Two Player Version and Plague Lands

[deltabob]

When setting up for a two player game, the neutral players get three armies in each of their territories. Since the neutral guys don't actually have a turn, are they affected by the plague (if there are any neutrals in plague lands). If they are affected, what would the timing be - would it occur once per Epoch, or once per each player's turn?

[holywolfman]

You can do "thier" plague removals at the end of the second player's turn. The nuetral player would be "like" player 3 ALWAYS going last (3rd)

...SO after the 2nd player goes....the nuetral armies in the plague spaces would go down to 2 (rounded down)....then in Epoch 2 after the 2nd player's turn, the nuetral armies (2) in the plague regions would go down (and stay at) "1" army on it!


[Hope that helps] ;)

[deltabob]

Yep, that makes sense. Thanks!

[Mike Selinker]

When setting up for a two player game, the neutral players get three armies in each of their territories. Since the neutral guys don't actually have a turn, are they affected by the plague (if there are any neutrals in plague lands). If they are affected, what would the timing be - would it occur once per Epoch, or once per each player's turn?

By a strict definition of the rules, the neutrals don't suffer plague. They don't have a turn, so they don't have a suffer plague step. This is how I expected it would be played in tournaments. They don't function like normal troops (for example, they don't ever attack or raise other armies), so they don't suffer plague.

However, I could imagine that would be less satisying for some players. For those folks, I recommend adding a cleanup step to the end of an epoch, where plague strikes only those territories occupied by neutral troops before bidding for turn order occurs. It's a perfectly consistent rule to add.

Mike

[holywolfman]

Or check this out: We played (1) 2-player game (not so "fair" as with more players)....but what we did to add a bit more challenge against the neutral was that we made a "rule" that you must defeat a neutral in combat or else if it suffered damage (1 or 2 units)....then the region would AUTOMATICALLY return to it's nominal unit size of "3" neutral units!

Basically: you have to kill 'em off on your combat phase or they return to full strength of "3" units! (worked pretty good!) :D

[deltabob]

Interesting variant - that does increase the challenge level.

Thanks for the clarification Mike. I'm not sure which way my group will end up going, but we'll definately be trying out both ways (both suffering and not suffering plague). Either way, it's always good to know how the rule was intended.