Number of Rounds
With
6 players, reduce the number of rounds from 6 to 5.
(With
7 players, you may want to reduce it even to 4 rounds.)
Reason: Having 6 or 7 players will make the game take too long for most people's comfort.
Note: If you do choose to play 6 rounds, you may want to also remove the variation rules for Structures.
Structures
Remove some structures in the setup. The structures you remove go in the box and cannot be built in the game, but leave empty spaces on the Player Boards, so they will generate income each round.
- With 6 players every player remove 3 Dwellings, 1 Trading Post, and 1 Temple.
- With 7 players every player remove 4 Dwellings, 2 Trading Posts, and 1 Temple.
- Since you remove a Temple during Setup, take a Favor Tile when you place your first structure. So the first player select the first Favor Tile, proceeding in turn order. Chaos Magicians do take 2 Favor Tiles, but since they always place structures last, they will choose their Favor Tiles last as well.
- In the Income Phase of each round, players receive extra income due to the buildings removed and from Favor Tile(s) selected.
- Structures removed do not give Victory Points for building, nor count as "ownership" of these structures.
Reason: More players will leave less open spaces on the map for building structures, so less structures are needed for each player.. Additionally, reducing the number of rounds from 6 to 5 reduces the overall resources acquired during the game; so increasing resources gained by removing these structures from your board offsets this.
Note: An optional rule even in the base game, with 5 players every player may remove 1 Dwelling and 1 Trading Post.
Cultist Board
If the Cultist Board has all four positions of an element occupied, you may still move your cultist to that element on the Cult Board by paying to remove one of those currently occupying a space.
- Pay a number of coins equal to the value of the space (2 or 3) to the opponent whose Priest you are removing.
- You may only remove a Priest from an element track when your Action is to move one of your Priests to the same track, and when that track already has all four positions occupied.
- You may not remove a Priest from an element that you currently have a Priest on.
- The opponent's priest is removed from the game (move it to the game box, not back to the player's Priest pool).
- Once you have paid to remove the opponent's Priest, place your Priest and advance your marker on the Cult Track as normal. The opponent's marker does not move down when their Priest is removed.
- As normal, you may still move 1 Priest to your pool to advance 1 space on the Cult Track.
Reason: To allow all players to be able to send a Priest to a Cult track.
Power Actions
Every Power Action can be used any number of times. The cost is 1 extra Power for each time the Power Action has already been used that round. Keep track of this by adding extra X tokens next to the action.
Reason: To allow more players to be able to use Power Actions.
Towns
There is no limit to the number of Towns that can be founded. If you found a Town and there are no Town Tiles left, you receive 5 Victory Points instead, as well as any other Faction bonus (Swarmlings receive 2 Workers, Witches 5 extra Victory Points). You do not receive a Town Tile, nor a Key.
Reason: The town limit is not reached in a normal game. Without these adjustments, it is very likely to reach the limit early on with 6 or 7 players, which does not make sense in the setting. It might also unbalance some factions to not be able to set up towns, especially the Chaos Magicians who are handicapped in the first round.
Comment: Normally there is a limit to 10 Towns, or 14 if you have the 4 extra Essen Town Tiles.
You may found a Town with only 3 connected structures if one of them is a Fortress, exactly like if one is a Sanctuary, but only if you have already built your Sanctuary. If you build a Sanctuary and already have a Fortress with 3 connected structures of sufficient value for a Town, you immediately found the Town under that Fortress.
Reason: Both the reduced number of Structures and the increased number of opponents makes it more difficult to gain 4 connected structures.
Scoring Tiles
With
6 players, in the Setup remove 3 Scoring Tiles of 3 different Cults.
With
7 players, in the Setup remove 4 Scoring Tiles of 4 different Cults.
ed: I need to read the rules again to see if this is worded correctly, because I'm not sure what this means as written.
Bonus Tiles
With
6 players use all the Bonus Tiles.
With
7 players use all the Bonus Tiles, and at the end of each Round place 2 Coins (instead of 1 Coin) on every Bonus Tile that was not chosen. (Or, if you have it, add the Spielbox Promo Bonus Tile instead).
Favor Tiles
With
6 players, the four 3-advance-Tiles can be taken twice. The first player that takes one of these tiles also gains 3 extra Power.
With
7 players, the four 3-advance-Tiles can be taken three times. The first player that takes one of these tiles gains 5 extra Power, the second gains 3 extra Power.
You cannot take a 3-advance-Tiles you currently own a second time (so if another player takes it from you, you can take it back).
To keep memory of the number of times that these Tiles were taken, put 1 Coin (or 1 Worker) on it each time it is taken.
Power Tokens
With
6 players, each player starts with 2 less Power tokens in Bowl I (5 tokens leftover).
With
7 players, each player starts with 3 less Power tokens in Bowl I (2 tokens leftover).
ed: I need to read the rules again to see if this is worded correctly, because I'm not sure what this means as written.
Improvise Other Limited Game Pieces
Some less important components may run out; just use improvised tokens/pieces, or adapt to not need them.
- If more than 5 players exceed 100 Victory Points, write "100 Victory Points" on cards, or just write down players with over 100 VP on a piece of paper.
- There are only 5 Rule Summary tiles, so either share 1 or 2 between two adjacent players, or copy them onto index cards.
- Treat worker cubes and coins as if they are unlimited. If they run out, use some other tokens to represent them (Monopoly money, toothpicks, whatever).
- If Terrain Tiles runs out, use something else to represent them.
- Alternately, remove Terrain Tiles that are under an established Structure. The current terrain only serves to restrict what structures may be built, and to determine what the cost is to terraform a tile to another type of terrain. Therefore, once a structure is placed, the only purpose of leaving a terraforming Terrain Tile under it is to reassure the other players that the cost of terraforming has already been paid.
- There are already enough Faction Boards, Structure pieces, and Action Markers for up to 7 players.
Credit
Originally from a post at
goblins.net/downloads/terra-mystica-regolamento-italiano-faq-varianti, by Davide Malvestuto aka Principe Konrad on Jan 13th, 2013.
Translated by him into English on a post at
boardgamegeek.com/article/15802476#15802476
Modified for this blog post at
abamacus.blogspot.com
