Hi there,

I've got a suggestion for a slight home brew variant I'd like to put to the more experienced players on this board as I have the grand total of 1 game under my belt. If this is a good idea or has already been tried, great, if not please do tell!

Purely from vicarious experience i've inferred by reading session reports and also in order to encourage perhaps slightly more realistic political interactions between players, i've thought of an idea which would mean players would have to be a little more careful with when deciding which allies to stab in the back. Whilst stabbing in the back is a perfectly valid game tactic, I propose the following:

In the status phase, objectives are claimed simultaneously. In the event that more than one player claims victory (i.e. has 10VPs), the galactic council must convene and all players must use their influence as normal, and use their votes to elect one of the tied winners as the overall winner of the game. In this way, players could still backstab each other in the back but would have to be more wary as to the consequences of doing this in the end game.

Feel free to say the idea is rubbish It's new year's eve and I'm too ill to go out partying so could just be chatting rubbish!

Cheers,

El

That would be interesting and would give some benefit to making lasting friends. However there is the problem (perhaps with my gaming group) that the votes might get taken personally. The tie breaking mechanism in place (planets, etc). worked well. It also makes the game finished, as opposed to another 20 minutes of prolonged negotation (ie. arguing) about who won.

But a good tool to spice things up.

Haha actually ignore this. I just had a game where it was the speaker token which ultimately decided who won first and I realised, had it gone to a vote- even with a good bunch of friends it may have been taken personally. Much better to simply anticipate becoming the speaker at the right time as a factor to a winning strategy.