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WHAT YOU NEED:
- 4 players
- Game board, including 5 dials for rotating counters on the game board. Dials can be made of paper, but a more rigid material is preferable. Print game board PDF or draw your own game board.
- 6 coloured counters (any shape) per player: blue, red, yellow, green.
- 4 standard six-sided dice. Alternatively you can use a throwing challenge instead of rolling dice, eg: balls / ring- toss / beanbags / darts etc…
OBJECTIVE:
The first player / team to get a cluster with all 6 of its counters win the game. A cluster can be any shape using adjacent squares. No diagonals. No part of a winning cluster may occupy the 4 squares immediately in front of a player’s / team’s starting position.
HOW TO PLAY:
Take turns in the same order for the entire game. Each turn consists of 3 actions, of which there are 3 types in the game to choose from (see below). Choose any combination of actions in any order, eg: 2 MOVE actions and 1 SPIN action. Actions may be focused on a single game counter or spread out to affect more than one counter. There are no diagonal moves in the game.
SPIN: Spin one dial any amount of rotation. 4 squares and any counters on them will move to new positions occupying the same tile area. Corner tiles don’t spin.
MOVE: Move one of your own counters into an unoccupied adjacent square. No diagonal moves. Moving a distance of 1 square counts as 1 MOVE action.
JUMP: Jump over any counter into an unoccupied square. No diagonal moves. You can keep on jumping in this checkers / draughts-like fashion so long as there are suitably placed counters and gaps on the board. Multiple hops still count as one action.
At the end of a player’s / team’s turn if any one tile on the game board forms a constellation (all 4 squares on a tile occupied by counters) a special round must be played before the next player’s standard turn. All players / teams with any counters on the constellation tile must participate in the special round. This involves rolling dice or a throwing challenge to see which counters remain on the board. A failed die roll or throw results in a counter being returned to its home base area. Although counters may be temporarily removed off the game grid, they can never be permanently lost from the game. The more counters a player / team has in a constellation the more difficult it is to succeed in the special round. A player / team who forms a constellation composed only of its own counters must do the special round alone with high risk. If no counters are lost from the constellation after the special round, and if that constellation still remains intact after the next player’s / team’s turn, then the special round is played again. This continues so long as that constellation remains intact. When a constellation remains intact no new constellations may be formed. There can never be more than one constellation in the game at any one time.
GAME TERMS EXPLAINED:
- SQUARE: There are 36 game squares on the board where the counters move.
- TILE: 4 squares bordered by black lines.
- HOME BASE: The coloured half-circle where a player’s / team’s counters start from and are sometimes returned to.
- HOME TILE: The tile (4 squares) immediately in front of a home base where a player / team moves onto the game grid from its home base.
- DIAL: A circular base on top of a spin tile which allows any counters sitting on it to be rotated into new positions.
- SPIN TILE: A tile with a dial sitting on top of it for taking SPIN actions. The board has 5 spin tiles marked with grey crosses.
- CORNER TILE: A tile without a dial. The board has 4 in each corner marked with orange crosses.
- CONSTELLATION: A full tile at the end of a turn with 4 counters on it. The counters can belong to any player / team. When a turn ends there can be no more than 1 constellation anywhere on the board. If at the end of a turn there is a constellation on the board, a special round must be played.
- GAME GRID: The 36 squares of the game board where counters move and interact. Not the home bases.
- TURN ORDER: The default order for players’ / teams’ turns unless decided otherwise is: BLUE 1st, RED 2nd, YELLOW 3rd, and GREEN 4th. This order is the same as the order of home bases around the game grid read clock-wise from the top.
Example: Player / team GREEN has a cluster with all of its 6 counters. Because one of GREEN’s counters is on its home tile it is not a winning cluster. RED has a winning cluster, but because a constellation has been formed at the end of the turn on the centre-most tile, RED and BLUE must participate in the special round. If RED loses any of its counters back to its home base then the game continues. However, RED wins if it can keep all its counters on the game grid during the special round. BLUE and YELLOW both have 2 of their counters on their home bases making it currently impossible to have a winning cluster with only 4 counters on the game grid.
Example: In order to move from its home base to square A, Player / team BLUE needs to take 1 MOVE action. To get from its home base to square C, BLUE needs to take 3 MOVE actions (moving first to A, then from A to B, then from B to C). To get from its home base to square D, BLUE needs to take 1 JUMP action. To get from its home base to square G, BLUE needs to take 1 JUMP action (travelling via squares D, E, F whilst jumping over 2 blue counters and 2 green counters). To get to square H from its home base, BLUE needs to take 1 JUMP action followed by 1 MOVE action to get from G to H.
Example: In order to move quickly from its home base to position A, Player / team BLUE needs to take 1 SPIN action, followed by 1 JUMP action. Unless BLUE uses its last action to MOVE or JUMP away from position A,a constellation with 2 RED and 2 BLUE counters will be formed.
Example: Imagine that player / team YELLOW has just ended its turn, and a constellation from the previous turn remains on the game board. YELLOW has no counters in the constellation and sits out the special round. Next in the normal turn order is GREEN. GREEN has 1 counter in the constellation, so must roll 1 die and get a result higher than 1. GREEN succeeds and its counter remains where it is. BLUE, who is next in the turn order, sits out the challenge. Next in the turn order is RED. RED has 3 counters in the constellation, so must roll 3 dice and every result needs to be higher than 3 (4,5,6 on a die). Only the 6 RED rolled is a successful result. RED must choose 2 of its counters in the constellation to be removed back to its home base. Counters must be removed before the next player / team in the special round acts. The special round has now ended. GREEN, whose turn comes after YELLOW, can now begin its standard turn involving 3 actions. Currently there are no constellations in the game because RED removed 2 counters from the full tile due to the special round.
NOTE: It is permitted for a player / team to use less than 3 actions on a turn if so desired.
NOTE: If all the counters in a constellation belong to one player / team, 4 dice must be rolled with a result higher than 4 required (5-6 on a die).
TIP: Creating a winning cluster without creating a constellation is optimal.
TIP: If using a throwing challenge instead of dice, set 4 suitable throwing ranges: easy / medium / hard / very hard. For example: GREEN throws a beanbag into a bucket from the closest range. RED throws 3 beanbags from quite far away at the third throwing range.
