by madddawgg
TL;DR Version
Set-up
Players set-up and re-setup board til all agree it works.
2 Dragon Runes in Home Realm, 1 Dragon Rune 2 spaces away per player. (False runes used as well)
Exploration tiles drafted one by one, shuffled, then placed one by one. (remove Dragon Thrones)
In spring, players draw back up to 4 Fate Cards forming a hand of Fate Cards.
A player may discard a Tactics Card during combat to do the following:
Prevent 1 Rout
Prevent 1 Damage
Play a Fate card from hand instead of drawing one for a unit
Neutral units cannot be controlled.
Dragons Have 3 Strength. Giants have 2 Strength.
Dragons and Giants are immune to Routs. They also get 2 fate cards per battle.
Diplomacy only makes Giants and Dragons retreat if you get a gold.
During winter, kill Neutral units down to 3.
Remove all cards that revolve around controlling neutral units.
When Rallying Support for Neutral Units, recruit your own units.
When you Harvest with Supremacy, you build a development but you do not use them. Instead, the developments work more intuitively. The influence and tactic card developments mean you have those on your dials when you acquire power/strategize. The +1 resource development means that area has +1 resource of your choice whenever you reset your resource dials (harvest w/o supremacy, fall season effect, etc).
You cannot 'overstack' when attacking.
Strategize is swapped. Primary is Gain tactics, Supremacy is move units 1 space.
When you Mobilize, you can attack with both the Primary and Supremacy.
Conquer's primary ability is "Attack with +3 Vs Strongholds" and its Supremacy is "You May Overstack"
Timmoran Shards cannot be 'turned in.' They always stay in possession of Heroes.
Timmoran Shards count as a Dragon Rune as long as they are in possession of a Hero who is in a Controlled area.
Each player's starting hero is given a Timmoran Shard.
Timmoran Shards are removed from the Reward Deck before a Hero draws a reward.
The Captain of the Heroes League Title reads: "Heroes never desert you. Before drawing a reward, shuffle the Timmoran Shards into the Reward deck and Draw 3 and choose your reward."
Trenloe the Strong's ability reads: "Before drawing a reward, shuffle the Timmoran Shards into the reward deck."
Above was the in brief version of this post. I know I can be verbose so I try to provide that. If you want to read my rationale or a more complete explanation of anything above, read on. Again, I apologize for the length. Thank you for your interest if you read the entire post.
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A quick note about my experience with the game. I have mostly played 2 and 3 player, but I have a lot of games under my belt. This is one of my favorite games. However, as we have played, 'turtling' has emerged as a dominant strategy. Further, even though originally I liked that 'the game' could defeat you (that is, you could get a bad fall card that would hurt you, or just dead tactic card draws, or the fate cards could not go your way, or the quests you receive could be bad... or your opponent flips a dragon rune exploration token... or you are starved for food.... or you could just die from failing quests... or just a million different things that are outof your control could go wrong and you lose... often in an unfun for everyone way. I've been the winner and loser due to these elements and you don't feel like you won and you don't feel like you lost). I have grown to just want a 'good' game where the winner is determined more by his ability to assess the board and to employ tactics and counter his opponent. These games happen in the core game, but they're the minority of games for me.
So, I wanted to really change a lot of the game to make the game more what I would like to play. I thought I would make some simple changes and document my play testing and if anyone else wants to theorize with me or playtest with me, I would appreciate it and we can make the game better as we go.
Here are my ideas. I have some very radical ideas and some less radical ideas. I'll start by posting my less radical ideas and then as I test the more radical ideas, I'll share them.
Let's start with fixing set-up since that is, in my opinion, one of the sure fire ways to balance the game a bit better. A bad board can instantly make someone lose before the game even begins.
Instead of doing one go-through of setting up tiles, players go through it twice, allowing them to make any changes they like. The final set-up, players must all agree is fair before beginning selection else they will go through it again. Players do not pick starting locations one at a time. Instead players agree where they will start. So, players have their starting locations, the monsters are on the board, etc. Players then place 2 dragon runes and 1 false rune in their home realm. Then player place 1 False and 1 Real rune anywhere on the board as long as it is two places away from a home realm. If this is not possible, the runes are not placed.
