Saboteur: Manual selection of Sab vs Digger division

[Martao]

Hello,

For Saboteur, I would suggest to add the option to manually select the amount of gold diggers and saboteurs.
It may be against the original rules, but I find that for certain amount of players, the balance is totally off.
For example in some cases there can be 0 saboteurs, which can be funny sometimes, but still.

Kind regards,
Martin

[Een]

Hello,

As you may know, we try to be as close to the original game as possible.
In this case, the rules are explicit: yes, there can be 0 saboteur, this is part of the surprise! And the game can still become very tense if someone _thinks_ there is a saboteur
Also, the selfish dwarf variant allows to be sure that there is always someone with a hidden agenda.

Cheers,
Een

[Martao]

I find this a really weird reasoning. I dont suggest to change the rules of the original game. I just suggest to give the players an additional option.

I see now that most players basically only want to play saboteur with 7 players. Only when this is impossible some other games are played, but usually everyone thinks it is not balanced. For example when you play with 6 people, it could be 1 saboteur vs. 5 gold diggers. You are certainly right that it gives some tension, but the end result is 99% clear. This really isnt very nice for the single saboteur.

Of course you can use selfish or competetive mode, but I find that most people prefer normal mode. Especially selfish increases randomness.

Anyway, I would encourage this option, so that saboteur games with less than 7 people will become feasible. Especially on certain times it is really hard to get 7 players at the same time.

[Een]

Well, I get your point, you want to remove the uncertainty to make sure that the battle is always even between saboteurs and miners.
Thing is, the game is also in figuring the repartition, not just in figuring who's who. Fixing the repartition from the start would remove that part of the guessing.

Anyway, I'll need to ask the author how he feels about this when I get the chance.

Cheers,
Een

[Een]

Hello,

After a while, I had the chance to get the author's take on this.
In his opinion, the best way to fix the imbalance existing with a specific number of players is to use the "selfish dwarf" variant (which was created for this).

Cheers,
Een

[Yorgad]

Hello Een,

Have you got a glance at this topic:
http://forum.boardgamearena.com/viewtop ... f=9&t=3359

Basically, the idea is to modify/update the "outnumbered sabs" rate in normal mode.
Let's say for instance in a 7 players game: 2vs5 repartition could occur 20% of the time instead of almost 40% (as per today definition according to the rules).

Actually, I think most of players who rather play normal mode (instead of selfish mode) are more interested in the co-operation aspect of the game, which may become unfair and/or unbalanced when sabs are outnumbered.

Cheers,
Y.

[Een]

Yes, I just posted a follow up message there: http://forum.boardgamearena.com/viewtop ... 687#p15687

Cheers,
Een