1987 Channel Tunnel Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Preparation
  • The Tunnel Tigers
• Objective of the Game
• Round Structure
  • Take an Action
  • Pass
• Actions
  • Plan
  • Tunnel
  • Deviation
  • Water! Water!
  • Finance
    • What is the ECU symbol?
  • Technology
  • More Space
  • Secondary Action
  • Development
• The Cards
  • Green Cards — Special Action
  • Blue Cards — Extra Victory Points
  • Red Cards — Chained Actions
• End of the Game
• Final Scoring
• Expansion: "Agenda"
• Credits

Components

• 2 player boards (France and Britain)
• 2 wooden tunnel-boring machines (hereafter referred as TBM): red and blue
• 2 wooden cubes (for the deviation track): red and blue
• 4 wooden counters (for the technology track): red and blue
• 25 wooden action discs: sky blue, black, orange, yellow and white
• 20 cardboard tokens (rubble)
• 1 cloth bag
• 60 cards:
  • 1 "First player" card
  • 6 "Tunnel" cards
  • 5 "Actions" cards (2 permanent and 3 temporary actions)
  • 6 "Agenda" cards (expansion)
  • 33 playing cards
  • 9 "Deviation" cards

Preparation

1. Each player takes a player board and places it in front him or her.

2. Place the six tunnel cards between the two player boards. Make sure the two cards with flags on them are located in the centre.

3. Shuffle the rubble tokens face down. Then place 18 of the tokens on the 18 spaces between the two player boards. Turn over the tokens closest to each player board.

4. The two rubble tokens that are left over are placed face up on one of the storage spaces on each player board.

5. Place the two cards with the permanent actions "Plan/Tunnel" and "Finance/Technology" to one side of the six tunnel cards (5a) and the three temporary action cards "Secondary action/Development" to the other side of the six tunnel cards (5b).

6. Shuffle the 33 playing cards and place them face down to form a draw deck. Draw the top three cards and place them on the temporary action cards (6a).

7. Shuffle the 9 deviation cards and place them face down to form a draw deck.

8. Each player takes a TBM in their chosen colour and places it on their player board (8a) and also places two technology counters of that same colour on the "0" space on both of their technology tracks (8b). Each player places a cube of their colour on the "0" space on the deviation track on their player board (8c).

9. Put the 25 wooden action discs into the cloth bag and shake the bag well.

10. Give the first player card to the player that is playing as Great Britain, making sure it displays the player's flag.

Note: Some rubble tokens have this symbol (the agenda symbol). Ignore this symbol if you are not using the "Agenda" expansion (see page 8).

The Tunnel Tigers

In December 1987, the construction of this masterpiece of engineering began. Each country deployed 4,000 workers who were to tunnel on their side with the idea of getting to the central point first. But they didn't start at exactly the same time. The British began tunnelling first; due to their long mining history, they already possessed an elite of experienced tunnellers who came to be called "The Tunnel Tigers." The French, on the other hand, had to hire and train their workers.

Objective of the Game

The game takes place over an indeterminate series of rounds, where the players will carry out actions by placing their disks until both players are unable to perform an action or pass.

When one of the players reaches the centre space with their TBM, the game ends immediately and the players begin final scoring. The game may also end if one of the players reaches the end of their deviation track.

Round Structure

At the start of each round, each player draws wooden action discs from the cloth bag until they reach their maximum allowed. At the beginning of the game this maximum is 10 discs, but it can increase after reaching certain levels on the technology track or when you use the "New workers" card.

Players should stack their discs of the same colour in front of them so that their rival can easily see how many of each colour they have at any time.

The player who holds the first player card is the first to take an action. For their turn they can choose to take an action or pass.

Take an Action

The player takes ALL the discs of one colour from the area in front of them (they cannot take less) and places them in an available action space.

Each permanent action space contains two different actions. If an action space is occupied by a stack of action discs placed by either the current player or the rival player, the current player must place a stack of action discs with at least one disc more.

In addition to placing the stack of action discs in the action space, the current player takes the stack that was in the action space previously and adds it to their area. If necessary the player must add the discs to a stack of the same colour in their area.

Example: A player wants to use the tunnel action but the action space is occupied by a stack of two yellow disks. The player decides to place the stack of orange discs on the action space and so picks up the two yellow ones and places them in his area to form a stack of three discs.

Pass

If a player doesn't want to or cannot place any action discs, he or she must pass. When this happens, the player takes the first player card making sure it displays the player's flag. Then the action discs from their area are returned to the cloth bag.

Before returning the discs to the cloth bag, the player may choose to keep some discs for their next turn. He or she doesn't need to keep all the discs of one colour, but may choose to keep some of the same colour and return the rest.

When both players have passed, a new round begins. All the action discs on the action cards are returned to the cloth bag. Each player, starting with the first player, takes his or her allowed number of action discs from the cloth bag.

