Volcano Rules

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Brain Knots Games 2015

The Volcano on your tiny island is erupting! Use the islands resources to

escape before it explodes! OBJECTIVE Collaborate to get everyone off the island. Use the resources available to escape by boat. The players receive a group score at the end based on the number of players tokens that made it off the island. MATERIALS Board Spinner Mat and Spinner 4 sets of 8 Player Tokens: Yellow, Orange, Green, Blue 49 Hex Chips: 16 Boats, 10 Carts, 10 Offerings, 10 Walls, and 3-2x markers 4 sets of 8 resource markers: Wood (brown), Stone (gray), Artifact (purple), and Livestock (white) 32 red lava flow markers 1 red magma marker SETUP For 2, 3, or 4 players. The Board: Small solid dots on the board represent villages. Thick lines connecting the villages are the paths along which the lava will flow. The large areas on the board with colored icons are the regions where resources are harvested. Small dashed circles near the top of the volcano are the shrines for offerings. Small white dashed circles off the coast are harbors. Lines connecting these features, both dashed and solid, are the paths along which players may move their resources, tokens, and items.

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Layout Fasten the spinner to its base through the hole in the spinner mat. Place the spinner on the board; match the features on the spinner with those on the board. (We advise using a small piece of tape to keep it in place.) Each player chooses a color and takes 8 player tokens (wood disks). Players take turns placing one of their tokens on the villages until each player has four tokens on the board. No more than four tokens may be in any village. [Optional] The game can at this point be made easier by spinning to place one, two, or three-2x markers on villages along the coast. Crafting in these villages will produce two of an item for one set of resources. Crafting still requires 2 actions to produce the 2 items. Spin for a starting player and begin! PLAY Play moves to the left. Players may coordinate efforts throughout the game. However, each players tribe must work independently. Tribes can coexist and inhabit the same villages, or even the same carts and boats, but cannot share parts of a turn. Multiple pieces, items, and resources can occupy all parts of the board. Each players turn is broken into three phases:

1. Replenish, 2. Action, and 3. Flow

1. Replenish Replenish Resources: Each resource is harvested from a region shown on the map: ruins produce artifacts (purple), forests produce wood (brown), the quarry produces stone (gray), and the fields produce livestock/game (white). At the start of a players turn, the player places resources in any resource region the player occupies.

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Resource markers are placed until they are equal in number to the total number of all players tokens in the region. [Note: the first turn will have no resources placed.] Example: at the start of blues turn, blue has one token in the ruins region and two tokens in the forest and orange has one token in the forest and one token in the quarry. One wood remains in the forest from the last players turn. Blue places one artifact marker in the ruins, two wood markers in the forest and no stone markers in the quarry. The markers placed do not belong to the player who placed them. If the lava did not flow because of a wall or an offering at the end of the last turn then resources are not replenished. Train Tribes: Each players token represents a unit of members of the players colors tribe who have been trained to respond in this crisis. They can train other villagers and so create more units to respond to the eruption. Any village with two or more of the active players tokens in it gets an additional token placed on it during the replenish phase. If training places a fifth token in a village, the player must use an action to move a token to end the turn with no more than four tokens in the village. If the token cannot be moved, it is removed at the end of the turn and set aside with the tokens that will be left behind as victims of the volcano.

Note: If the resources or tokens to be placed are all in play, the player does not place them. Remove Offerings: Also during the Replenish phase, any Offerings the active player made the previous turn are removed.

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2. Action: Players can move resources, items or tokens, or craft items from resources for an action during the action phase. When the replenish phase is done, the active player counts the number of her player tokens on the board. The player may take a number of actions equal to the number of tokens at the beginning of the action phase. [Note: It does not use up an action to reorganize the pieces on a location.] Moving tokens: Players may use 1 action to move tokens to a neighboring space, whether it is a village, a region to harvest, a shrine in which to make an offering, or a boat waiting in harbor. Tokens may move out of a region that has been flooded with lava, but may not move through a flow or into a village at the end of a flow. Players may not move another players pieces unless they are in a boat or cart together. No more than four tokens may be in any village as a result of a move. Moving items or resources: Using one action, a player can move items or resources (including carts) from a location with one of the players tokens in it to a neighboring location that also has at least one of the players tokens in it. A player can also move one item or resource when moving a player token. Moving the item uses one action in addition to the action used to move the players token. See the exceptions for boats and carts below.

