Dschingis Khan: Bewegung an der Großen Mauer Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Contents
• Preparation
• Playing the Game
• The Turn
  • 1. Take New Supplies
  • 2. Place Pieces
    • ... Placing Tiles
  • 'Plague' and 'Ginseng' Tiles
  • Placing Walls
  • Loops and New Ends
  • Taking the Scout Off the Board
• End of the Game and Scoring
  • Scoring
• Example of the Start of a Game

Overview

The game takes place in the Far East, on the border between Mongolia and China. Both empires are separated and protected from each other by the Great Wall. But Genghis Khan has just unified the Mongolian empire and is now trying to conquer China. Amidst this unrest, warriors of both sides and also local farmers, roam around in search of a safe place to stay in one of the many villages. The Mongolian horsemen obviously want to be on the Mongolian side of the Great Wall and the Chinese warriors want to be on the Chinese side. Only farmers can manage equally well on either side. As experienced scouts, the players help these displaced people on their difficult journey. The Great Wall is shifted again and again depending upon the varying successes of the warring parties and the scouts play an active role in this when it serves their purposes. A Mongolian village can quickly become Chinese again – and vice versa.

Each player uses all the tiles of one colour and can also use the walls. Each turn you have to decide whether to place your tiles or to build walls – in order to annex Chinese land and its villages for the Mongolians or vice versa. If you choose to place your tiles, you move your scout from his current position to neighbouring villages and on each one you place a face-down tile. If there are already tiles in a village, the new tile is placed on top. The player who owns the tile on top controls the village and this is important for scoring at the end. Only the player in control can look at the tiles in the village; to see, for example, whether the village would be better on the other side of the wall.

Villages are still neighbouring when they are on opposite sides of the wall so long as that piece of wall is still open. A scout can then either go through the gate to the other side or can go up on to the wall, move any distance along it, and leave it via another open piece. Afterwards the pieces used are turned over and are then 'closed', i.e. they can no longer be passed through or used to get on or off the wall.

When you choose to build walls – in order to provide better access to the wall for your scout or to shift the position of the Great Wall – you put your pieces of wall on the lines between the towers. New pieces of wall must always connect to the Great Wall. If a loop of walls is formed, the shorter section is removed so that there is just the one continuous wall and the enclosed parcel of land again belongs to either Mongolia or China.

At the end of the game, each player gets points for the tiles in each of the villages he controls. Points are scored for farmers and for Mongolians or Chinese who are on the correct side of the wall. Points are deducted for those on the wrong side. The winner is the player with the most points.

Contents

• Board showing 38 villages and lines for the walls. The line across the middle indicates where the Great Wall goes at the start.
• 4 sets of 17 tiles: 5 Chinese warriors, 5 Mongolian horsemen, 5 farmers, 1 'plague' and 1 'ginseng'.
• A scout in each of the 4 colours.
• 28 walls. The walls have 2 functions:
  • Open, with the gate on the board, they allow passage through them or on to the wall.
  • Closed, with steps now showing, prevent passage across or on to the wall.

Figure 1: Initial set-up for 3. The figure labels the common supply, the active supply and the passive supply around the board.

Figure 2: An open wall piece (gate showing) and a closed wall piece (steps showing).

Preparation

Open the board and set up the starting position for the Great Wall as shown in Fig. 1. At the start of the game it connects the two red towers along the thicker line. All the pieces of wall are placed face-up; that is, with the gate on the board. The other wall pieces are placed to one side for use as a common supply.

The player with the narrowest eyes begins.

The players each choose a colour and take the tiles and scout of their colour. Keeping his tiles face-down, each player shuffles them and places them to his side or stacked as shown in Fig. 1.

Each player in turn, takes 2 of his tiles and secretly looks at them. He then places them face-down in 2 neighbouring villages which are both on the same side of the wall. He then puts his scout on one of the two tiles.

Each player takes 2 walls and another 2 of his tiles and places them in front of him as his active supply. You can look at these tiles but don't let the other players see them.

Playing the Game

The players take turns in order. Each turn consists of 2 steps:

1. Take new supplies
2. Place pieces

Afterwards the next player on the left has their turn.

The Turn

1. Take New Supplies

You first choose 2 pieces to add to your active supply:

• either 2 walls from the common supply
• or 2 tiles from your passive supply
• or 1 tile and 1 wall.

The tiles are taken randomly but can be looked at once they've been taken. You can take a tile, then look at it, and then decide whether to take another tile or a wall. However you cannot have more than 4 pieces of either type, walls or tiles, in your active supply, including the ones just taken.

Example: Anna has 3 walls left over from her last turn. She would like to build a lot of walls but can only take one more piece of wall. She takes a tile from her passive supply, looks at it and places it face-down in front of her. She can now decide whether to take another tile or a wall. She chooses a wall and takes it from the common supply.

Sidebar: Take 2 pieces, walls / tiles. Maximum of 4 walls, maximum of 4 tiles in active supply.

2. Place Pieces

On your turn you must always place all the pieces of one type from your active supply, i.e. either all the walls or all the tiles.

Sidebar: Place all the pieces of one type. Possibly place scout. Move scout and place tiles. Scout moves to neighbouring villages, neighbouring villages on the other side of the wall (so long as the wall is open), or villages along the wall so long as it is open where it is ascended and descended.

