Deutschland: Finden Sie Minden Rulebook

Table of Contents

Game Contents
Setup
Sequence of Play
Bonus Points
Game End
Notes
Game Variants
- A) Trading Cards Multiple Times
- B) Playing with Challenges
Credits

Game Contents

1 game board
1 place indicator
1 overview card
5 player pieces
5 tip cards
20 tip stones
58 yellow city cards
80 orange place cards
45 green nature cards
41 blue expert cards
10 chips

Setup

Place the game board in the middle of the table. Place the place indicator next to the game board for now. Each player receives the tip card, the player piece, and the four tip stones in their colour. Each player also receives one chip (the remaining chips are needed for a game variant and stay in the box).

Place the player pieces on the starting spaces of the game board, which are marked according to the number of players. For example, if four players are taking part, the player pieces are placed on the spaces printed with a "4". The piece of the oldest player goes at the very front, with the other pieces following behind it in order of the players' ages.

For the normal game, the yellow, orange, and green cards are used. Shuffle them all together and set out about half of them as a draw pile with the solution side facing down.

For the expert game, the blue expert cards are also shuffled in.

Sequence of Play

The game is played in rounds. A round always proceeds as follows:

Dealing out and choosing cards
Optional trading of cards
Guessing phase
Scoring

1. Dealing Out and Choosing Cards

At the start of each round, as many cards as there are players are dealt out from the pile next to the game board. The cards are placed with the task side facing up. No player may see the solution side! The player whose piece is in the rearmost position may choose one of the cards first.

The other players then follow in turn according to their position on the score track (from last to first). The leading player (at the start of the game, the oldest player) therefore takes the card that is left over. Each player places their card face up (task side) in front of them. The solution side may not be looked at.

2. Trading

Each player has received a chip, which they can use to trade in a card. To do this, the player puts the chip and the card lying in front of them back in the box and takes the top card from the pile as their new card. The player who is furthest behind decides first whether they want to trade in the card lying in front of them. The other players then follow in turn according to their position on the score track.

3. Guessing Phase

Now everyone plays at the same time. Each player tries to locate the place on their card as precisely as possible. To do this, they use their tip card and place up to four tip stones on it as follows:

First, you must judge whether the place lies west or east of the vertical white line. The line divides the map of Germany along the 10th line of longitude into an eastern and a western part. To make this guess, place a tip stone on the corresponding space (O for East, or W for West) on your own tip card.
With the next stone, you can decide whether the place lies in the North, the Middle, or the South (N, M, S). These zones are separated from each other on the game board by horizontal white lines along the 50th and 52nd lines of latitude.
After that, you can guess which map square the place lies in. To do this, each zone (N, M, S) is divided into 10 or 15 map squares, which are bounded by the thick black lines and the white lines and numbered with large white numbers.
Finally, each player can also indicate where within the map square the place lies. The thin black lines on the game board divide the map squares into four equally sized sections: so if a player thinks the place lies in the lower-left corner of the map square, they place the tip stone on space "C". (Each map square is divided into four equally sized sections, labelled A, B, C, D — A upper-left, B upper-right, C lower-left, D lower-right.)

Important: A player does not have to place all four tip stones. For every correctly placed stone, they may move their player piece forward one space during the scoring phase. But if even just one of the tip stones is placed incorrectly, the player does not move forward any spaces at all!

4. Scoring

Once all players have made their guesses, scoring follows. The player whose piece is furthest behind begins the scoring. They place the place indicator on the game board, visible to the other players, at the spot where they believe the place is located in Germany. They then turn their card over to the solution side and compare the solution with what they marked on their tip card, by reading the "coordinates" aloud:

If all of the tip stones they placed are correct, they may move their player piece forward the corresponding number of free spaces. Spaces occupied by opposing players' pieces are therefore not counted, but skipped over.
If even just one of the tip stones is placed incorrectly, the player may not move their piece forward.

The other players then follow according to the position of their piece. Whoever among them is furthest behind takes their turn next.

If a player has not placed enough tip stones, or if one of the tip stones was placed incorrectly, the card goes back into the box after scoring. The cards a player wins can earn bonus points at the end of the game and decide the win. So it can sometimes be worth placing another stone, even if you're not entirely sure. Once all players have scored their guess, the next round begins.

Bonus Points

Players may keep their card if they have placed at least the following number of tip stones correctly:

Yellow city cards: all 4 tip stones
Orange place cards: at least 3 tip stones
Green nature cards: at least 2 tip stones
Blue expert cards: at least 3 tip stones

Game End

The game ends as soon as a player's piece reaches the orange final spaces. The current round is played to its end. A final scoring then follows. Players count the cards of each colour that they own. Whoever has collected the most cards of one colour may move forward five spaces. In case of a tie, all players involved may move forward two spaces. In each case, the player who is furthest behind goes first.

The different card colours are scored in the following order:

Yellow city cards
Orange place cards
Green nature cards
Blue expert cards

Whoever is in front on the score track after the final scoring has won and may call themselves "Deutscher Meister" (German Champion).

Notes

For a few cards, two solutions are given instead of one, because the places lie very close to a dividing line, or because the areas — for example, a low mountain range — extend over a larger area. Otherwise, the solutions are chosen according to the location of the city centre, or, in the case of natural areas, according to where the largest portion or the specified point of the natural area is located on the map. The blue expert cards cover companies and sights. They are therefore harder to locate, because the player must first know which city the object is located in. Players decide at the start of the game whether they want to play with the blue cards.

Game Variants

A) Trading Cards Multiple Times

A player who has already used their chip may, in subsequent rounds, trade in further cards by using one of their tip stones to do so. However, they can then no longer place four guesses. Accordingly, they can win correspondingly fewer points at most per round in this round and in the following rounds.

B) Playing with Challenges

All players receive a second chip at the start of the game. At the end of the guessing phase, a player may place this chip in front of any other player if they believe that player has not guessed correctly.

If this suspicion is correct, the challenger may move forward one space when that player's guess is scored. They then get the chip back.
If the suspicion is wrong, the player whose guess was challenged keeps the chip.

At the end of the game, every chip a player owns counts as one point. Before the final scoring, players may move their piece forward the corresponding number of spaces. Once again, the player who is furthest behind goes first.

Credits

Author: Günter Burkhardt, born 1961, lives on the Swabian Jura between Stuttgart and Ulm. The former secondary school teacher is currently a stay-at-home father and game designer. We owe this Deutschland game to his love of travel and geography. Other games by Günter Burkhardt published by KOSMOS Verlag include: Die Pyramiden des Jaguar, Schrecklicht, and Die Wilden Hühner und die Liebe.

Illustrations: Bernd Wagenfeld Design: SENSiT Communication, Munich Editing: Michael Baskal, Markus Reichert, Bärbel Schmidts, Stefan Stadler