A Place at the Table: What would you do?

Hello again, gamers. And welcome to another episode of A Place at the Table. For today’s topic, let’s branch out beyond the norm and ask a hypothetical question. Are you ready? Okay, here we go:

If you could change (or add) a rule to a board game, what would it be?

I think you will find that this question will strike a chord with all of us who play board games on the regular. How many times have you been playing a game and really wanted to do something in particular only to find out that the rules wouldn’t allow it?

I asked Number One what rule he would change or add to a game. After an entire day of thinking, he came up with adding a rule to Terraforming Mars. Traditionally, once you can no longer perform at least one action on your turn, you do a hard pass, and you are out of the game until the next generation starts. Number One has proposed this new rule: as long as there is still one active player in the generation, you can take a turn even after you have passed. I can see the appeal of this rule. There are times when you’ve run out of actions because the temperature isn’t where you need it to be or the oxygen level isn’t at the right percentage or you just need two more dollars in order to play a card. So, you hard pass on your turn. But then a few turns later, someone raises the temperature and now you can play that card! But since you’ve hard passed for the generation, you have to wait until the new generation has started.  This rule could really mess with some people though if you’ve made some tentative plans for your next couple of moves based on someone else being out for the rest of the generation.

As for me, I’d add a card to the game of Catan that would allow you to destroy two roads anywhere on the board. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been locked out of a port of lost the longest road because someone else decided that they needed to build their road right in my path. Yes, I do understand that this is part of the game. But at the same time, it would be really nice to be able to just get rid of two roads that were in my way.

So, what rule would you change or create for a board game?