We did play the game with 3 players and came up with a few unbalancing situations. Has anybody out there the same feeling or am I wrong.

I know this game is not supposed to be 100% balanced. It is more about fun and getting lucky with dice, drafts and cheat tokens but ...

A) the scaven team upgrade. Warpstone Souvenirs. Scoreboard phase : Eacht time you loose a matchup gain 2 fans.

In our game the scaven player had no problem to participate in 3 highlights and a tournament. (allmost each round)

He lost all highlights and got second place in the tourney. He received 10 fans. While everybody else got much less. And this continued in all the other rounds. He got lucky drafting that upgrade on the first turn. Before we started the last turn nobody else could beat him with the points spread out before us. We did not replay again so maybe he was pure lucky but after a few discussions in our group everybody was aggreeing that this card was over the top.

B) Dwarven Deathroller. A mean machine that every time it was used in a matchup, it nearly completely annihilated the opposition. This is the only card that has 3 attacks with only as counterweight the 3 extra cheat tokens and those tokens are most of the time beneficial. 6 out of 30 is bad. Even in the event that you are a bit unlucky and you draft an ejection cheat token, it has probably wiped out the opposition and you still win the matchup.

C) More a rules question.

We did play in our game with only the starplayers of the participating teams in the corresponding star player decks. And so the other starplayers were returned to the box. After re-reading the rules it seems I had to add all of the star players in their corresponding decks. Is this correct ?

Yes, all the star players should be added in two decks depending on the affiliation on the back of the card. I have, however, toyed with the idea of doing it as you did. The only thing that keeps me from doing it, is that I'm not big into houseruling stuff.

The warpstone really isn't that bad if you know how to stop it. Simply put if the skaven player is dividing himself into four zones like that this means he's going to have, 1 in most highlights and perhaps a few in another (in your case up to 3 or 2 in 2 matchups and 1 in everything else). Simply put to stop him from benefiting from the warpstone just injure the players where he placed only one. This is very simple to do if you're not equally over spreading yourself. If his player is injured he has to either A) Put another player there thus lowering his ability to spread or B) have no other player there (such as if another player takes up the now empty spot) and thus not be counted towards loosing the matchup (as you must have at least one player present during the scoreboard to be considered participating at a matchup in the first place).

Now for the Dwarven star. I love him, he's absolutely wonderful but even without the cheating tokens the chances of him taking himself out aren't all that low. He has a 1/12 chance per roll to score X / X (assuming he's continually rolling 2 dice which with 5 Star power he typically will) as soon as he rolls this once he can not continue with any remaining cheat/tackles he may have left. With 3 tackle rolls you're looking at about a 25% chance that he'd tackle himself by at least the third roll and while powerful using line men or other things with guard can remedy this somewhat (not to mention the tentacle tactic for the chaos or something similar that lowers strength). Overall, yes he's very powerful, but far from game breaking.

First, regarding the Warpstone: according to the rules, any team that either is First Place or Runner Up in a tournament wins it, and whoever gets the Lose! reward loses it. If the Skaven team finishes in second place, they don't get the reward for Warpstone.

Second, it's weird you're letting the Skaven player participate in 4 highlights considering that that means each of you are then only participating in one, (and one player in two) highlights. That's terrible play. The Skaven player has to take 4 out of 6 turns to get to that state, you guys should have been claiming highlights for their free rewards before they ever got to that point, and if you're letting the Skavens spread thin like that they deserve to win anyway.

Third, the Dwarven Deathroller isn't that great because it will often be ejected, which will cancel any benefit they might have gotten from the other cheating tokens (any ejected player leaves the field with all his other cheating tokens being cancelled). If you hit three times with it (thus have 4 cheat tokens) you have 61.2% chance of ejection.

Note that the previous poster is wrong, you only have 1/36 chance of falling down when rolling two dice (you need double X, so 1/6 * 1/6), so the odds of the deathroller failing badly on a tackle is 1 - (35/36)^3 = about 8%.

Titan : Thx . I read the same info on boardgamegeek. But I wanted to be sure and share the info. I think this mistake will be made by a few other people.

DarkAngel and DarkBunny : thx to share your view about my fears. I still have my doubts about the warpstone and the roller. In our next games we will try out some of your hints. With only two games played I now we can't make strong assumptions but all three of us had a bad feeling about those 2 cards.

Thx again

Keep in mind too that some team upgrades, staff upgrades and star players are MUCH more useful than others.. and that any card that adds fans over time can start swinging the game if the card is drawn early - or drawn late and you just happen to have a bunch of whatever is required to get the bonus fans.

The game requires that players take note of the +fan cards their opponents draw and play to counteract them. If your opponent draws the +2 fans/Star Player staff upgrade early on, everyone has to play to minimize the star players he draws. Same thing if he draws the +1 fan/staff upgrade. Or clearly matchups completely of skaven when they have Warpstone Souvenirs in play.

Drawn early, the +fan cards can be very powerful and let you pursue those fans in your strategy - but your opponents can respond because it's obvious what you're chasing.

Those bonus fan cards won't help you win matchups though - unlike a star player or coach/apothecary/wizard for example.

As others have already pointed out, the game has mechanisms to balance both cards. With the Warpstone Souvenir, it's a matter of the other players adapting their play a little bit (which I think is what makes that card so interesting). The Death Roller is balanced by the large number of cheat tokens (and the chance of dos equis). The Death Roller is also slightly limited in that it is best played in tandem with an existing player already at the matchup/tournament. The DR functions mainly to knock out as many opponents as possible. You have to make a quick calculation whether you'd be better served knocking out as many opponents as you can or just playing the card and taking the 5 point star power (if you are, for example, the last to act).

Having said that, it's always more fun to rack up cheat tokens and carnage.