by Bartheus
I have bought all the DC sets to augment the DDAS games, save the Heart of Cormyr (HoC), as I haven't figured an easy way to get the allies to play. For myself the standard method is lacking, as I keep the encounter cards separate with each game and if I would buy the HoC, I would like to be able to easily use it with all of the games. The obvious answer would be to order more of these Ally Spawning Encounter cards but I would rather not do that.So do you - the good people of BGG - have any nice ideas for how the allies could come to play. I prefer ideas that do not make me buy any new stuff and are not fiddly (I don't like rolling and consulting a table). I would also like that meeting them is mostly random, which rules out hiring them at the start of the game and getting them to appear by using XP.
As I use monster and treasure tokens in all games, one idea that I have been toying with is to use the 4 monster token (or some villain token) from LoD to signify the appearance of an ally. Still, even that is not perfect as there is a disconnect with the picture in the token and what happens as a result. So perhaps having ally tokens that look like monster tokens would probably be the best option, but as there is no such thing I am open to other suggestions.
Please tell me if you have any Ally variants in play, or if you have any ideas how the heroes could meet them randomly without fuzz (with only one encounter card and three different encounter decks).