Last weekend, we wanted to try out our new variant for World of WarCraft The Board Game. We enjoy the game a great deal, but when playing with the standard rules, it has some pretty hefty downtime. Luckily, that was pretty easy to get around. With the implementation of our "Fully Cooperative" variant, what we previously considered an excellent game has become one of our favorite games!
In World of WarCraft, there are 2 factions; the Alliance, and the Horde. When playing with the normal rules, gameplay proceeds in faction-based turns. What this means is that each faction's players all take their "actions" at the same time. However, even with just 4 players (2 on each faction), a single faction turn can take 30+ minutes, especially when they involve a lot of combat. While this is going on, the opposite faction is mostly just sitting around waiting.
The solution to this was really pretty simple. If you're playing with 2 or 3 people, you can simply ignore the existence of the other faction and all play on the same faction - sorta. To this end, we all played on the same faction; the Alliance. Anytime we drew a new quest card, we simply drew a Horde quest card as well, but only spawned the blue creatures (if any) from the opposing faction's quest. What this accomplished, is to keep the gameplay for 1 faction virtually the same as if you were playing with 2 factions. With the only major exceptions being that you could not see the other factions characters, and you never attack each other. Other minor mishaps came up from time to time. For example: event cards that allow factions to do something detrimental to the other faction. However, since there would be no final PvP, we simply ignored these and moved on.
While playing with this variant, downtime is non-existent. Your faction is constantly building up, planning, and taking part in epic combat. This decreases total game time a great deal, and increases gameplay intensity. While PvP is a lot of fun for many players, we find this to be a more exhilarating experience. Try it out and let us know what you think!
You can find the rules outline for the Kelsam Fully Cooperative Variant on the World of WarCraft The Board Game page.
