Discover India Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Game Setup
• Gameplay
  • Example of a Move
  • 1. Move Your Own Travel Pawn
  • 2. Take a City Tile and Place It on Your Own Kolam
  • End of the Game
  • Scoring
• Variant: Discover India – Challenge
• Kolam

Game Setup

• The board shows India with 33 cities (4 of them with an airport). There are 5 regions with 6 or 7 cities each. The board is placed in the middle of the table.
• The 144 city tiles show 1 or 2 symbols. They are mixed thoroughly face down. On each city a city tile is placed face up. On the four airports (Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi) 5 city tiles each are placed as an open stack (only city tiles with 2 symbols).
• The remaining 95 city tiles are put into the cloth bag.
• The 33 city cards (6 or 7 per region) show on the front the name of the city or the sight, and also a symbol (this is used only in the variant). The back shows a map of India in which the city is marked with a large white dot, and 1 victory point (VP). The city cards are mixed thoroughly and placed as an open stack next to the board.
• The 5 Kolam boards (also called Kolams; see the "Kolam" section below) are in the five player colours. Each shows 19 spaces connected by roads, on which city tiles can be placed, and also one trade space. Each player chooses a player colour and places the matching Kolam in front of them, front side up. The reverse side has 22 spaces (recognisable by the golden hourglass and the golden frames). It may be used for an extended game with unchanged rules, for 2 to 4 players only. In that case all players play with the reverse side of their Kolam.
• The 5 festival stones are placed at random on 5 cities (not an airport). Each region may hold only 1 festival stone.
• The 5 travel pawns in the player colours are placed on the start space (the large aeroplane).
• The 5 score markers in the player colours are placed on space "5" of the score track.
• The cloth bag is used to store the city tiles that are drawn.
• 1 rulebook.

Different rules for 2 players: Each player receives two travel pawns in one Kolam. The active player always moves the pawn that they did not move in their last turn.

Gameplay

The youngest player is the start player. They place their travel pawn on one of the four airports. They take the top city tile from the stack and place it on their trade space. Then the other players, one after the other, clockwise, take their turns.

Each turn consists of two parts:

1. Move your own travel pawn.
2. Take a city tile and place it on your own Kolam.

At the end of the turns, one city tile is drawn from the bag and placed face up in the city. For an airport, no tile is drawn as long as there are still tiles lying there. Only when an airport space is empty is a new tile drawn for that space.

Note on the translation: the Dutch text reads "Aan het einde van de speelbeurten" (at the end of the turns) and does not say explicitly whether this happens after each individual turn or after each full round. The wording is kept as printed.

Example of a Move

Just before, player Blue was on turn, and now player Orange is on turn. Orange has three options for where to place their pawn: to Kanpur, to Varanasi, or to the Lingaraj temple. These three cities are neighbours of the blue pawn and are unoccupied. If Orange moves their pawn to the Lingaraj temple, the next player has two options for where to place their pawn: to Kolkata or to Vizag (both are neighbouring cities of Orange's new location).

1. Move Your Own Travel Pawn

The player whose turn it is moves their travel pawn to a free city. The players travel together as a group, and take turns deciding the next destination. The active player places their pawn on a free neighbouring city of the city in which the last pawn was placed. Neighbouring cities are cities between which there is a direct road connection.

The airports also count as neighbouring, because they can be connected by aeroplane. However, the group does not fly several times in a row: if a player reaches an airport by road, the player who comes after them may fly to an airport city of their choice. At the airport the travel group gets out, and must then again use a road connection.

Example of a move by aeroplane: Blue is on turn, after Red has just been placed on the airport of Kolkata. Blue may now either move to one of the free cities connected by road to Kolkata (so the Lingaraj temple, Ranchi, Gangtok or Assam), or to one of the three free airports (Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi). The player who comes after Red may not fly to an airport again.

Special case: dead-end road. If there is no free neighbouring space on which the active player can place, they may place their pawn on a free space of their choice in the same region.

2. Take a City Tile and Place It on Your Own Kolam

The player takes the city tile that lies in the city. The first tile a player takes is, as a rule, placed on their trade space. From their second turn onward, the player has the choice between the following three options:

• place;
• exchange;
• buy.

Attention: To score many points, players should try to place matching symbols on neighbouring spaces (see also "Scoring").

A. Place: The player places the tile they took on their Kolam. A tile must be placed on a crossing point that is directly connected to another tile of the player's choice.

B. Exchange: The player exchanges the tile from the board with the tile lying on their trade space, and places the tile from the trade space on their Kolam (see the rules for "Place").

Illustration in the original rulebook: a tile is exchanged with the tile on the player's own trade space.

