I was thinking about the wanted posters and how they seem under used during games. So, I have come up with the following variant:

Instead of putting the three posters on the city gate space put one on the City space, one on the Tavern space, and one on the Village space at the start of the game. You may buy one of these posters that you land on at the end of your turn with two exceptions:

You get drunk in the tavern.

You are turned into a toad visiting the Enchantress.

When you buy a poster it is replaced with another from the deck. You may also claim one of these bounties right away just like landing on the City Gate space.

If you land on the City Gate space, you may claim or buy any of these three posters as usual. You may only ever own one wanted poster at a time. if you buy another you must discard your first one. This prevents one player from hoarding all the wanted posters and collecting a massive amount of gold at one time.

This gives players more chances to get some gold early in the game to go buy some stuff in the city which should also help speed up the game.

Thoughts?

Encounter the Posters BEFORE the space...

You know, we hardly used the Wanted Posters, but then we pulled the ending which required their use. We discovered an influx of gold due to this, even tho we use Highlands. And because of this, our next game had much more use of wanted posters even tho we didn't have the required use of them for an ending.

Good idea, interesting veriant indeed.

We use Wanted posters. Not with any particular agenda or scheme in mind. Just per the normal rules. The City tends to be a 'late beginning-game to middle game' ploy. We're still mostly heading to the Highlands if its gold we seek. But it mostly works, landing on the City Gate space, and buying or redeeming warrants or trophies.