Rationale behind this change:
You get a fair set-up no matter what. No one can complain. No surprises. You all have to agree before you start. It makes set-up WAY better. Finally, the dragon runes fill-up your home realm so that you can't simply hide them right away and it makes the 'threatened home realms' season card work always. In this variant, we play to 8 runes as well. But really you're playing to 6 because you start with 2.
Then, players sort the exploration tiles removing the two Dragon Throne tiles, and the flooded area tokens (removing these is your option of course). The amount of places that can receive a '2' token is counted then divided by the number of players. If this is uneven, that is ok. Players then draft an amount of tokens (that is, they look at them all face up and choose them one at a time. The fate deck determines who gets first pick, then it goes in a circle). Once players have enough to fill the spots, they shuffle the tiles then place them one at a time on the board (face down). The players will place the tiles they want in their area and the tiles they do not want in their opponent's area.
Rationale behind this change:
Players will know what exploration tiles are out there. Further, players will take the villages that shore-up the resources they lack. Lack food? Draft a food village. Draft both if you get to them first. This also makes heroes have a little more importance aside from farming rewards. The "1" explore tiles are placed as usual, just pure random. Alternatively, you could use JUST "2" explore tiles and place them and skip using "1" tiles altogether. I have not tested this. But, using this draft technique has improved our games by itself Dramatically. I really look forward to using my hero JUST to explore and benefit from these tokens. In our 2 player games, we leave the throne in the pool to draft (obvi, we both draft one first), and we usually end up spending our heroes exploring looking for that throne first thing.
Objective cards are handed out as usual. Heroes are dealt as usual. Quest cards as usual.
Game play changes
Fate Cards and Tactic Card--Tactic Cards can be discarded to provide the following benefits instead of their card effect:
Block 1 Damage
Block 1 Route
Play A Fate Card from your Hand of Fate Cards
So, every spring you draw back up to 4 Fate Cards for your hand of Fate Cards. These Fate Cards are only usable for Combat. Essentially, the idea is that every Tactics card can work like the Banners of War fate cards w/ the alternate Fate results.
Rationale for this change:
I haven't heavily tested this, but my hope is that over time it proves to give players a feel of more options during combat. From what I've playtested, it works pretty fair and feels balanced. But I have yet to use it in a live game.
More Radical Change:
I actually have an idea where Tactics cards are replaced with Tactic Tokens. The tokens are accrued in the same fashion as cards. You can spend them to do fixed abilities. For example, block damage, block route, forced march for one unit, recruit 1 triangle or circle unit, play a fate card from your hand, and a few more ideas. I have not tested this at all, but plan to. Any ideas on what would be good Tactic token abilities would be welcome. I even liked the idea of giving players random tactic cards and saying 'these are what your tokens can do' or maybe players Acquire Power for Tactic Cards and those allow Tactic Tokens to use those abilities. A lot of experimenting/ideas here. Again, this is a more radical change that I have not tested at all.
Neutral Units:
I really dislike how the Giant and Dragons work. I also dislike players controlling Neutral Units in general. I also dislike how they cluster in a big group. I do like Neutral Units and how they function as a road block to progress. I like the idea of having Monsters in the game world. I like how the individual units work even.
But I want to change a lot here. However, I feel that none of these are that radical.
Players cannot recruit neutral units via diplomacy or cities. A gold result is REQUIRED to force Dragons and Giants to retreat, otherwise Gold has no significance. When recruiting units at a city... just recruit from your own units. Simple.
Also, Giants count for 2 strength and Dragons count 3. Dragons and Giants are immune to Routs and Draw 2 Fate Cards instead of 1 Fate Card. Note that if using the alternative rules for Tactic Cards, that these battles should be easier to plan for, but overall will still be harder. I don't think I have ever played a game where Giants and Dragons really mattered unless gained control by the enemy which imo is just more luck in a game filled with luck. Also thematically I dislike the idea of Neutral units being controlled.
To prevent clusters, neutral units are considered to have 3 food for winter. When killing off for Winter, use a system that everyone agrees on. I think Dragon>Giant>Beastman>Wing Bat>Hell Hound>Wizard is fair.
Finally, remove any cards that revolve around controlling neutral units from the game.
