Shards of the Throne: New Way to Vote.

Shards introduces a new way to vote on political cards.

First I should define two new card types.

Representatives: Each race gets 3 representative characters, they are like "leaders" but are only used in voting. Each one augments the amount of influence you get to add to your vote (ranging from +0, to +4 I believe) They also have other abilities that affect things outside of voting.

Promissory notes: There are 5 of these per color, and they are exactly the same. They are used for bribing, like trade goods, but the difference is, promissory notes are binding. You can use them to force the player you got them from to take certain actions against their will. Some examples include giving you all of their trade goods, voting a certain way, retreating from combat, etc...

So now that we have that out of the way, lets look at how the new voting system works.

Step 1: Decide on a political card
Step 2: Choose which representative you want to send, face down.
Step 3: resolve Spies (A type of representative that kills other representatives)
Step 4: Resolve bargaining (the usual bribe and threaten phase, but with promissory notes involved)
Step 5: Vote

I think this overhaul of the voting system will add some more political intrigue to the game. The political part is a strong and oft-overlooked facet of TI3.

-Mike