From the Shards of the Throne rulebook:

"The Ghosts of Creuss have two separate Home Systems
connected by a “D” Wormhole. Both of these systems are
considered Home Systems for the purpose of card and game
effects. During setup, the Ghosts of Creuss player only places
the hexagonal tile in the galaxy. He places the non-hexagonal
tile in front of him. Also, the “D” Wormhole is considered a
Wormhole for the purposes of card and game effects ."

It seems to me that this will make the wormhole secret objective much harder to complete. Unless the Creuss get it, of course.

Or maybe it will just make our games much more hostile than they have been, traditionally. =P

All those secret objective is kind of a russian roulette. You just get one and it can vary from: go take those 2 systems near your home system and get 2 points, to: go destroy all your opponent's fleet. And because of that you can always say whether you win or lose the game from the very beginning.

We either don't use secret objectives now or use em with special rules:

Before the Politics action card is resolved and before the new Voice of the council is elected person who got the Voice of the Council Card can choose and get any 1 secret objective card from the secret objective deck. After he has chosen a secret objective he reveals it to all the players and places it next to the public objectives. Any number of secret objectives can be revealed at the same time. Any player can now claim that secret objective as if it was his own.
As soon as any player announced that he has all the prerequisites to claim secret objective he immediately takes it and gets 2 VP. Player who has claimed secret objective can not claim another secret objective. No one can claim already claimed secret objectives.

This little feature makes our games more politically-oriented and more brutal at the same time.

Mr. Djingles said:

I agree. It just struck me for this particular case since the wormhole SO (guardian of the gates?) is already potentially one of the harder ones to get, depending on map layout, and now you could have the added PITA of trying ot take an enemy home system as well. I suppose there are other SOs that explicitly require the taking of enemy home systems, though.

Mr. Djingles said:

That's a pretty cool house rule. Might have to try that out some day.

Just imagine the "close the wormholes" agenda getting passed on the first turn.

Aarontu said:

The one that makes all the ships in the wormholes destroyed is also fun.

I like the house rule posted above, especially the fact that only one player may claim a secret objective. I do think I would miss the ability to score points from a secret objective and a public objective.

We use a house rule where players draw three random SOs and then select one. The other two return to the deck, the deck is shuffled, and the next player draws three. Selection order is randomly determined in advance and whoever is first to draw gets to be Speaker during the first Strategy Phase as well.

As to Steve-Os original question, I would only include alpha and beta wormholes as part of the Keeper of the Gates objective. I've also heard players excluding Mallice, if that's in play. Depending on the map you're using (we use pre-sets), there should be at least 3-4 wormholes scattered around the board.

Even though these are all adjacent, it's on par with a SO like Threatening where a player only needs to take 2 systems (but each system is adjacent to an opposing player's home system).

Seren said:

It wasn't a question so much as an observation.

If you want to house rule that way, that's cool, but I think the rule is quite clear, as I quoted it above, that this wormhole counts as a wormhole for all rules purposes, and that would include the Keeper of the Gates S.O.

Seren said:

The SE rules specifically state that you don't have to control the Wormhole Nexus for Keeper of the Gates.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Creuss have some racial ability that protects them from Closing the Wormholes and other such Wormhole-affecting stuff.

sigmazero13 said:

On snap, I didn't even think about the closing the wormholes one. Yeah, that would suck for them if they don't have a racial exception somewhere.

Steve-O said:

sounds like a great game , i'm tempted .
sounds like a great game , i'm tempted .

Oh, how I HATE HATE HATE this forum software; it screwed up my post. But in any case, it looks like the Ghosts are indeed immune to the Closing the Wormholes effect.

Sorry for the other two posts, for some reason the software decided to start playing "poorly"

I think that's a huge problem. Because obviously you can't close off the homeworld of a player! That's just nonsense. Either he's unconquerable [as is right now, becaus HE can still fly through but others may only reach him by discarding the LAW or mimicing his racial] or he's down his homesystem in capacity possibly in an early stage.

One might think that such a situation could never happen, but given that there are card to choose a aktioncard/agenda you'll see this if it's not balanced!

Iolly said:

The way it works right now is quite clear. The Ghosts of Creuss ignore the effects of Closing the Wormholes. No one else does. It effectively makes one of their two home systems unconquerable, unless you discard the law or play Multiculturalism on them. But people can still qualify for home system objectives using the home system they have on the board, so it doesn't really matter. It just gives them a system no one can take from them and makes it so they can always qualify for objectives.

broken said:

Actually no. Since both systems are considered the Ghost's Home Systems, another player can always take the planet which is in their home system in this galaxy to prevent them from being able to accomplish objectives.

There isn't a planet in the "Creuss Gate" system. It's just a system with a D wormhole.