I'm going to go out on a limb and say that more of the area around the two starting flux wells should be revealed so that you know if you're completely walled off from the rest of the map. I realize this potentially means that you have more area to place your starting building and can merely postpone the effect, but I still think it would be of overall benefit to know the immediate area and reduce some of the random "you lost this game because of the map" syndrome.

Seconded. Or include a defacto naturescaping for two tiles immediately adjacent to the first building you play

I understand the frustration, I'm sure we have all started on an island a couple times, but I rather enjoy the semi-surprise of that missing row personally. I won't argue against a "free" naturescaping, but I think it is overkill myself.

I don't think revealing another row is a good idea but the naturescaping for one or two tiles would be a good compromise.

Something definitely has to be done to fix that problem. How about reveal the next line, but don't allow you to build on it?

_________________
-Minds

Tryste and I just had a game where this was huge.. I built on a spot that turned out being a one-hex peninsula. I risked the three-round build time on another base outside my controlled land to fix it and picked a SECOND peninsula the same. To be honest.. that's life. It really hurt but don't blame that for losing the game either... It's just part of the game.. sometimes it helps, others it hurts

I like the naturscaping concept... in earlier threads, we were discussing having the landscape be partially determined by the domains in the player's decks, and this idea seems like a nice compromise. Play a building, then choose to change two of the adjacent hex tiles to whatever landscape you want...

... but it might be better to limit that to specific base types... plains, mountain, forest, desert, ocean... as I could see potential for people to abuse this by creating two forested mountain hex tiles within their control.

It's a neat idea, but implimentation might be rough.

I'm in agreement with expanding the vision, you should be able to see range 2 from each of the flux wells, showing the bottem middle of the map doesn't do much for you either. Losing because you didn't know you were trapped, its annoying at the least and often enough you dont get to pick between the two cause one will be complete ocean. Oh well, your just going to randomly lose the game from bad luck, you already have to contend with an non0mulliganable starting hand.

I dont like the naturescaping concept, i do like terrain control, i think you should be able to select a terrain type, and it incresses the chance of that terrain before the match starts. It probably should be a seperate style of play.

Expanding what you can see from the starting flux wells would pretty drastically alter how games are played and would give an unfair advantage to domains that have two sight non-domain buildings that can be put down on the first hand.

You would have elemental decks controlling two flux wells on the very first or second turn guaranteed, and with only two buildings as opposed to three, since mahal is an autodraw. Death and Sylvan would see an advantage at times. MF would be out in the cold.

You see a lot of building for the middle as it stands. This would only heighten that problem and effectively make the map smaller in terms of land use.

Naturescaping a couple tiles should be enough to keep people from getting entirely land screwed.

This is assuming that you can place buildings on the squares... For me, it would be nice to just SEE what's there -- to prevent the island problem or other stupid terrain things. I'd be perfectly happy being able to see more, but having less choice about where to place (e.g., always on the starting flux, not next to it).

Heh -- either that, or change the start so you get a little creature that is attack 0, move 1, or something -- and then turns into your first building. That way, you can decide if you want to see more, or just start or something. (But actually that doesn't deal with the issue of which side.)