Christmas Tree Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Normal Game (for 3-4 players)
  • I. Setup
  • II. Gameplay
  • Linzer cookies
  • Summary of one round
  • III. The final evaluation
• Advanced Game
  • Setup
  • Gameplay
• Two Player Game
  • Setup
  • Gameplay
• Help for the Scoring
  • Evaluation of the objective cards at the end of the third round
  • Final evaluation
• Tips
• Objective Cards
  • Notes
• Credits

Components

• 4 player boards (the pine trees you will decorate)
• 106 ornament cards
  • 72 glass ornaments
  • 18 gingerbreads
  • 16 wrapped candies
• 30 objective cards
  • 15 for all game types
  • 6 more for the family game and the advanced game
  • 9 more for the advanced game
• 16 linzer cookies
• 72 score tokens

Normal Game (for 3-4 players)

I. Setup

1. Place a player board in front of each player.
2. Create a deck of cards according to the player number using the glass ornaments and the wrapped candies (in a 3 player game you only use the cards without any marks, in a 4 player game you also need the cards marked for 4 players).
3. Shuffle 3 randomly chosen gingerbreads per player into the deck.
4. Each player receives 3 linzer cookies (do not shuffle them into the deck).
5. Each player receives face down 4 randomly chosen objective cards from the cards belonging to the family game (marked with 1 and 2 bells).

Family game differences (blue box): the differences compared to the normal game are shown in blue boxes throughout the rules.

4. Do not tally linzer cookies, you do not need them!
5. Make a deck from the objective cards with 1 bell, but do not tally them!

II. Gameplay

The game has 3 rounds, in each round the players place 7 ornament cards onto their player board. The Christmas tree will be completely decorated in 3 rounds. At the end of each round the players evaluate the ornament cards they played so far according to the actual objective cards. After the pine is decorated, comes the final evaluation, and the player who gathered the most snowflakes (points) wins the game. There is no tiebreaker, so if there is a tie, each player wins! (It's a Christmas game :) )

The structure of one round is the following:

1. Receiving the ornament cards

At the beginning of the round each player receives 8 ornament cards from the deck, which they should keep secret.

2. Choosing the objective card

After checking the received ornament cards the players choose an objective card from the 4 cards they received before and place it face down onto the middle of the table. After each player chose their objective card, they turn them over, so they are visible to everyone.

Randomly choose 3 objective cards from the deck and put them face up onto the middle of the table!

These objectives will be the evaluating standards of the actual round. These objectives define what suits the Christmas tree well according to the players.

3. Decorating the Christmas tree

After these preparations the decorating begins. Each player selects a card from the 8 cards in their hand, and places it face down before them. Once every player selected their card, they turn it over simultaneously and place it onto any free space of their player board. The cards are rotatable, it means the player can place them "upside down" too.

Then each player hands their remaining ornament cards to the left-hand neighbour. After that, everyone chooses a card again from the newly received cards as before, they place it onto the Christmas tree, and hand the remaining cards to their left-hand neighbour again. The players repeat this method until each player has just 2 cards in their hands, they select one more from these and the last card goes out of the game.

4. Evaluation

After each player placed 7 ornament cards onto their Christmas tree, the round ends. That is the time when the players evaluate the objective cards.

They gather points not just from their own but also from the other player's objective cards. You can read more about this in the section of the objective cards below.

The players gather points from the objective cards they chose randomly at the beginning of the round.

After the evaluation, the "used" objective cards will be taken out of the game. Only the objective cards give points at the end of the round, all other point sources will be accounted at the end of the game!

The second and third round goes the same way as the first. This means that from the 4 objective cards the players received at the beginning of the game 1 will be unused.

Linzer cookies

The linzer cookies help you to decorate the Christmas tree during the game. Namely after a player played an ornament card (before the evaluation at the latest), she/he has the opportunity to use one or more linzer cookies to switch the ornaments on the Christmas tree which were already placed there. Using this you can rotate the cards. The other option using the linzer cookie is to rotate an already placed card on the pine. The unused linzer cookie scores 1 point at the end of the game.

Summary of one round

• Deal 8 ornament cards to each player.
• Each player plays 1 objective card and turns it face up.
• The players place 7 ornament cards onto their player board.
• Evaluate the objective cards.