Note: Players can never have more than their allowed number of action discs. If that maximum number is 10 discs, but he or she has kept 2 from the previous round, then only 8 new ones can be drawn from the bag.

Actions

There are five action cards where players can place their action discs. There are two permanent action cards and three temporary action cards that change depending on which playing cards are on them at the time.

Whenever you take or discard a card when performing a temporary action, or the "Finance" action is used (see page 5), the card must be replaced instantly with a card from the draw deck.

Plan

The player turns over the face down rubble token closest to his or her TBM.

• A player can turn over rubble tokens even if they haven't tunnelled the token closest to his or her TBM.
• A player cannot turn over rubble tokens on his or her rival's side of the route (further than the player's flag).

Tunnel

The player returns one action disc, from their area, in the same colour as the revealed rubble token closest to their TBM to the cloth bag. Then the player takes the rubble token and places it in an empty space in their storage area on their player board. The TBM then advances one space.

• If no space is available in the players storage area, the action cannot be taken.
• If the player doesn't have an action disc in the same colour as the rubble token, the player may, instead, return any 2 action discs to the cloth bag.

Example: The player returns a yellow action disc to the bag to tunnel a yellow rubble token, the token is then placed in their storage area.

The player must then check the tunnel-boring machine for deviation.

Deviation

The player draws one deviation card and leaves it visible next to the deck. He or she then adjusts the deviation indicator on their player board as many levels as the card indicates (0, -1 or -2). If at any point, the indicator passes the -4 level, the tunnel-boring machine has deviated too much. The work comes to a standstill and the player loses the game.

Water: If the rubble token that has been tunnelled is blue, that means that water has leaked into the tunnel. The British player must draw two deviation cards and adjust his or her deviation indicator for both cards. The French player doesn't draw a deviation card in this case.

The deviation cards (except the -2 card) come in four colours representing the different directions the TBM can deviate. When a player draws and plays a card that is the same colour as any from the discard pile, he or she must reshuffle the remaining cards with the cards from the discard pile to form a new draw deck.

Deviation of the TBM can be corrected with the "Technology" action.

Example: After drawing a red card and adjusting the deviation indicator -1, the player then reshuffles the discard pile to form a new draw deck.

Water! Water!

In March 1988, water entered the British tunnel. Work stopped for weeks as they sealed the leaks and fixed short circuits in the machinery.

The French team also had leaks but they didn't experience any delays, because in the time they had taken to prepare their workers, they had also been waterproofing the headset of their TBM.

Finance

The player can take one of the three playing cards available and store it face up below their player board, leaving the amount of money visible. Immediately replace the cards from the playing card draw deck. If the deck of playing cards is depleted, shuffle the discard and create a new one.

IMPORTANT! If the "Finance" action is selected using the secondary action (see page 6), the player must only take the playing card on that action space.

What is the ECU symbol?

This is the symbol of the ECU (European Currency Unit), a unit of currency that had been used since 1979 throughout the European Community. This currency was used at an accounting level and did not physically exist beyond a few commemorative printings.

In 1999 this currency was converted at a 1:1 exchange rate to the Euro which we know of today.

Technology

The player can advance one of their technology counters on their technology track one space to the right. After moving his or her counter, the player may then discard one or more of their money playing cards to align their TBM. For each million spent, the deviation indicator is reduced by one level towards "0".

There are areas on the technology track where an amount of money is shown. This amount must be spent before advancing to the next space on the technology track. When a player crosses these bars ALL the money cards for that player are spent.

If the player spends more than the amount shown, the balance can be used to move his or her cube on the deviation indicator as explained above.

Advancing along the technology track allows players to earn victory points and to obtain other benefits:

• Take one extra disc from the cloth bag at the beginning of each round.
• Look in secret at any rubble token (even in the rival's side of the route) then return it face down to its space.
• The British player can use their third space to store rubble.

More Space

In January 1990, after recovering from water leaks, the British increased their work rate to regain their lost advantage. That meant increasing the manufacture of the concrete blocks used to line the tunnel, which were stored on the surrounding land.

But this caused a problem because while the French coastline was flat, the steep British cliffs left very little storage space. And if they ran out of concrete blocks, they would have to stop the machines, which meant delay and considerable costs. The British solution was to take advantage of the 36,000 tons of soil and rubble extracted daily from the tunnel and dump it into the sea to reclaim new land. After months of tunnelling, Great Britain had grown by 36 hectares.

Secondary Action

When a player takes the Plan, Tunnel, Finance or Technology action on the lower part of the playing cards, the card is immediately discarded and a new card is drawn from the playing card draw deck.

Note: Remember if the secondary finance action is used, the player can only use that same card as money and not any of the other cards available.

Development

When the develop action is used, player takes one of the cards and places it in their area near their player board. Some cards taken this way are free and do not have a cost while other cards will have a cost and will have to be paid for with rubble tokens from the players storage area on their player boards. Taking cards that require rubble tokens is the only way to empty the storage area.

