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14 votes

Ticket to Ride house rule to help players with short destination tickets

The goal in TTR is not "complete the cards you're given", it's "get the most points". There are plenty of ways to do this with short routes (e.g. by focusing on building only length 4+, not going for ...
freekvd's user avatar
  • 4,545
13 votes
Accepted

Is Root really asymmetrical and balanced?

Root is highly asymmetrical While each faction has technically the same goal (reach 30 victory points), and there are some universal ways of gaining victory points (destroying your opponents' ...
Arcanist Lupus's user avatar
10 votes
Accepted

How to balance Dixit?

That particular rule isn't particularly balanced, and is included for convenience. However, playing with fewer cards in hand also imbalances the game, as storytellers have fewer cards to choose from ...
Samthere's user avatar
  • 9,618
9 votes
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Balancing a Momentum Mechanic

I can imagine this system working better if implemented as an additional layer to the general action system, rather than a standalone concept of managing actions - let me outline what I have in mind: ...
TheThirdMan's user avatar
  • 9,091
7 votes

Are the A-sides and B-sides of the wonder boards really balanced?

[EDIT] As promised I'm getting back with more stats. TL;DR: You can view an interactive version of the stats in this js fiddle There are 3 tables. One for sides only, one for wonders only and one for ...
Marius's user avatar
  • 587
7 votes

Ticket to Ride house rule to help players with short destination tickets

I disagree that the player who draws the longest routes has an advantage. A winning play in Ticket to Ride (TTR) doesn't boil down simply to that. Here are a few reasons why I don't think changing the ...
BirkTheSoggy's user avatar
7 votes

How to balance Dixit?

Definitions A turn consists of one player being the story teller and all other players guessing. A round consists of as many turns as there are players, so that every player has been the ...
SQB's user avatar
  • 1,588
5 votes

Balancing a Momentum Mechanic

The easiest way I can think of to balance this sort of mechanic is to have certain actions only be available at certain momentum levels. In particular, you could introduce a class of "desperate ...
goldPseudo's user avatar
  • 6,682
5 votes
Accepted

Has computer go impacted the discussion about komi?

Something to note because many people are confused by this issue... The skill of the players is irrelevant to komi. Komi is defined as the number of points given to white such that perfect play will ...
Daniel T.'s user avatar
  • 260
5 votes

Is Saboteur biased towards the miners?

In my experience, if you're playing the Saboteur base game with a group of experienced players, the saboteurs have a better chance of winning than the gold diggers. During the first few (5-10 maybe) ...
freekvd's user avatar
  • 4,545
5 votes
Accepted

How can I determine whether two decks are equally strong?

Playtesting is by far the best option (and how all major (and minor) trading card games) have been designed. Do not only pitch the two decks against each other, but also against other decks. Other ...
Glorfindel's user avatar
  • 29.4k
4 votes

Are the A-sides and B-sides of the wonder boards really balanced?

The two sides are not designed to be balanced. On 6 out of 7 wonders in the base game, side A has been in fact created to ease new players in the game, by providing a common pattern among them: 3 ...
Adama's user avatar
  • 3,722
4 votes
Accepted

How to deal with being a 'dungeon master' and the other players finding the missions too hard?

Efficiency and focus is the name of the game in Imperial Assault. Let's look at your specific issues: Running out of time My group ran into a similar issue until we realized that many of the ...
David C Ellis's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

Most important elements of easy-to-learn hard-to-master?

Make sure that single actions can have multiple different outcomes depending on how and when they are used Strategic complexity is created when a player has multiple mutually exclusive actions* they ...
Arcanist Lupus's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

For Star Realms, what's the appropriate ratio of Wealth-per-Card-per-Faction?

