Amusing Rule Variation

[BoredomFestival]

Not sure if this is germane to post here, but our local in-person boardgame group recently invented a bizarre set of house rules that actually seem to work and makes for an interesting but mind-bending game for the experienced player; we call it "Involuntary Servitude". Play is identical to the base game, with two additional constraints:

- After placing a tile, if it is possible to legally play a meeple on a potential farm, you *must* do so.
- If all of your meeples are on farms, they revolt and *all* of them return to your hand immediately.

As you might imagine, this tends to make for low-scoring games. The "revolt" can be either a disaster or a boon depending on your situation.

[euklid314]

I am trying to understand the implications...

Since it is not useful to place all your 7 meeples on farms and then "revolt" (0 points) one will try to place some meeples on cities/roads (which is possible if one places the own tile such that its field part is already occupied).

If one of those meeples that is placed onto a city or road is blocked then the game is more-or-less over. Since one will place the rest of ones meeples on fields rather sooner than later without the possibility of a revolt - one cannot score many more points.

Thus one has to be very defensive with the placement of meeples - and very aggressive with blocking the opponents meeples.

Could be fun to try but without having played it myself I cannot be sure if it results in an interesting game play on the long run.