As everyone knows, the longer you play a game the more likely it is that you’ll customize some small part of the rules to make things easier within your group. Maybe it’s to make things more challenging, or perhaps even further citing “precedence” like the group has an official codex containing errata created over years of embittered arguments about an inane rule. In any case, here are some of the house rules we use to make things a bit more challenging, along with some gadgets we’ve picked up over time.

Increase the VP required to win!

The simplest rule change we have is changing the VP required to win to 20. This is only a 5 point increase, but that adds at least one additional base in playthroughs. However note that our games last about an hour and a half, sometimes two hours long.

Decrease the amount of bases played!

We often use 4 bases instead of n + 1, where n is the number of players. This helps us move the game along faster by forcing players to interact with one another more often. Of course, this leads to more arguing as well, but that’s half the fun.

Consider using a timer!

We have a member of our group who pays no attention to changes in game when it’s not his turn. This almost always means he’s spending the next 10 minutes asking everyone what they did and wasting the rest of our time. Looking at you Castronaut. What we found to solve this is a cool gadget that is basically a chess clock for 4 players! Now we can impose awful time limits on turns, also letting us impose penalties like losing VP if the time limit is crossed. (Speed game anyone?)

Change the initial deck distribution!

We’ve come up with a few different ways to randomize the decks we’ll play with:

• Each player chooses a number of factions to remove from the pool.
• Each player is dealt 5 cards and is forced to choose two factions from that hand.
• Each player is dealt 5 cards, and then passes one left, right, and across. Players then choose 2 factions.

Most often you’ll find us going with a combination of the above. With 50 factions it’s much harder to find those favorites, so we like to remove either unfavorable factions or hinder other players by removing powerhouses.

Consider accolades!

We got to the point we’d play regularly enough that we knew who won last, and even prior. With 5 people in our rotation, we though it’d be fun to take some wrestling belts and make titles. We now have two titles, “World Heavyweight Champion” and the “Intercontinental Champion”. Now we play for those titles, adding just a little bit more trash talk and intensity knowing that we’re after a prive that we can rub in the other players faces when we win.

Childish? Irreverant? Masochistic? Yes! We have fun though, and that’s what matters to us. I hope some of these suggestions help breath a little bit more life into your games, because I know it does with ours.