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During the Gathering, someone asked “Should we play Stationfall tonight?” and I replied “We should play every night.”
It didn’t quite turn out that way, but I played nearly one game per diem (and taught the game once to beginners without playing). I’ve now played nearly twenty games (not bad for a game I’ve had less than two months and that takes ~2 hours to play) and while I won’t go so far to say that every game has been hysterical, there have only been a few disgruntled players across those games. We also spent a fair chunk of the convention discussing what wasn’t fun or needed tweaking, and started on a set of variant rules and fixes.
I suggested the “Psychic Rat” variant. Not because the Rat needs tweaking, but more because the Rat “suggests” the variant rules. But that was confusing (we aren’t modifying the rat!) so now we call it the “Rat Pack.”
There is a shared Google drive with image files to replace the originals (via sleeves or overlays). (If there are discrepancies between the below and the drive, please let me know in the comments).
(Credits — The Tao of Gaming is only one of many contributors to the Rat Pack Variant, and does not claim sole authorship).
The Rat Pack Variant (Version 01)
Rules Modifications
- Players can only get one Kompromat a turn (unless using the Shred Room)
- You may not spend a Kompromat to perform the “wait” action.
- You may suppress fires to clear in a single action.
- At the beginning of Stationfall, players who got one less turn (due to early game end in the middle of the round, for instance if anti-matter explodes) may take a renegotiate action as the first step of Stationfall (before other players reveal).
- You can do two drags per turn (instead of just one) as long as one step/airlock action starts AND ends in zero gravity.
Board Modifications
- The Tanks space now says “During any Resolve phase, Decontaminate characters in this space” (the overlay doesn’t have space for all that, but you get it).
Billionaire
The Billionaire’s VP schedule is replaced with the following:
- 4 VP if Billionaire Escapes
- +1 VP if not Colocated with a live human or robot at Stationfall.
- +2 VP if the news does not end with evidence
- 2 VP If Fletcher escapes
- +2 VP IF Fletcher is Colocated with Billionaire in a pod.
- Billionaire doesn’t score any possessed or unused bribes
Digital Assistant
The Digital Assistant’s A.I ability now reads “Only perform (console) actions plus a free Lock/Unlock. Characters possessing (Digital Assistant data) meet listed requirements for any non-Bridge section action.”
Engineer
The Engineer’s VP schedule is replaced with the following:
- 2 VP if the antimatter detonates on board before Stationfall.
- 2 VP if no contaminated characters escape
- +2 VP if no data escapes or is transmitted to offsite
- +1 VP if the artifact does not escape
- 1 VP if innocent, but may win if guilty
Exile
The exile may not score his own Kompromat, otherwise unchanged.
Maintenance Clones
New Quirk — A damaged pod that is launched with a live maintenance clone escapes and is not destroyed.
The Maintenance Clones get an additional +4VP if the 3rd clone escapes. (So 1/5/9 for 1/2/3 clones). The +2VP for news having evidence is unchanged.
Microbiologist
The Microbiologist’s Infect ability now infects ALL Colocated characters.
Troubleshooter
The Troubleshooter’s VP schedule is replaced with the following:
- 2 VP if Stationfall happens on Turn 0 or Turn 1.
- 2 VP if no live monsters are on board at Stationfall
- 1 VP if no fires on board at Stationfall
- 1 VP if no blackout at Stationfall
- 1 VP for each live robot at Stationfall
The Astrochimp Explains
The Psychic Rat won’t explain his reasoning, for the simple reason that it won’t add to your suffering. However, we did have a long conversation with the only person he really ‘talks’ to — the Astrochimp, who sat down with Tao of Gaming for a quick chat.
Tao: “Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Can you talk about the rules changes?”
Astrochimp: “Well, for the rules changes, the one kompromat a turn is mainly just to prevent the first player from snagging a bonus kompromat, either from a lucky placement with 5+ players or by grabbing the billionaire and bribing someone else. Rat considers it unfair for the first player to get two Kompromats. It also has a nice symmetry with only being able to spend one per turn. The Renegotiate rule for players who get shorted a turn is also address a mild balance issue, and gives players later in turn order a bit of flexibility if the game looks like it might end early.”
Tao: “What’s with the wait rule change?”
Astrochimp: “You could, in theory, wait using Kompromat to remove your disk and then reactivate. It turned the Kompromat into an action for the character you wanted to activate. Frankly, it was cheese. And you know the saying. ‘Only Rat gets the cheese.’”