• The card is free to take and has no cost.
• The player must discard a rubble token to take this card.
• Place one rubble token on this space of the card. When you want to use the ability of this card, remove the rubble token and turn the card face down.
• Before taking this card, the player must decide whether to place either one or two rubble tokens on this card. The number of rubble tokens is the amount of times the player is allowed to activate the ability of this card (one or two times).

These cards are placed face up and are visible to both players while there are rubble tokens on them. When the card is exhausted and no longer has rubble tokens on it, it is placed face down and will not play any more part in the game until final scoring, when victory points are counted. They are placed face down to prevent the rival player from knowing the other players exact number of points.

The Cards

Each playing card shows:

• Victory points
• Cost (rubble tokens)
• Card abilities
• Secondary action
• Money (Finance)

A player can only use a card's ability once per round. Acording to the type of effect, the cards are divided into three colors.

Green Cards — Special Action

The abilities on these cards activate from the beginning of a round or at any time during a player's turn.

• Improve technology. Take 2 technology actions in the same turn.
• New workers. At the beginning of the round, take one extra action disc from the bag.
• Exchange. At the beginning of the round, a player may swap one of their action discs for one of their rival players action discs.
• Extra Finance. Use this card as if it were 3 million ECUs during one of the technology actions.

Blue Cards — Extra Victory Points

These cards do not have any in-game abilities that can be activated. They give victory points during final scoring.

• European influence. There are ten different cards. Each card represents a European country that supports that player.
• Political duel. The player receives 3 points if they have more European influence cards than their rival.
• European speech. The player receives 1 point for each two European influence cards.
• Media relations. The player received 2 points if has more cards (face up and face down) than their opponent.
• Topographical Analysis. Receive 1, 3, 6, 10 or 15 points if you have 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 of these cards with a different kind of rubble token on them.

Red Cards — Chained Actions

These cards abilities take effect immediately after taking a specific action.

• New Materials. After taking an action, the player can recover one disc from the used stack.
• Heavy Machinery. After taking an action, the player can take any other action of their choice.
• Control room 1. After taking a "Plan" action, the player can recover one disc from the stack.
• Control room 2. After taking a "Technology" action, the player can recover one disc from the stack.
• Control room 3. After taking a "Plan" action, the player can take another "Plan" action.
• Control room 4. After taking a "Plan" action, the player can take a "Tunnel" action.
• Control room 5. After taking a "Technology" action the player can take another "Technology" action.

End of the Game

The game can end in two ways:

• When one player exceeds -4 on the deviation track, this player loses immediately.
• When one players TBM reaches the centre space on the route cards, which is indicated with the player's flag. In this case the game ends immediately and final scoring begins.

Final Scoring

Both players calculate their scores:

• Adding all the points on their playing cards in their area.
• Adding all the points from the space their counter reached on their technology track.
• Deducting the points reached on their deviation indicator.
• The player who reached the centre point on the route cards first receives two points more one point for every rubble token (face up or face down) on their rival's side of the route.

The player with the most points is the winner. In the case of a draw, the player who arrived at the centre point first is the winner.

Expansion: "Agenda"

Bureaucracy, politics, inspections… the building of the tunnel wasn't just about digging soil. There were lots of other important tasks to be done.

Shuffle the 6 "Agenda" cards and place the deck within reach of both players.

There are 5 rubble tokens with the agenda symbol on them. If during the planning action a player reveals one of these tokens the player must immediately draw an agenda card and decide if they are going to place the card in front of themselves and attempt to do the cards action or simply discard the card.

IMPORTANT: Each player can only have one agenda card in play at any time. If a player has chosen to keep a card and during the planning action an Agenda symbol is revealed no card is drawn.

Each card has a penalty that must be completed immediately or at the next possible opportunity. When the penalty has been completed place the card face down with your other cards. Their points are added at the end of the game. If the game ends and the agenda card hasn't been completed the points are deducted.

• TRAINING. In the next round take one disc less from the bag.
• WAREHOUSE INSPECTION. Do not take an action so your opponent can take two actions together.
• CHECK UP. Reveal a deviation card immediatly and adjust the deviation track.
• REPAIRS. During your next "Technology" action do not move your counter on the technology track.
• SUPERVISION. For your next action you must use a stack with at least two discs more than there are in the action space.
• PROMOTION. Pay 3M ECU immediatly or at the next opportunity the funds become available.

Credits

1987 Channel Tunnel

Game Design: Shei S. & Isra C. (www.llamadice.com)

Illustration & Design: Pedro Soto

Development and Rules: Perepau Llistosella y Pedro Soto

Translation: Noel Keegan

Designer's special thanks: To Paco and Lorena because you didn't like the prototype and without your honesty this game would only be rubble, thanks also to looping games for keeping the TBM on track.

Published by: Looping Games S.L. (www.loopinggames.com)