Here is a good time to suggest some "house" rules. after will be the logic behind the rule.

1. - Mustering always occurs on step 1.

1. In most other quality strategy games there is a muster, or recruit phase(cosmic encounter,civilization,twilight imperium, risk, axis and allies, diplomacy, etc.). having your recruit phase being randomized is dubious at best and makes the special consolidate token more powerful than it should be. Furthermore no mustering occurs first turn and is very liely not to happen on the next turn. how do you use your units to take new regions when you have too few on the board? answer is, you don't. the game can't function properly as a diplomatic war game without you having units on the board to threaten or bargain with. and more often than not you will NOT be mustering units.

1a. - A further variant of this would be to acquire a power token from the region if mustering was not done (1 or 2 depending on the mustering).

1a. This is borrowing from FFG's own product: Civilization (where you muster a unit or make buildings or harvest materials, one of them not all of them) you can offer a trade-off... units for the board or power tokens for umm.. power... it is what the player wants to do with the game that will make this game dynamic work to his/her favour.

1b. - Westeros cards are just used for the wildliing track and special events cards (supply and muster are not used and considered "do nothing").

1b. Sometimes having a random event in your game to mix things up is fun. just dont have it have so great of an impact. Wildlings attacking is that fresh little addition of suspense that makes the game good and fun.

Comments, opinions?

What happens to the supply? Calculated at the end of each turn? IMO the game will not be balanced, Lannister wil have NO chance against the Greyjoy if there is a mustering each turn. Also, i think that the game works just fine if you have only 4 units for the first 2 or even 3 turns, but if you don't think so u can muster when you like via special consolidate power. [There is an issue of 2 houses left without special orders at the beggining of the game, therefore unable to muster this way. If you are stuck in the position of no musterings as Greyjoy or Tyrell, you should send 1 footman to pyke/arbor and make enough power tokens to dominate the next bid -> gain special orders. your initial position on the map is safe enough to last long with only your 4/5 units.]

This said, i don't like the randomness of the cards, but prefer to play with the top 2 cards in each deck face up, to eliminate it. : )

as stated before the supply card reconciles your supply levels upwards so it still has strategic value.

however you cannot:

muster

retreat

march

move

without mainaining the support limitations so the supply card is largely useless anyways.

I think this is a good variant to use with people who usually don't play complex strategy games. It removes a few variables from the game, makes it easier to calculate what is going to happen next and reduces the number of situations you have to anticipate and for which you might need a contingency plan.

bump.

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