Thought I was insane for a minute there, because this is one of my favorite games, and I’d definitely never heard of this. I did just check though, and verified that my version doesn’t actually include this ability at all; “mobile units” are literally just crap tanks. From my search on the Internet™, it seems it was only even added in the FFG version?
I did always do a slight rules tweak in this game, to make the two halves of Michigan adjacent, because…
More on topic, one rule my family always get wrong is in Galaxy Truckers, where they always lose the cheapest cubes to the pirates (normally would be most expensive ones lost). I haven’t corrected this because a) it would be sad and 2) it actually makes the game better IMO because there is actually some benefit to loading up on worthless blue stuff, and it puts less emphasis on the order of the cards (the outcome of the game depending on whether the pirates come before or after Planets drives me nuts).
I was aceing Gloomhaven for around five missions until I realised the combat decks I was using for my characters were actually all the upgrade cards rather than the basic decks.
It was a painful experience going back to the normal decks. It was like being born after the safety of the womb. Or going to Cornwall.
Also, Sentinels of the Multiverse: Oblivaeon is so fiddly with so many little exceptions and rules changing from round to round it’s almost impossible not to get something wrong, at least while soloing it.
Parks is surprisingly difficult to go from solo to 2-player, because the end phase is completely different. I think I’ve managed to get it wrong on both types.
Oof, I’m glad I’m catching this one early, but I still have to invalidate last weekend’s logged win.
Too Many Bones: For some reason I had it in my head that when a bones symbol is rolled on a skill die, and that die is used for the Backup Plan, you can return the die to your mat rather than exhausting it.
Realistically this only really meant a few extra damage saved and dealt over the course of the adventure. They often came at critical moments, however, and I’m confident I would have probably lost the scenario if played correctly.
In Tzolk’in, I thought I’d read that to remove a worker from a gear, you had to pay corn equivalent to the action’s place, just like when you place a worker there. Made for some VERY low-scoring affairs, although the game still worked, amazingly!
In Quacks of Quedlinburg, I thought you could use the bottle to put back the white token that would make your cauldron explode. We didn’t realize we’d played wrong until we got the first expansion, so many months after we first got the game, so we just kept playing it like that. Easier to just make it a house rule than unlearning a habit, LOL.
Architects of the West Kingdom, on the Workshop, not realising that in order to go right to hire apprentices that are not on the left edge, not only you need to cover the cards you skip with coins, you also need to have as many workers as indicated on the middle row icons between the two rows of cards.
There must be so many rules screw-ups that I’ve made, but two good 'uns that are still somewhat fresh in my mind:
Cthulhu: Death May Die – Leaving 1/3 of the monsters in the box instead of in reserve and, as a result, happily ignoring any instruction to spawn something that wasn’t available.
Judge Dredd: Helter Skelter + The Dark Judges – Suddenly realising towards the end of my first game (which had gone very well) that the reason my ranged attacks against the Dark Judges were so successful was that they had no defences against ranged attacks – because I was using entirely the wrong set of icons.
(Behold the most important part of the game: the board of confusion, also known as action selection board)
There are 4 possible actions (move your minis, place new minis, gather followers and gain ankh powers) and you move the marker to the right to take an action and when it arrives on the final spot (in white) it triggers an event on the event timeline below and the marker gets reset to its (player number dependent) starting spot and it is the next players turn.
Also great is that you get two actions but the second must be below the first and triggering an event (which can be personal: control monuments, place caravan or global: conflict) ends your turn so choose wisely.
My mistake: when the marker arrives on the last spot, not only is an event triggered, the player gets to resolve the action first. I played the last spot without the action. Especially the 4th action (gain ankh powers) only has 2 spots so the way I played it one player could get an ankh power before an event was triggered. It made for a fast but weird game. When I noticed, I had to end because this had unhinged the balance of play quite a bit. So glad I caught my mistake before showing to anyone else.
I seem to have ironed out the last little rules wrinkle for Tales from the Loop. Mind you, I thought I was playing this one correctly in the first place so I’ll try not to act too surprised if I find another one.
In my last game I had a terrible time getting around thanks to some ugly draws for the hacking tests. In normal tests, kids can help simply by being there but only in a very limited way. In hacking tests, kids need to spend an action cube to help out, but they can use items/anomalies and combo tags to contribute in a more significant way.
Per the rulebook, the “Lead Hacker” (player who spends the most actions) gains control of the machine if successful but is not explicitly required to perform the hacking tests. This felt odd just on the face of it, but running a series of hack tests with the same kid was proving incredibly demanding on top of things.
It turns out the rule is in two places (I’ve bemoaned this rulebook previously). The comprehensive-but-ambiguous-and-still-incomplete version is in the manual, while the large-enough-to-be-more-comprehensive player aid holds the definitive final piece: you may choose a different kid for each of the (up to 4) hacking tests. For heaven’s sake.
I came real close to winning my last game, and I have no doubt being able to capitalize on a few machine rides would have made all the difference. This will be huge going forward.
I played Just One 3-player on Monday night, and failed to spot the special 3-player-game rules, so it was two clues per card – and twice they turned out to be the same clue. (We still got “average”.)
New one I’ve just realized last week seeing the NRB gang playing Pandemic:
Turns out the researcher can only GIVE cards, not TAKE.
With how instrumental this game has been for my wife’s morale and, I’m convinced, recovery, I’m taking this to my grave. Last thing I want is for her to start questioning every game we’ve ever won and for that doubt to worm itself into everything.
and 2) it actually makes the game better IMO because there is actually some benefit to loading up on worthless blue stuff, and it puts less emphasis on the order of the cards (the outcome of the game depending on whether the pirates come before or after Planets drives me nuts).
