Extended Rules and Variations for FENCE!

These are proposals for rule modifications to the Basic Rules. They are (mostly) independent of each other, and can be played in combination. They probably haven't been as well-tested as the Basic Rules. We encourage you to get in touch if you have suggestions, or if you think any of these rules below are good enough to warrant inclusion in the basic rules.

Changes to Game Mechanics

Ritzy Tile

During the setup phase, after placing the Cops, draw and discard one more red/blue pair. The selected tile is the "Ritzy Tile" -- a player who wins any Hot Goods that show up on that tile gets to draw two cards instead of one. Place the Ritzy Tile marker on the tile to help remember.

Color Swap with Joker

The Yards Lily Rivers
color swap example

Mix one Joker of each color into The Stash for each pair of players. When you play a Joker to Move Yourself or when tipping off the Cops, swap the coordinates of the pawn. For example, a pawn in The Yards (⚂,⚁) would go to Lily Rivers (⚁,⚂), and vice versa.

Boats

During the setup phase, add one face-card for each player to the Stash (even out the numbers of Red and Blue -- if there are an odd number of players, add one more face-card).

If a player has decided to Move Others for their turn, they can also play a face card if they have one. The player puts the card face up in front of them and announces "I have a red boat" (or "I have a blue boat"). If the Hot Goods come up on a tile that has waterfront, and the boated player is on a waterfront, they may have an alternate route to the goods by water. Each tile moved by water counts half as much as a tile moved by land. So a player with a boat who is 5 tiles away from the Hot Goods by water is closer to the Hot Goods than a player who is 3 tiles away by road. Travel by water can ignore One Way signs. Passing under bridges is fine.

When a player goes to Jail, their boat goes to the discard pile.

Only one boat of the same color may be in play at once, and the last-played boat wins; if Clyde has a red boat in play, and Bonnie plays another red boat, Clyde must put his red boat face card in the discard pile.

Tunnel

During the setup phase, after the map is built, the First Player draws two more cards of each color from The Stash (or rolls the dice twice) to select neighborhoods from two tiles. Place a Tunnel Marker on each neighborhood; those two neighborhoods are now mutually-reachable by road.

Turn-Taking for Pawn Placement

During the setup phase, rather than choose initial locations secretly at once, each player chooses their location in sequence, starting with the First Player. Players may not choose an already-occupied starting location.

Free-For-All Tile Placement

During the setup phase, all players play their tiles at once, rather than taking turns. A player who has placed all their tiles may place tiles belonging to another player.

Rewarded Tile Placement

During the setup phase, encourage the creation of a densely-connected map by letting players draw and keep a card for every tile placed with at least two (three?) connecting edges. Reducing the number of initial cards drawn after map placement might be advisable.

Big Map

Make two sets of tiles and shuffle them together. Build a huge city. When cards or dice indicate a new tile coordinate, the player placing the pawn chooses from any neighborhood on any tile bearing that coordinate.

Missing Tiles

During the setup phase, as soon as the first player empties their hand of tiles, all tiles still held in people's hands are discarded.

Placing Multi-Neighborhood Tiles

During the setup phase, require that every neighborhood in a placed tile must be connected to Old Town (in both directions), rather than simply checking that at least one neighborhood is reachable.

Trading Cards

Allow (encourage?) players to trade cards with each other. What kind of deals are acceptable? When can trading happen? Can people in Jail trade cards?

The Trading Post

During the Setup Phase, the First Player rolls the dice and places a Trading Post marker on a neighborhood in the selected tile. Any player who ends their turn in the Trading Post can swap a card with another player of their choice. The player in the Trading Post takes one card from their hand and puts it face down in front of another player. The other player presents their hand (backs outward) to the first player, and the first player selects a card from their hand, keeping it. The player who got traded with keeps the card that was placed face down in front of them.

Mixed Stash

After the setup phase, shuffle the red and blue decks in The Stash together. A player who wins the Hot Goods simply draws from the top of the stack.

Mixed, Blind Stash

Play with a single deck of cards for every two players: red suits refer to the red coordinate, black suits refer to the blue coordinate. Any time a red/blue pair must be drawn from the stash directly, draw cards until you get one of each color, discarding all but the last of each color.

Hot Goods by Cards

If you don't have a pair of dice, during the Hot Goods part of a round, draw the location of the Hot Goods from The Stash. This can burn through The Stash pretty quickly, so you could try adding another set of Ace through 6 of each color. If you don't like that, you could shuffle and draw from the Discard Pile, or you could set aside the cards drawn for the Hot Goods, and re-shuffle the Stash each round.

More Hot Goods

You might try N or N-1 Hot Goods per round instead of N/2 Hot Goods per round.

Wasted Hot Goods

If no one wins the Hot Goods (e.g. a tie, or the Cops are closer) then the First Player discards one card from the Stash.

State's Evidence on a Hunch

If you are in Jail, and you are Moving Others, there is a third way you can move the Cops (aside from moving them by road or moving them by playing a card: a Jailed player can choose to Turn State's Evidence on a Hunch. The Jailed player chooses a die (red or blue) and rolls it to determine where the Cops go. If the Cops land on another pawn, the Jailed player draws cards as though they had played a card to move the Cops. If the Cops land on an empty neighborhood, the Jailed player becomes an Unreliable Witness: knock (or flip) over the player's Jailed pawn.

An Unreliable Witness must spend their entire next turn re-establishing credibility (setting their pawn right-side up).

Alternate Victory Conditions

Victory by accumulation

At the end of each round, check to see if any un-Jailed player has twice as many cards as there are players out of Jail. If so, the un-Jailed player with the most cards is the winner.

Round-limited game

During the setup phase, pick a pre-defined number of rounds by rolling the dice and adding them. At the end of that number of rounds, the un-Jailed player with the most cards is the winner.