III. The final evaluation

After the third round comes the final evaluation, when each player collects points for their ornament cards on their Christmas tree. The snowflakes on the ornament indicate the point value of the card. After the final evaluation, the player with the most points wins.

1. Glass ornaments

The glass ornaments have 3 colors (yellow, blue, red) and 3 shapes (star, ball, oval). The point value of these cards could be 0, 1 and 2.

2. Wrapped candies

Each of the wrapped candies has the same look, and they give you points equivalent to the indicated snowflakes on them (3-6 points).

3. Gingerbread

There is a symbol on each side of the gingerbread, which indicates the kind of the ornament card that has to be placed next to it to gather the most points. The point value of the gingerbread depends on the number of correct adjacent cards (the conditions could be the color of the glass ornament, the shape of the glass ornament, or this card has to be a wrapped candy). Depending on the number of the correct adjacent ornament cards the point value of the gingerbread (indicated as buttons) is the following:

• No correct neighbour: 2 points
• 1 correct neighbour: 4 points
• 2 correct neighbours: 8 points
• 3 correct neighbours: 12 points
• 4 correct neighbours: 18 points

In the example the gingerbread is worth 12 points, because one of its neighbors is not the correct ornament card.

4. Bulbs

There could be bulbs on the sides of the ornament cards. They can be yellow, red and blue.

The bulbs are worth points in the final evaluation, if the adjacent card on the bulb's side has a bulb with the same color, and therefore they create a complete bulb. In the final evaluation each complete bulb scores 2 points.

Advanced Game

The differences compared to the normal game:

Setup

1. The players use all objective cards (with 1, 2 and 3 bells).
2. The players receive 5 objective cards at the setup.
3. Each player receives 4 linzer cookies at the setup.

Gameplay

1. New rules for placing the ornament cards: the players can place their first ornament card anywhere on the player board, but after the first one each card has to be placed next to another ornament card (with their sides) already placed onto the player board.
2. The chosen objective cards are not open for the other players at the beginning of the round, but the players put them into their hand (to the ornament cards), and give them to their neighbor with their hand when the hands go around. This way the players get to know only 1 objective card per turn from the other players. After the chosen objective cards return to their owners (as their hands go around), they place it face up onto the middle of the table, and they evaluate them at the end of the round, as in the normal game.
3. The hands go around in the first round to the left, in the second round to the right, and in the third round to the left again.

Two Player Game

The players use the following rules in all game types (family, normal, advanced):

Setup

1. Beside the two players there is a third, neutral player, whose Christmas tree will be decorated too. It means this game mode requires 3 player boards.
2. The players play the game as they would play a 3 player game, it means in each round they tally 3x8 cards, 1 hand for each player and 1 hand to the neutral player.

Gameplay

1. The neutral player's objective card is always chosen randomly from the remaining objective cards at the beginning of the round, but only after the players have chosen their own (if they play normal or advanced game).
2. The hands go round as usual, but they choose in each turn 1 card randomly from the actual hand of the neutral player, and place the chosen card onto any free space on its player board.
3. The neutral player's ornament cards count only by objective cards which give you points for a majority. For example by an objective card which gives additional points to the player who has the most stars. By any other aspect of the game, the neutral player's pine doesn't count.

Help for the Scoring

In this example you can see the evaluation of the objective cards from the third round and the final evaluation using Kluni's player board.

Evaluation of the objective cards at the end of the third round

1. Race for the gingerbreads – there are 3 gingerbreads on Kluni's Christmas tree, so she gets 3x2=6 points, and if she has the most, she will get 6 more.
2. Formation – Kluni made this formation twice (3 ornament cards diagonally with the same color or shape). Notice that the formation with the blue dashed line is also correct, but since the blue ball is already part of another shape, it doesn't give points, since you can count one ornament for one objective just once!
3. Bulbpairs – Kluni has 3 bulbpairs, they give her 3x4=12 points. The bulbpair with the yellow dashed line gives no points, because one of its complete bulbs (the yellow) is already part of another bulbpair.
4. Snowflake formation – This objective was once accomplished by Kluni, so she gets 8 points for it. The cards have the proper formation, and each has the same point value (0 snowflakes on each).

Final evaluation

By the final evaluation the players get points for the snowflakes on the glass ornaments, wrapped candies, for the bulbs, for the gingerbreads and for the remaining linzer cookies.

