Rule Variant: Mercenaries

ToB cards are now represent mercenary forces that can be hired with power tokens.

After combat begins, but before house cards are played the attacker and defender announce if they'll be hiring mercenaries. They secretly set aside a number of power tokens and reveal at the same time the amount of tokens they'll be spending.

Each mercenary (ToB card) costs 2 power tokens and must be drawn from the top of the deck. The person higher on the fiefdom track draws all his/her cards first.

The only limit to how many mercenaries can be hired are the power tokens a player can spend.

The ToB cards represent how well a mercenary group fought for you on the battlefield, in some cases they'll do terrible while in others they'll shine. We've done it like this to change up the unpredictability that ToB cards already add to combat while at the same time allowing players the chance to more or less "guarantee" success or to pull out a close victory against overwhelming odds. This also helps in countering some of the unbalance in house cards, but in order for that to happen a player must plan ahead and know when they'll be hiring mercenaries.

Try it out and share your thoughts!

I think those rules are bloody brilliant! On the other hand they would aid the winning players more so than the loosing. I'm definitely going to give these rules a try

We had two sessions the other night (surprisingly quick games) both with the mercenary rule. There was only one time that it helped completely obliterate an opponent. Every other time it kept things very interesting.

The time where one player (me) was obliterated was because my invader dropped 8 power tokens to buy 4 cards. It was a massive naval battle with me (Baratheons) having 6 ships (3 main, 3 in support) and my opponent (Starks) having only 3. Even with my house card that turns his ships into 0's I lost big time because I had no power tokens and he drew some great cards.

That of course led to my capital being conquered… but other than that it seems pretty balanced so far.

My friends and I played with that rule except we changed it to one power instead of two. It worked quite well but near the end of the game no one was able to purchase mercenaries which lead to the cards deciding the battles (just as if the were no tides of battle at all).

thanks for sharing

I find this a very interesting variant, I would keep it at 2 power tokens otherwise it might be a bit too good for the houses with better power consolidation capacity..

I think that limiting the amount of mercenaries could be good as well, a good way to do this is by using the logistics marker, you can buy as many cards as your logistics current capacity per turn (you can use them in a single battle or spread them).

thanks for your share