Developments:
The Tactic Card and Influence developments are gained not when you Harvest w/ Supremacy but when you Strategize or Acquire power instead. The +1 resource Development makes that area count as having 1 resource of your choice whenever it matters. (I.E if you get famine, you say 'this is worth 1 food' and then count your dials and reset accordingly)
Rationale: Essentially, the Supremacy of Harvest only matters when you want to BUILD something not BENEFIT from it. This is more a QOL change though it does change the game a bit. This I think should open more strategies and just 'make sense' more. It can be annoying to be hit by famine or something when really you DO have that resource... Also, Harvesting just to get +2 influence or +1 tactic just seems lackluster to the point that buying those developments seems useless especially after you consider how good the BoW development cards are.
Order Cards:
Strategize is swapped.
Supremacy is "Move Units 1 Space" While Primary is Gain Tactics.
Rationale: This shouldn't change the card that much. Honestly, if you want to Strategize early, you're fine to do so. But Strategize late, and you can still get some Tactic Cards. This also helps to mitigate the awfulness of Long Winter for a player who wants Tactic Cards. A big part, imo, of why Influence > Tactics, is because the way Strategize works. I think this subtle change will make it a better order card. As-is, it's so rare that I even want the primary and only strategize early because I want tactic cards.
Mobilize
You can conduct combat with both steps, but you cannot 'overstack' with either attack.
Rationale: The changes here are important and should allow combat to come about more often. Mobilize basically works the same, but I always felt the second move should be an attack as well. It will allow players to spread and honestly, it makes the supremacy matter. If you're GOING TO ACTIVATE you should be able to attack. Further, you can PUNCH THROUGH. Attack one space, then attack the next one. This makes turtling really hard. But you cannot overstack, so this makes the defending player stand a chance and forces him to defend two locations rather than one, but does so without the fear of being overstacked... Unless the player uses...
Conquer
Attack with +3 vs stronghold and the supremacy bonus is "You can overstack" with your attack.
Rationale: Conquering does not always require 'overstacking' and honestly overstacking in my opinion is a weak way to make the game 'work.' That is, it's the only way to win versus a stronghold. With this, you can conquer AT ANY TIME! so your opponent must always fear an attack on his strongholds. If you want to overstack though, you need to use the supremacy bonus. So the game is removing the overstack option, but allowing it as the supremacy of conquer. Part of my hope with removing overstack and allowing mobilize to be two attacks is that players go for an Offense is the Best Defense strategy.
Changes to Heroes
Timmoran Shards cannot be 'turned in.' They always stay in possession of Heroes.
Timmoran Shards count as a Dragon Rune as long as they are in possession of a Hero who is in a Controlled area.
Each player's starting hero is given a Timmoran Shard.
Timmoran Shards are removed from the Reward Deck before a Hero draws a reward.
The Captain of the Heroes League Title reads: "Heroes never desert you. Before drawing a reward, shuffle the Timmoran Shards into the Reward deck and Draw 3 and choose your reward."
Trenloe the Strong's ability reads: "Before drawing a reward, shuffle the Timmoran Shards into the reward deck."
Rationale: I really feel that the Captain of the Heroes League card 'breaks' heroes. It's too silly for a Player to be able to churn out a reward left and right like that. Ripping Timmoran Shards off the reward deck is too luck centric and Hero Combat should matter more. While Heroes League makes it more of a chance of getting them, it's not a sure fire thing. Plus, I like the idea of KEEPING YOUR REWARDS AND USING THEM! Heroes League Makes your Heroes less Heroic? That doesn't make sense. Let's make them MORE heroic. It also says Get Heroes League Early just like the other Titles. Every Title you want early to benefit from... except Heroes League... Get it At The End and then snipe the win by discarding your now useless Rewards. I hate it.
I don't like Commanders as per BoW. I LIKE that Heroes are this Side game, and I want it to remain a Side Game. As it stands, players ALREADY just hold onto Timmoran Shards til the end of the game or til they are unsure if they'll lose their hero. I say, GO IN AND TAKE THE SHARD. The shard should not be able to be Turned In. It counts as a dragon rune as long as a Hero Holds it and is in a Friendly/Controlled area.
I think if you play a really aggressive Hero Campaign you should be rewarded with a Shard/Rune after you kill that Hero. Giving you an extra Rune. It also should force your Heroes to stay on your side of the map.