by skir
h00sha wrote:
My comment is that it seems that with 8 or 9 players, it appears that ancient hives or warp portals are mandatory. If you start with the 18 sector threes from base game and add the 5 sector threes from rota, you're one short of 24. Is this mentioned in the rules or did I miscount?
That does seem to be the case...
If you really wanted an 8 or 9 player game with no warp portals, no ancient hives and no ancient homeworlds, what you could do is use the 18 base tier 3 hexes, the 5 new ones, and one of the warp sectors. If there's only one warp sector and no warp portal development or discovery tile, the lone warp portal won't do anything. Or just play with the warp portal symbols not meaning anything.
The rules don't have instructions for every exact combination of variants that can be included, so sometimes you will just have to house rule some slight changes to get the combination of variants you want. Another example would be if you don't want to use warp portals but are playing a 7+ player game with developments - you won't use the warp portal development and so you'll actually be one development short of the amount the rules say to setup, but you just have to roll with it.