Alright, so I found google docs with cards, added some more data concerning base sets and made a diagram with it. I used a sophisticated formula of counting only half of the trade from ally and scrap ...
Deo's user avatar
  • 3,216
3 votes

Ticket to Ride house rule to help players with short destination tickets

How much have you played? I agree that someone who gets lucky and gets several long tickets that are all along the same route will have a big advantage. However, other players can disrupt the ...
dwjohnston's user avatar
  • 3,485
3 votes

Battlestar Galactica: How to balance core game

There is some strategies that can make you human group win. Is hard to fight the cylons in the board game (exactly like the TV show), but not impossible, even without changing the resources markers to ...
Bruno Estrazulas's user avatar
3 votes

Battlestar Galactica: How to balance core game

From page 28 of the rulebook: To make the game easier for the human players, start the game with 2 more of each resource (10 food, 10 fuel, 12 morale, and 14 population). However, it's worth ...
Daniel Lim's user avatar
  • 1,213
3 votes
Accepted

How can I use chess piece value to balance my homemade TCG?

When Glorfindel linked you to the Chess piece relative value article, he was providing an example of how you can compare relative strengths in very simple situations. In the case of your game, you ...
ConMan's user avatar
  • 10.7k
2 votes

Ticket to Ride house rule to help players with short destination tickets

In my experience, I don't think starting with short tickets is an automatic loss. In fact, I've been very successful with shorter tickets. When I start with short tickets, I try to complete them ...
John's user avatar
  • 316
2 votes

Ticket to Ride house rule to help players with short destination tickets

Yes, without the risk of beïng disrupted, the long routes are a winner. I'm not sure if your solution helps. But I have a few of my own: Disregard the points for the routes. Divide the routes in ...
Toon Krijthe's user avatar
  • 11.6k
2 votes

In Axis and Allies, could a house rule upgrading the German navy finally "balance" the 1942 game?

Interested in what you say here about the Allies having a slight edge. I assume you mean First Edition here. My friend and I have been playing for years. We originally used to think that the Allies ...
Steve Oakes's user avatar
2 votes

Flash Point without the Deck Gun?

I agree that this is a major flaw in the base game. To counteract this (a little), my wife and I sometimes use 2 characters each, which is allowed in the official rules. That isn't a complete solution ...
Ned Strong's user avatar
2 votes

Could Axis and Allies be "balanced" by weakening the US just a bit more?

This would be an interesting variation. I'm thinking you would have to remove all 3 IPC from Brazil. The timing of when IPCs are delivered has a huge effect. Early IPCs allow the Germans to build up ...
Dogberry's user avatar
2 votes

Ticket to Ride house rule to help players with short destination tickets

I think you could mitigate this by having a hand drafting of initial routes, ala 7 wonders/agricola. Let's say you seed each player with a minimum of two long routes and two short. On top of that, ...
Channy's user avatar
  • 21
2 votes

How to fix very high impact of losing players last turn

While I haven't played Game of Thrones, kingmaking is something that happens in a ton of games. And I've only ever found a couple ways of effectively dealing with it. Embrace it. Sometimes, it is ...
Becuzz's user avatar
  • 5,502
2 votes
Accepted

Balancing Creature battles in a new card game

Forget fixed stat blocks decided by the type. They're too deterministic! Nobody wants to remember all those different number triplets! What should you do instead? Use non-transitive dice Each ...
Nij's user avatar
  • 3,533
2 votes

Is Root really asymmetrical and balanced?

I've played it a dozen times and seen all factions win. Also, in BGG comments all factions are alternatively seen as the "best" faction, so I guess it depends on the playing groups. For example, ...
mcabreb's user avatar
  • 786
2 votes

Is Root really asymmetrical and balanced?

Root is asymmetrical. Aside from a game where you have 2 Vagabonds every faction is wildly different while still using the same core mechanics. Even in a game with two Vagabonds however, they do ...
aslum's user avatar
  • 4,766
1 vote
Accepted

Can you tell if one board is balanced or not compared to the others?

You probably could produce a mathematical formula taking into account the different factors that obtain you points based on your wonder. It would be long and arduous to figure out, especially ...
Maltanis's user avatar
  • 424

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