by DaviddesJ
BagelManB wrote:
I'm just saying that partly because of this, I'd rather just start each game in opposite towers instead of going with the rules as written.
Well, as I said above, that's what we do in the tournament that I started.
But if I were going to play with random towers, I would then change the start player rules so that instead of having each player roll for their own tower, I'd have players choose which of the random towers they wanted (with the player who chooses last going first). That way at least in the instances where positioning gives an advantage, it's not giving it to a player who already has the start player advantage. The rules as written at least make it less likely that the 1st player will have the positional advantage, but why not use rules that make it impossible?
The main reason I adopted the rules that I did is that they only generate legal starts that could have been generated using the standard system. So you don't get all of the legal possibilities, but all of the possibilities you get are legal. If you allow the lower numbered tower to go first then you're creating start positions that don't exist in the standard rules. There's nothing particularly wrong with that, I just thought it would be easier to get players to accept, "We're only going to use some of the possible start positions," than, "We're going to create new start positions that don't exist in the standard rules."
Personally, I would like to institute "No Tower-to-Tower Teleport on Turn One", or a similar rule, but I think this idea has majority support but not an overwhelming majority, and we aren't prepared to change the rules unless an overwhelming majority of players agree. Plus, I'm not the tournament GM any more.