Interleaved Actions for Strain

(Originally posted on BoardGameGeek.)

Great game! My wife and I played just ourselves and it worked well – we made one minor change to make it a bit more exciting, though.

Interleaved Actions

Instead of taking multiple actions on your turn, mash the turns together.

1. Everyone “untaps” and draws three cards.
2. In turn, each person performs one action (place a card, attack another player, or score an organism) – or passes.
3. When all players pass in a row, the turn ends.

With this variant, the game feels much more tense (at least with two players), because you’re worried more about timing, and you can’t just hold organisms on the table to score all at once at the end.

Taking the variant one step farther, you can remove the original idea of a turn altogether:

1. At the beginning of the game, all players draw three cards, of any type.
2. Turns consist of a single action, taken from:
   • Place a card (organism, *plasm, petri dish with payment).
   • Attack an organism.
   • Score an organism.
   • NEW: Discard any number of cards and draw up to three.
   • NEW: Refresh all your cards, and draw one card.
3. Play to 12 VPs.

This way, turns are short and tactical, and players have a good chance to react to threats building across the table. The new actions are potentially unbalanced, so it deserves some extra testing, but it seems like a fun variant in general.

Thanks to Avrom for designing it!