Hey guys. I thought I would share our optional rules me and my friends play. Let me know if you have any questions or critique

First I want to explain that the reason we use this rules below are 1) faster and more explosive 2) suitable for 3-4 players 3) more Risk (the game) look alike 4) more drama!

Winning the game

* Completion of a secret objective card will end the game. And winner is declared instantly.

General

* Whole board will be played
* Public cards are open. 9 objective cards and are drawn as usual. With the exception that the "end game" card is removed from the game"
* 1 political card is always drawn at the start of every turn after strategy cards have been selected.
* Each player choose two strategy cards, like described for 3 or 4 player optional rule described in rule book.
* Players can trade Technologies, and Action Cards with each other when activating the Trade Strategy card. However, only to the person they have current trade agreements with. Trading a technology will not result in a loss of that technology.
* When the Political card is revealed: the current "speaker" always have a +5 in influence
* Political Vote: every 2 influence vote for another player will result in = 1 influence for that player who vote for another player i.e. if John votes 4 influence for George then John will recieve 2 influence in the vote.

Objective Cards and Victory points

* Public Objective cards:

1 victory points will give 1 Action card, 3 Tradegood and 1 Command Counter .
2 victory points will give 1 action card, 6 tradegoods and 2 command counters.

* Whenever, the reward is victory point refer to above.

Action Cards
* Players can only hold 4 action cards at any given time.

Trade
* Players can have 2 trade agreements with the same player. Can be broken at any time.

I forgot to add that each player has 2 strategy cards, as optional rules for 3-4 player game in rulebook

It's an interesting variant. I'll have to try it sometime. Don't think I'll use those last two rules, though. They don't seem integral tot he basic idea and frankly I don't like them, but that's just my personal taste. Everything else looks good.

My mate told me some corrections of the rules we play hehe

Corrections

* Whole board:
- depends on how fast you want to play. The smaller board the more intense and more drama

* Political vote:
- a player can never vote on himself (optional, since we have experienced it depends on who you play with hehe)
- votes are done hidden and written down on papers. Players discuss the votes (how many votes in influence he will give a person and so on) before writing down the decisions on how they are going to vote (with influence scores and so on).

- The "every 2 influence rule" will only apply if a player will receive a vote from the player he voted on

- The "every 2 influence" rule will always be rounded down e.g. if I give John +3 I will recieve +1 in the vote

* When the political card is revealed:
- the speaker gets +6 and he cannot vote on himself.
- the speaker can devide the infleunce vote e.g. +2 to John and +4 to Steve

This political system will sure piss of the players in political debate

Steve, the reason we decided to decrease the amount of action cards are that we felt they get more valuable. And when a player have 7 of them it gets to confusing and players with special ability to spy on the cards sometimes ignore the rule. And when you can spend two trade agreements with the same player...trust me .. it will get interesting and especially when you can break the agreements whenever you want.

That's an interesting variant you've got there. It definitely seems like it would speed up the gameplay. Our playing group got cut nearly in half because most of our players decided after a few games that it was 'way too long of a game.' I'll have to coerce them into playing again and give this variant a try, heheh.

I've gotta agree with Steve-O though, the trade rule doesn't really bother me that much, but I don't like that action card limitation. Seems like it would give Yssaril even more of an edge, when everyone else only has four cards and they could have upwards from eight, over double the amount of everyone else. And I both like and dislike some of the voting rules you've established. I like that you hide your votes and they aren't revealed until the end of the proceedings, but I don't like that you are unable to vote on yourself. It just doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

I have one question though: You say that a political card is revealed after the strategy phase. Does that replace the usual political card played by the Political/Assembly strategy card, or does it merely introduce a second one each turn?

We're actually going to be playing a game tonight I believe. It's been a while since we've played so we'll probably stick to our usual rules, but next game we might just give these rules here a spin.

Mighty Maltin: We removed the political card, from the game. We actually played this game this night to refresh our memories of the rules we usually play and realised that some of the rules do not work that well (we usually play drunk and this night we were sober and some rules don't make sense haha ) so here is a revised "war of the universe" rules. We changed the "political rules" below.

Winning the game
* Completion of a secret objective card will end the game. And winner is declared instantly.
General

* Whole board will be played: depends on how fast you want to play. The smaller board the more intense and more drama
* Remove secret objectives cards that are to easy to complete
* Public cards are open: 9 objective cards and are drawn as usual (5 public I and 4 public II cards). The "end game" card is removed from the game"?* 1 political card is always drawn at the start of every turn after strategy cards have been selected.

?* Optional: each player choose 2 strategy cards as described in 3-4 player game. This will make the game faster!
* Players can trade Technologies, and Action Cards with each other when activating the Trade Strategy card. However, only to the person they have current trade agreements with. Trading a technology will not result in a loss of that technology. Only 1 technology per turn can be traded..

* Trades are established before the game starts?

Political
* votes are done hidden and written down on papers. Players discuss the votes (how many votes in influence he will give a person and so on) before writing down the decisions on how they are going to vote (with influence scores and so on).

Objective Cards and Victory points
* Public Objective cards:
1 victory points will give 1 Action card, 2 Tradegood and 1 Command Counter . ?2 victory points will give 1 Action card, 4 Tradegoods and 2 Command counters.
3 vicotory points will give 1 action card, 6 Tradegoods and 2 Command counters.
* Whenever, the reward is victory point refer to above.

Action Cards?
* Players can only hold 4 action cards at any given time.

Trade?
* Players can have 2 trade agreements with the same player. Can be broken at any time.

Speaker card rotates "clockwise" until someone draws the initiative card

Strategy Cards
Imperial Card: Receive 2 Tradegoods and can choose to exhaust 1 system i.e. a player cannot enter or leave a system, the player place a CC on that system.
Politcal Card: is removed from the game