Crafting: A player with a token in a village that has the resources present may use an action to craft an item. There are four items in the basic game that a player can craft from resources. Each is represented by a hexagonal chip and

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has the basic building recipe on the back. They are the Wall, Cart, Offering, and Boat: 1 Wood + 1 Stone = 1 Wall 1 Stone + 1 Artifact = 1 Cart

1 Artifact + 1 Livestock = 1 Offering 1 Livestock + 1 Wood = 1 Boat

Wall: A wall is placed just uphill of a village on the solid-line path connecting villages. Placing a wall requires 1 action. Once placed, the wall remains until a lava flow would reach it. When a lava flow would occur where a wall is located, the lava flow marker is not placed and instead the wall is removed. No lava flows that turn. Cart: With a cart, a player can use 1 action to move 2 player pieces, items, resources or a mix of these and the cart. Normal item movement rules apply to the cart. Players may only place or remove their own pieces in and from carts. Players may not move another players pieces unless they are in a boat or cart together. Carts cannot be placed in carts. It does not take an action to place an item or token in a cart; place the item or token on the cart chip. Offering: An offering item can be moved into one of the dashed circles (shrines) near the mouth of the volcano. Once moved to the shrine, the player uses 1 action to make the offering. If the lava would flow along one of the paths on either side of the shrine before the players next turn, the offering is successful and the lava flow marker is not placed. This can happen multiple times for one offering. On the players next turns replenishing step, the offering item is removed. The players piece is unaffected (but may become stranded at the top of the volcano!). Boat: A player may use an action to place a boat in the water. With a boat in the water, a player can use 1 action to move 2 player pieces, items, resources or a mix of these. Moving a boat from a seaside village to the nearby dashed white circle takes one action. It requires 1 action to move

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a token, item or resource into the boat. Boats in the water can move without player pieces. Players may not move another players pieces unless they are in a boat or cart together. Boats move to neighboring white dashed circles for 1 action. Boats can carry loaded carts. Note: An item does not belong to any specific player and can be used by or moved by any player (see Carts and Boats above). Reckoning: At the end of the action phase, any of the players pieces left behind in a village with lava reaching it or flowing through it are removed and set aside to count against the score at the end of the game. Items and resources are destroyed if left in a village at the end of a lava flow at the end of the action phase of the first turn the lava reached the village. All items and resources in the obliterated village are removed from the board, but the tokens can be used again in the game.

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3. Flow: Lava flows slowly at first, then picks up the pace. The starting player starts with a round red magma marker. The marker is passed to the right at the end of the players turn. Play proceeds to the left. When the player with the marker finishes the action part of a turn, the player spins the spinner and extends the lava flow in the direction indicated on the mini-map under the spinner. [Note: resources are still replenished on turns following these turns when the lava doesnt flow.] Once every player has used the red magma marker once, it is removed and every players turn ends by spinning for a lava flow. The different sections of the mini-map under the spinner indicate specific directions of flow as the lava moves further down the mountain. One long red flow marker is placed along the indicated black line connecting a pair of villages. Flows extend one segment per turn from the caldera toward the part of the coast the spinner is closest to on the mini-map. If a wall blocks the flow the wall token is removed and there is no flow. If an offering token is next to the path of the flow at the top of the caldera, the lava does not flow, but the token remains until that players next turn. In either of these cases, during the next players turn, resources are not replenished. Once lava reaches the coastal village, if the spinner lands on that path another time, the lava is instead extended along the nearest available branch. If all of the branches along any one of the four paths from the caldera are covered with flow markers and that path is indicated by the spinner again (without an offering), then the island explodes, the game ends and scores are totaled.

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ENDING and SCORING Ending: The game ends when either: All of the players active tokens are in boats off the island, (Congrats!) All the available boats are as full as they can be and players agree no more tokens can escape, or The island explodes. When any of these end scenarios happen, the remaining tokens are considered victims of the volcano and are placed with any tokens that had already been set-aside during play. These will be subtracted in the scoring. Scoring Keep track of who played and your groups scores, it will be fun to look back at earlier games! Basic Score: To find your basic score, count the number of tokens that made it off the island by boat and subtract the number that were left behind or fell victim to the volcano. Do not consider the tokens that were not brought into play. A perfect score for four players would be 32.

Example: During play, two yellow tokens and one orange token were lost to lava flows and had been set aside. As the lava flowed, resources and the players tokens harvesting them were cutoff from the villages. No more boats could be made. Eventually, the island was close to exploding and no more boats could be filled; they declared the game ended. All the remaining tokens on the island were added to the three that were lost during play. If 26 tokens were brought into play, 15 made it off the island, 8 were left on the island, and 3 were lost during play, then the basic score is 4 (15 11).

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Advanced Score Want a scoring method that encourages more collaboration? Each player counts how many tokens they got off the island, then each player subtracts how many of their color was left behind or lost to get a player end total. Player end totals in advanced scoring cannot be negative; the minimum is zero. The advanced score is the product of all of the players end totals.

Example: Blue brought 7 tokens into play, 5 got off the island, for a player end total of 3 (5 2). Similarly, orange and green had player end totals of 4 and 8. The advanced score is 3x4x8, which is 96. Notice that if the number of tokens that were brought into play and escaped was the same, but more evenly distributed: 5, 5, and 5, then the advanced score would have been 125, much higher. In this scoring method, a perfect score for four players would be 4096; a perfect score for three would be 512. CHALLENGE For an extra challenge, try starting with some lava already on the board! Or change the dynamic by placing a 2x marker on a coastal village between the quarry and the ruins.

Volcano Rules

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