My gaming group of 6 has played Panic Station for about 15 times. For the first 10 games, the humans have won 8 times. The mini-expansion adds items that in my opinion are advantages to the humans. After that, we decided to tweak the game.
A 2nd host.
For the next 5 games, the hosts have won 4 out of 5 games. Although this seems very unbalanced, everyone enjoyed the game much more for the following reasons: (1) the host does not feel alone anymore, and (2) it's harder to trust people now.
You will need a card to represent the 2nd host. In my gaming group, we use the antidote card from the mini-expansion deck. Here's the setup for a 6-player game:
Item deck setup:
1. Take 6 gas cans, 5 random cards and 1 host card. Shuffle them. These 12 cards form the top deck. [For a 5 player game, take 5 gas cans, 4 random cards and 1 host card. For a game with 4 or less players, don't use this variant.]
2. Take 1/4 of the remaining cards and put them aside. This stack forms the bottom deck.
3. Shuffle the 2nd host card into the remaining cards. This forms the middle deck.
4. Stack them up, from top to bottom, and distribute the first 12 cards to the players so each player receives 2 cards. You know that one of the player is already a host. You just don't know who.
The game begins.
When the 2nd host card is drawn:
If the 2nd host card is drawn by a human player, he immediately becomes another host.
If the 2nd host card is drawn by the original host, he can give the card to another player, who will in turn become the 2nd host. This card cannot be prevented by gas cans.
If the 2nd host card is drawn by an infected player, he also can give the card to another player, who will in turn become the 2nd host. Again, this card cannot be prevented by gas cans in this manner. Although this doesn't make sense, game-wise, it works as the purpose of the 2nd host card is for a human to be on the host's side.
The backstory/reason for the appearance of the 2nd host card to be is entirely up to you. For my gaming group, we pretended that the syringe is a toxic serum that cannot be avoided, or a sleeper host who is activated halfway in the game.
Using the terminal (recommended variant):
When a player access the terminal to check for infected players, he can decide whether to share the information with everyone or keep it to himself. After the check cards are returned to the players, everyone closes their eyes for the next 10 seconds. Host(s) will open their eyes to see who the other party is. Infected players do not open their eyes. Again, this does not seem to make sense, but game-wise, it works.
Who wins, and who loses:
There are only 2 teams in this game: the humans and the hosts. Either the humans win or the hosts. Players who are infected are part of the hosts team.
Conclusion:
For those who feel that humans are always winning (or that playing a host is too hard), you can try out this variant. It definitely makes the humans harder to win. However, it also makes us want to challenge again right after the game ends. If in your game, the host wins most of the time, then you do not need this variant. For us, we never played Panic Station with only 1 host anymore.
Hope you will experience all the fun that my group had with this variant.
Overall gaming experience (with this variant): A
No comments:
Post a Comment