Board Game Arena

Be advised, most factions are locked to non premium users, putting us at great dissadvange. So if you're not premium, I'll advice not playing. would have been nice to know it before I sat down. But bga doesn't tell you that BEFORE game starts.

The good news is that the basic factions available to non-premium still consist of some of the best factions in the game. Folks pretty universally agree that Jol-Nar is the best faction in the base game, and non-premium has access to that. Sol and Hacan are also quite strong, while the other 3 are still competitive.

That is true, but they literally hid Saar and Mentak behind paywall.

You can cash in your gift point for premium.

Earn your gift points by writing tutorials, providing translations and coding new games.

None of these require money, just your time by helping out.

If that's true, it's completely unacceptable.

One thing is allowing to start tables with or without certain options to premium or nonpremium players.

A very different thing is having different "rules" for premium and nonpremium players at the same table. That should never happen.

Jellby wrote: ↑07 July 2026, 16:14 If that's true, it's completely unacceptable.

One thing is allowing to start tables with or without certain options to premium or nonpremium players.

A very different thing is having different "rules" for premium and nonpremium players at the same table. That should never happen.

Yeah, this sounds bad. Also it would limit the premium player's options to play AGAINST these factions. Not sure how relevant that is though... Is it really implemented like that? IMO correct implementation would be one premium player unlocks factions for everyone at the table.

Silene wrote: ↑07 July 2026, 17:02 IMO correct implementation would be one premium player unlocks factions for everyone at the table.

That's what I thought at first. Then I "realized" that this is a premium game and therefore there must always be a premium player... Now I double-check it and see that actually it's not a premium game. Maybe I mistook the beta flag as a premium flag. Something else to consider is that we have been told several times (in relation to rigged RNGs) that there is no way a game's code can tell if a player is premium or not, and if that's the case then it's also not possible to limit some factions no premium players.

In short, if it is as Silene says (and I first believed), then it's fine: No premium player at the table, only base factions allowed. At least one premium player at the table, then all factions are available for all players

No I don't think it is:

https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... um#p256551

suggests that non-premium will be limited to 6 starting factions.

In https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=856564476 the nonpremium player got "Clan of Saar", which I understand is one of the premium factions. But it was a random assigment, not a choice

This makes sense, I was wondering why I kept playing against the same factions. I'm a premium user and I think having the factions behind a paywall would diminish the experience all round. I don't want to always have the same 6 factions to play against.

Hopefully this is just a thing while in beta. Very happy with the overall implementation of the game, please keep up the good work and roll on PoK and TE.