Rule Variations
You can divide games players into three types:
- Those who play by the official rules.
- Those who think they are playing by the official rules, but who have got something (usually slightly) wrong.
- Those who play by their own modified versions of the official rules.
Actually, there’s also a Type 4 who don’t play by any agreed or consistent set of rules, but since these are known as “dirty rotten cheaters”, we won’t discuss them any further.
The game that I can think of where the three main types are most prevalent is actually one of the most successful board games ever - Monopoly. I haven’t done the research, but I’m willing to guess that more people fall into types 2 and 3 with Monopoly than with any other popular game.
I’m not a fan of Monopoly (though we have two copies in the house, in addition to copies of Junior Monopoly and Anti-Monopoly), and I think a lot of people share those feelings, but it’s a great example of rule variants. Some of the unofficial rule variants that exist are so well-known that they have become de facto rules that need agreeing, and the pre-game checklist becomes:
- Choose a banker
- Pick your tokens
- Roll to see who starts
- Are we paying fines to the Free Parking square?
The preponderance of rule variants doesn’t reflect well on Monopoly. Players usually introduce the variants to either make the game more interesting (like the Free Parking rule mentioned above), or to correct some real or perceived flaw in the gameplay. For example, the start of Monopoly, according to the standard rules, is notoriously unfair in favour of the person who starts and to the detriment of those who set off last. In a six-player game, the poor sixth player finds themselves following in the dust of the other players, landing on property that’s already been snapped up and not only having to cough up rent from the get-go but not having the opportunity to buy property themselves.
One of the variants most often introduced to tackle this is the rule that you can’t buy anything on the first time around the board. I was never convinced by this rule, because at best all you’re doing is shifting the problem from the start of the game to the point where someone completes the first lap. In fact I suspect it makes it worse, because by the end of that first lap everyone’s more spread out. In fact it’s not inconceivable that the pace-setters could lap the tail-enders through pure chance, leaving the tail-enders with even slimmer pickings once they finally complete their first lap.
An alternative is to randomly stagger the start, so instead of everyone starting on Go, some players start from Go, some start from Just Visiting, some start from Free Parking and some start from Go To Jail. I haven’t tried this myself, but it sounds like it makes sense (though if you don’t want some players to feel hard-done-by, it helps if they appreciate that Mayfair and Park Lane aren’t the best set of properties).
And so on and so forth. Click this link for more suggested rule variants for Monopoly.
Another interesting phenomenon, particularly noticeable amongst the better known games - and again, Monopoly is a prime example - is the way that everyone thinks they know the rules, but actually they don’t exactly. For example, I just found out - and I’m sure I’ve never played Monopoly this way - that if a player lands on an unowned property and decides not to buy it, then the property is auctioned to the highest bidder. Wow, really? Have a look at this PDF from Hasbro’s own site if you don’t believe me.
The reason for having this post in the first place is that we’ve been thinking about “official” rule variants for Army Of Zero.
There are a couple of rule variants that we’re playtesting at the moment and are broadly happy with, and a further couple that need a bit more work before we’re really happy with them. The latter two are about playing Army Of Zero with more than two players: we’ll get back to you on those.
The other two are very straightforward, and we know of a few players already using them. Firstly, you don’t need ten cards each at the start of the game. If you want to play a quicker game, why not try five cards each? Or if you want a longer game, try playing with 15 cards each.
Secondly, here’s a variant that can be used if you don’t like players having different sizes of Squad (after some warriors have been defeated). Basically, when a combat is over, the losing player discards their warrior, and the winning player, instead of putting the winning card onto a separate pile ready for the next phase, just puts it to the bottom of their Squad Pile. Play simply continues until one player has no cards left. This variant was explained to me as a way to cut down on the space you need to play the game (you can basically play it on you knees, although some sort of container to throw the dice into is recommended!) but it also eliminates the way that some warriors don’t “get a turn” when the two squad sizes are different, because each card still comes up in rotation.
We’ll be “officially” making available a set of rules variants shortly. In the meantime, feel free to contact us, either via email or in the comments below, if you have any favourite variants of your own.