So Kluni's points:

1. The sum of the snowflakes on the glass ornaments and on the wrapped candies: 26 points
2. Points for the gingerbreads: 38 points
   • Left gingerbread: 12 points (3 correctly placed cards)
   • Middle gingerbread: 18 points (all cards are correct)
   • Right gingerbread: 8 points (2 correctly placed cards)
3. Points for the bulbs: 24 points (12 complete bulbs) – you will certainly count all the complete bulbs, if you count them in the direction of the red arrows (as if you were walking on a serpentine).
4. Points for the remaining linzer cookies: Kluni left 1 linzer cookie, so she gets 1 point for it.

Tips

• The shuffling of the diamond-shaped cards is more difficult than usual, but this can be a problem only for the first game. After a finished game, as you take back the cards from the player board, the cards shuffle themselves, so the deck does not need much shuffling hereafter. Therefore it is practical to put the gingerbreads separately into the deck at the beginning of the game.
• Although the game has 3 different rules, those are variable in the future, if you want it. For example after a few games, you can use all the objective cards for each game type, or you can play the family game also with 5 objective cards per player…
• Don't hold back using the Linzer cookies for the 1 point it gives, with a proper card switch/rotation, you can gather much more points.
• If something is not clear in the rulebook, please feel free to contact us sending an email ([email protected]) or visit our website (www.clevergreengames.hu), where you can watch a video about the rules.

Objective Cards

The objective cards allude to the card's color, shape, point value, to the bulbs, or to different formations of the ornament cards. The full set of objective cards includes:

• 1 point for each glass ornament card in the indicated shape/color. The player with the most glass ornament in the indicated shape/color gathers 6 additional points and the second one receives 3.
• 1 point for each wrapped candy/2 points for each gingerbread. The player with the most wrapped candies/gingerbreads gathers 6 additional points and the second one receives 3.
• 3 points for each complete bulb in the indicated color.
• 6 points for each formation which contains 3 glass ornaments with the same color or shape, and has the indicated form.
• 4 points for each formation which contains 2 glass ornaments with the same color and shape, and has the indicated form.
• 6 points for each formation which contains a wrapped candy and a gingerbread and has the indicated form (the cards have to be adjacent with their corners).
• 6 points if you have all the 3 different shaped/colored glass ornaments in the same row. In the first row you can achieve it 2 times (with two ornaments from each different shapes/colors). The ornament cards don't have to be adjacent to each other and the order of them also doesn't matter.
• 5 points for each row which has glass ornaments on both ends with the same color and shape.
• 5 points for each row/diagonal in which the total points of the glass ornaments are at least the indicated amount. For example if the sum of the glass ornaments' point value is at least 4 in the 3rd row/diagonal, you get 5 points.
• 8 points for each formation which contains 4 glass ornaments with the same point value and forms the indicated formation. You can use each point value for this card (0, 1, 2).
• 6 points for each formation, which contains 3 glass ornaments with the point value of 0, 1 and 2, and they are adjacent to each other with their side in the following order: next to the card with 0 point value there is a card with 1 point value and next to this card there is a card with 2 points.
• 4 points for each bulb formation which contains 2 complete bulbs and their position is as indicated. By this objective you receive points for the bulbs and not for the card so if you have an ornament card with 4 bulbs, it is possible to create 2 formations with it.

Notes

Formations. The formations cannot contain gingerbreads or wrapped candies, only if the objective card indicates it. Important rule by the evaluation of the objective cards: you can use one ornament for one objective just once. So if a formation needs 3 ornaments, it means for 2 formations you need 6!

• One marking indicates that you have to make the formation using glass ornaments with the same color.
• Another marking indicates that you have to make the formation using glass ornaments with the same shape.

Tiebreaker of the objectives. In a case of a tie in the first place, each player receives 6 points and there is no second place. If there is a tie in the second place, each player receives the 3 points.

Credits

• Designer: Nagy Balázs
• Illustration: Vörös Judit
• Graphics: Vörös Judit, Nagy Balázs
• German translation: Hauszknecht Imre
• English translation: Nagy Balázs
• Proofreaders: Hilzinger Marcel and Forster Ákos
• Publisher: Clevergreen Board Games, Clevergreen Kft., 7625 Pécs, Szőlő utca 17. Made in Hungary
• © 2017, Clevergreen Board Games. All rights reserved!
• www.clevergreengames.hu, [email protected]