As If

More subtle rules changes:

In the old game, if your prospected card was in enemy territory you lose it. Your attempt failed. Now you get to keep it, even if it’s in their home country. It’s perfectly fine. You can pay the salaries and keep all the production from it ….unless, they decided to seize it. If you control an area, you MAY seize any company card there at any time. You don’t have to. Subtle change but it has a big impact on play.

Another change is that players do not start with cards in their home country. You get ANY 3 random cards. They could be anywhere. What if all your cards end up in Russia? Not likely but if so, then Russia could immediately seize all your production at the beginning of the game. –or worse yet, wait until you pay the salaries on them first, then seize them!

What if they end up in a neutral area? They are fine for now. You pay and it produces like normal. There are many multiple cards now, so other players could have companies in that same area. Fine. No problem. The trouble starts if someone wants to occupy that area with troops. Now they have the ability to seize any and all companies there -if they want to.

They can’t just walk into there anymore either. All neutral areas have armies now. How many? You don’t know! You must commit to attacking it first. Declare how many armies are attacking, then roll the dice and place that many neutral armies there to defend. This is in addition to any armies another superpower may have sold them.

All of these little changes add up to lots of conflict and lots of tension between players. As if getting nuked wasn’t enough to worry about.