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Let's try to make /BuildingRefuge again, only this time, not crap.

Deck and map building game.

  1. Starting deck: 4 desert, 3 grassland.
  2. Starting board: 5x5 with a city in the middle and the explorer on it.
  3. Each turn, draw 5 tiles from your available stash to your hand.
  4. Now play tiles from your hand to move the explorer. There are three types of explorer move:
    1. Play a new tile from your hand onto the board, orthogonally adjacent to the explorer, and move the explorer onto it.
      1. You have to match adjacency restrictions.
      2. Note: I intend that you can place passable edges next to impassable ones and vice versa (the resulting border is impassable), but you can't put passable next to mountains, and, obviously, an explorer cannot cross an impassable border.
      3. (If you place a Mountain tile, the explorer doesn't move on to it, you just position it in a neighbouring space)
      4. You now gain either the purchase-power or the victory-point-value of the tile you placed.
    2. Play a tile from your hand into the area in front of you, to move the explorer orthogonally onto an existing tile of the same type. (The tile moved to and the tile you have to play from your hand must be the same terrain type, but the impassable edges dsn't have to match).
      1. TODO: Huh.  I didn't specify king wise, implying teleportation within explored territory.  I'm not certain.  On the plus side, way less likely to get trapped (thus removing the need for an escape rule),  on the negative, no ability to trap opponent and loses much of the 'trace a route' feeling.  Not sure about this.
      2. You get the purchase-power of existing tiles you move onto.
    3. Destroy a tile from hand (i.e. play a tile from your hand into the global discard pile) to teleport the explorer to any tile of a type matching the tile you destroyed.
    4. No takebacks.  If you get stuck, tough!
    5. You may destroy a card from hand to move onto a terrain you don't have the card for - you get no benefit except to move the explorer.
  5. Now, only if you played at least one new tile to the board: Use the total accumulated purchase power from all of your turn to buy new tiles for your deck.
    1. Split as many ways as you like.
  6. Shuffle your stash (including tiles used for moving to existing tiles) around to draw a new hand.
  7. Game ends when the board is full.
  8. Winner is whoever has the most VP.
    1. TODO: That gives last player a huge advantage.  Fix that a bit.

 Terrain  Ok  Cost Buy VP  Number (With 0,1,2 walls)
---------------------------------------------------
Desert  G    1  1  0  6 , 5 , 3
Grass    DOC  4  2  1  5 , 4
City    G    7  1  4  2 (+1 starter) , 2
Oasis    GC    6  5  2  3 , 1
Mountain D~    2  x  0  3

(Add extra 4/3 sets for more players, but I'll start testing with 2)

There's a possible stumbling block here - the first turn.  The first player has to sacrifice a grass (as it's the only valid tile they have) and that seems like a pretty big disadvantage.  Though the flip side is that they can also throw away a couple of deserts  and do a pretty good job of defining what the board will look like.  Not sure whether this will work out like I hope or just be annoying.
I think I'm missing something. I don't see from the rules what you mean by sacrificing a grass. Do you mean playing it as a new tile to walk on, or something else? I don't see why that would be sacrificing. --Edwin
Playing it to walk on - it's no longer in your hand, so you have less buying power on subsequent turns.  --Vitenka (I think first turn is pretty much always 'sac grass, desert, desert to map, walk two more tiles, buy grass or whatever better is available, with the rules as they currently stand.)
How about "play desert, pass turn"?
If they do that they get basically no benefit from their turn (they change the map slightly, they trim a desert from their hand, but they can't buy anything or score anything).  Plus they can't play a desert on the first turn, desert cannot be adjacent to city. --Vitenka (I'll permit oasis to border city too, actually, not that it'll help the first turn)

It also looks like it's a bit too easy to never have more tiles than you can use - but hopefully that's where the difficulty of map placement comes in.

(Cost of desert reduced all the way to 1 - trimming your hand to 5 and keeping it there is a good plan, but sometimes you do need a desert to move with)




First playtest: Mixed reactions.  Nothing very compelling, but something fairly fun.  I kept over-thinning my hand and getting stuck, there needs to be an explicit "If both players pass, game over" rule.
Also proposed: teleport should have to be your first move in a turn, and oasis should be allowed to border desert but not city.  Would make travelling more eager.

Permit mountains to be discovered across walls?

AlexChurchill writes:
First playtest reactions: There's a lot of luck in whether there happens to be a City / Oasis available to purchase or not. I might be inclined to let them just be individual buy stacks, one of each type, so you can always buy the tile you want to (if it's not run out).
I've just spotted there's a rule above which says: "You may destroy a card from hand to move onto a terrain you don't have the card for - you get no benefit except to move the explorer." As written, it suggests I can destroy a Desert from hand to move onto that City that's otherwise impassible, so I can place a Grassland beyond it. If that's accurate, that would significantly alleviate the movement difficulties we had. OTOH, the movement difficulties, and manipulating and arranging them, were basically the heart of the game last night. So maybe you want to bin that rule.
I've had a go at rephrasing the explorer movement section of the rules, to be the same as what it was before but clearer. Check whether I've managed to keep the rules the same or not. --AC

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