Alright got a question, when setting up the map do the starting positions need to be actually 4 spaces away or 4 spaces if you have to move around mountains and such?

They need to actually have 4 spaces between them, disregarding red/blue borders. This is measured from every hex a home realm would touch if placed where the marker is.

Also remember that it's okay for ONE home area to be 3 spaces away from the nearest opponent if its impossible to make them all 4 spaces away. I think that's mostly a time-saving measure so you don't have to rebuild the map five times. Obviously getting everyone 4 spaces away would be the fairest method.

Getting everyone four hexes away is actually just nearly impossible to do in a three-player game, and won't always occur in a two-player game. But if home realms are only two hexes away, the first player to march on his opponent's home realm just plain takes it.

In cases where it's impossible one could simply rule that an additional map piece must be put on the table to fix this.

I've only played 1 4-player game so far, but with 4 players, you use all but 1 of the tiles... Why not just put that extra tile on the board to start with as a "seed tile"?

sigmazero13 said:

Yep that should work to make sure that there it's easy to make a valid map.

sigmazero13 said:

We've found that "packing" the tiles in very close makes it hard to always get that "4-hex" rule. Don't be afraid to conntect the tiles in "spaced-out" ways (as long as you obey the "two hex touch" rule.)

TK