McMulti [fix]

The problem: about 40% of the time, the winner is determined by choice of strategy at the start, not by play during the game, due to either a long initial run of no doubles (in which case, "big oil" wins) or lots of doubles (in which case, "gas stations" wins). The game is interesting only 60% of the time, when an "average" number of doubles (which trigger phase changes) occurs during the first portion of the game.

The fix (Don Woods, Steve Thomas, and Tom Lehmann):

Place a third die, which begins "6" side up, in the center of the board. Game phases no longer change on doubles (but events based on rolling a given double still occur normally). Instead, the game phase changes when both dice rolled on a turn equal or exceed the current value of the die in the center (thus, initially, the phase will change only on a roll of 6-6).

If only one die equals or exceeds the current value of the central die, reduce the central die to the next lowest number (6 to 5, 5 to 4, etc.), thereby increasing the odds that a change in phase will occur on future rolls.

When a phase change occurs, roll the central die to determine the new phase and then place it back in the center, "6" side up.

Comment: this produces a phase change, on average, every 3-5 player turns. The actual number of turns between phase changes varies a fair amount but, typically, not enough to have players' initial strategy choices determine the winner.