Tao: “The Drag and Hazard Suppression changes?”
Astrochimp: “Well, Rat has seen over twenty five or thirty games, and those actions are too rare. Dragging happens from time to time, sure; but taking two actions to remove a fire? Never seen it. These changes make it easier to escape a downed character (without necessarily reviving them) which was too hard. And frankly the Corpsicle needs the help; especially as a bonus character. And I don’t think anyone has seen a tanks action, so now it happens during the resolve phase.”
Tao: “What were the Rat’s goals for character changes?”
Astrochimp: “Well, Rat’s philosophy is that a character’s Maximum VP (assuming they have one) should reflect how difficult it is to achieve. The Engineer has a zillion ways to arm the antimatter, and often never even needs to activate their own character. If it blows up fast enough, that’s 9 VP and the end of the game. Compare that with poor Huey, Dewey and Lewey…”
Tao: “Who?”
Astrochimp: “The Maintenance Clones. Are you seriously telling them that as long as two of them escape, the third doesn’t matter? Rude! Escaping all three clones is hard, and if you do that AND get evidence to the news, that’s only seven points! Seven! The engineer needed to be nerfed, and difficult characters needed a boost. The Billionaire also only score 8 VP for escaping in a pod with just himself and Fletcher. And filthy peasants! Eight! And no points for bribes! If he escapes with the sole video content, his likes and subscribes would go through the roof! That should count for something.”
Tao: “So … awesome victories that are rare should score more. Makes sense.”
Astrochimp: “Yup. Most Engineer games have the antimatter detonate, with little effort. In fact, Rat seriously considered banning the Engineer from existence. Its no fun for the game to end so quickly that you have no reasonable chance because you had to spend precious turns moving the antimatter to space and then disabling the cargo claw….that reminds me, we did a lot of work on the Troubleshooter to make her fun. The problem with her agenda as written is that you can never recover points once lost. She shouldn’t be required to prevent the impossible, she should be allowed to fix the situation. So if Antimatter arms, she can still score if she gets it off the station. If a monster is roaming the halls, she can try to kill it. She often lost, and often lost with no hope. Rat hates every pure human, but that was just depressing.”
Tao: “Been there. Going back to the clones, what’s up with their new quirk?”
Astrochimp: “Characters should have a reason to make people want to activate them and help their agenda, even if they weren’t your character. If you activated the Cyborg when he wasn’t your primary character, you might conk an officer on the head, and the Cyborg would be score. People who activated the clones might want to repair, but that doesn’t help the Clones’ agenda. But if you moved a clone on board your pod to make sure it couldn’t be damaged right before a timed launch? Win/Win. And — truth be told — Rat is a bit annoyed at how easy it is to damage pods.”
Astrochimp: “The only other big change was removing the Digital Assistant’s Bridge access. DA is great in theory but all the games Rat has witnessed have an early bridge action, either self-destruct or abandon ship, and it was just too easy and also felt scripted. Also abandon ship unlocks everything. And nobody — even their PC — influenced DA that much, unless Drones were in play. But a free lock/unlock action makes the Digital Assistant more interesting and softens the bridge lockout. Fun! Chaos! People banging on doors as they fail to escape. Rat loves that.”
Tao: “We’re almost out of time. The minor changes?”
Astrochimp: “We thought long and hard about Exile …. he can often rack up 12 or even 15 points, but in the end we decided that the solution was simply to make sure he died in a fire, or vacuum, or pod explosion. Really, we don’t care. We did make sure he couldn’t score for his own Kompromat because that seemed cheesy …”
Tao: “‘And only Rat gets cheese.’”
Astrochimp: “Just so. The Microbiologist needed a minor boost, so we made the infect action a bit more efficient. It worked well in testing.”
Tao: “Any other changes the Psychic Rat is considering, down the line?”
Astrochimp: “Sure, but we wanted to get the ones we were fairly certain about out for testing ASAP.”
Tao: “Great, and we are looking forward to them. Astrochimp, thank you.”
Astrochimp: “Aren’t you forgetting something? Services rendered” (pulls out gun)
(Tao hands over briefcase. Recording Ends)
Note — If you playtest the Rat Pack and have comments, please post them on the ‘Rat Pack‘ BGG thread (or create a session report and link the it in the thread). Thanks!