C. Buy: The player "buys" a tile from the trade space of a fellow player. To do this, they place the tile from the board on the trade space of a fellow player of their choice, take the tile that lies there, and place it on their own Kolam. The player moves their score marker one space backwards on the score track, and the score marker of that fellow player one space forwards. (If the player has no points, they also cannot buy a tile.)

Festival: If a player places their travel pawn on a city with a festival stone, they take, in addition to the city tile, the top city card from the stack. The players keep their city cards until the end of the game. Each city card is worth 1 point. Then the player places the festival stone on another free city of their choice in the same region. When the card stack is used up, the festival stones are returned to the box.

End of the Game

The game ends as soon as the Kolams of all players are completely filled with city tiles.

Scoring

Players receive points for groups of matching symbols (see the overview on the board):

• 3 symbols: 2 points
• 4 symbols: 3 points
• 5 symbols: 5 points
• 6 symbols: 7 points
• 7 symbols: 10 points
• 8 or more symbols: 13 points

A group includes all symbols that lie on adjacent spaces, or that are connected through spaces with the same symbol. The group does not have to be a chain; branches also count.

Each city card is worth 1 point.

The player who has scored the most points wins the game. In case of a tie, the largest group of the same symbol decides (see the overview at the top right of the board).

Note (from the rulebook): to avoid mistakes when counting, and to make scoring more exciting, it is advisable to score the groups in the order shown on the board.

Example of scoring. At the end of the game, player Green has the tiles shown on their Kolam. Green receives:

• for the 6 connected symbols: 7 points
• for the 3 connected symbols: 2 points
• for the 5 connected symbols: 5 points
• for another 5 connected symbols: 5 points
• the other tiles yield no points
• for the 3 city cards: 3 points

Total: 22 points.

In the original rulebook the symbols are shown as pictures; the printed text refers to them only by their number. Where the Dutch text names a symbol but the symbol itself is only a picture, this translation writes [symbol].

Variant: Discover India – Challenge

Symbol or Victory Point – that is the question!

All game rules remain in effect. The only changes are the following:

• The city cards are sorted by region and divided into 5 stacks, front side up. (If an airport is at the top of a stack, it is slid under the stack.)

• The festival stones are distributed onto the cities that match the 5 top cards. (The white dot on the back of the card helps with this.)

• A player who reaches a city with a festival stone takes the top card of the stack of that region, and has two options:

  1. Certain victory point: The player places the city tile as usual, symbol side up, on their Kolam (or exchanges the tile, or buys a tile from a fellow player). The card is placed beside their Kolam with the back side (victory point) up. In the final scoring the player receives 1 victory point per card.

  2. Better connection: The player places the city tile on their Kolam with the back side up. These back-side tiles connect tiles in the player's surroundings that would otherwise not be adjacent (see the illustration). The player places the card in front of them, symbol side up. In the final scoring, the symbol on the card counts extra with the identical symbols on the player's Kolam. (If there are several groups, it counts only for one of the groups.) For this card the player receives no point in the final scoring.

  After either option, the player places the festival stone on the city of the next open card of the relevant stack. When one of the 5 card stacks is used up, the corresponding festival stone is returned to the box.

Example. During the game, player Green has placed two tiles face down on their Kolam. In this way they can connect the 3 tiles with a [symbol] on the right side with both face-down tiles on the left side, and with the one below the face-down tiles. Moreover, through the two face-down tiles, the [symbol] on the left side is also connected with the four identical symbols below the face-down tiles.

Note (from the rulebook): regardless of how the player places the city tiles, the three options – place, exchange or buy – are always available to them.

Kolam

A Kolam is usually a centrally symmetrical pattern that many women in southern India draw every day in the entrance of their house, with white rice flour but also with coloured rice flour. This Hindu tradition is especially lively in Tamil Nadu and also in Kerala. Kolams were also drawn ritually by women in the important temples. Kolams serve both to predict good fortune and to bless the inhabitants, and they probably originate in the mixing of other and very ancient cultures, in which labyrinth motifs also play a role. The surfaces were first thoroughly cleaned with water and cow dung. Then, with the help of rice flour, a number of dots were applied, which were connected by symmetrically interlaced unbroken lines. In doing so the artist lets the white flour trickle down between thumb and index finger. Sometimes Kolams were also made without a dot grid and in different colours. In one temple a roller apparatus was used, with which several parallel lines could be produced at the same time and this complex motif could be restored quickly. There are apparently countless variants, and each woman had a considerable repertoire at her disposal, often passed down by tradition. A special design was used on every weekday as well as on every festival day. Originally stemming from Hindu culture, in modern times one also regularly finds Kolams with Christian motifs such as crosses and candles. Kolams also require a mental discipline such as religious reflection and concentration. The dots are often interpreted as symbols for the daily tasks of life, and the lines as the ultimate goal of life. Very beautiful and complex Kolams have been preserved as evidence of the skill, perseverance and discipline of women.