... Placing Tiles

You move your scout from village to village and distribute your tiles as you move. (If your scout is not on the board at the start of your turn, you place it first; see 'Taking the scout off the board'.) You always place every tile that you have in your active supply. The tiles are placed face-down on the villages in the middle of each space. If there are already tiles there, the new one goes on the top of the stack.

You may only move your scout to the following villages:

• to a neighbouring village on the same side of the wall along a connecting track (Fig. 3).
• to a neighbouring village on the other side of the wall, so long as the piece of wall between them is open, i.e. with the gate directly on the board (Fig. 4).
• to another village next to the Great Wall, when both the village moved from and the village moved to are next to open pieces of wall (it does not matter which side each village is on). The scout climbs on to the wall from the village where he starts, moves along the wall to his destination and descends from the wall into the village. In moving along the wall you can move along closed pieces as well as open pieces of wall (Figs. 5 and 6).

Figure 3 to Figure 6: Diagrams showing the scout movements described above (Fig. 3: along a connecting track on the same side; Fig. 4: through an open gate; Figs. 5 and 6: along the wall).

The scout is moved to the village and the first tile is placed face-down in this village. The scout then moves to the next village where the next tile is placed, and so on, until all the tiles have been distributed. The scout figure is left standing on the final tile. If the scout cannot move any further, even though the player still has tiles left, the turn is ended. The unplaced tiles are discarded from the game. (The scout can be removed from the board in a separate turn; see 'Taking the scout off the board'.)

When a scout moves through the wall, the gate is closed behind him, i.e. the piece of wall is turned over so that the gate becomes a set of face-up steps. When a scout moves along the wall to reach a more distant village, the pieces of wall where he ascended and descended are turned over and closed.

The scouts can move to empty or already occupied villages, but not to a village where there is another scout. A scout cannot visit the same village twice in one turn nor return to the village where he started his turn.

A village is controlled by the player who owns the tile on the top of the stack. A player can look at all the tiles in any village he controls, either during his turn or whenever he wants to, so long as it does not disrupt the other players.

Sidebar: Close entrance and exit walls. Move to empty or occupied villages but not where there is another scout and cannot return to same village in same turn. Place tile face-down on top. Own colour on top = own village, allowed to look at tiles. Plague is bad, Ginseng is good.

'Plague' and 'Ginseng' Tiles

'Plague' and 'ginseng' are placed like normal tiles but they have bad ('plague') or good ('ginseng') effects during scoring at the end.

Placing Walls

Walls are placed in order to:

• provide new entrances to the wall, when otherwise there would be no more open gates for you to access.
• convert Chinese land – and the villages in it – to Mongolian and vice versa.

When placing walls, you must always place all the walls that are in your active supply.

The walls are placed on the lines between the towers.

They can be placed anywhere but must always connect to the Great Wall. Walls are always open when first placed on the board; so with the gate at the base of the wall.

Sidebar: Placing walls: new entrances, convert land, along the lines, connecting to the Great Wall, gate open.

Loops and New Ends

Branches of wall can be built along the Great Wall. As soon as a branch connects back to the Great Wall, forming a loop as in Fig. 7, the route of the Great Wall has to be clearly established so that there is only one continuous route. To do this the loop has to be reopened by removing the shorter section and putting these walls back into the common supply. The longer wall section remains on the board (Fig. 7). In a similar way, it is possible to change the end of the wall by connecting to a different tower on the side of board. Again, the longer section remains in place and the shorter section of wall is removed (Fig. 12).

If a loop is formed where both sections are the same length, the walls forming the newly completed section are removed. (This could be deliberately done to hinder the aims of an opponent). If other sections become isolated when removing walls, these are also removed and put back into the common supply (Fig. 8).

Loops that lie entirely one one side of the wall and not part of the Great Wall may not be closed (Fig. 9).

Figure 7: If the orange wall is placed as shown, a loop is formed which must be resolved immediately. The longer route (5 pieces of wall) remains in place and the shorter route (1 piece) is removed. The area within the loop, which was previously Mongolian, has now become Chinese.

Figure 8: The wall could also have been placed as shown here. The new route is then the same length as the original one (2 pieces of wall). In this case the new route (2 pieces) must be removed. The pieces that are then left with no connection to the Great Wall are also removed and so an opponent's planned conversion of land is prevented.

Figure 9: By laying a piece of wall a circle has been form, as here, is not allowed. The orange piece may not be placed.

Sidebar: Loop or new end: longer route remains. If they are the same: older route remains. Remove isolated walls. No loops off the wall.

Taking the Scout Off the Board

If a player's scout is blocked and cannot move he can use his turn to remove it from the board, instead of placing tiles or walls. No pieces are placed on this turn. At the start of the next turn the player places the scout on to any of his own villages before he places pieces as normal. If the player does not have any villages or no village from which he can move, the scout is placed on any empty space.

Sidebar: Rescue scout. In a separate turn: take from the board. Replace: before next placing pieces.

End of the Game and Scoring

When 2 supplies (walls and tiles of one colour or tiles of two colours) are empty at the same time the game enters its final phase. The player who emptied the second supply announces the end of the game and completes his turn. A further complete round is then played; the final turn being taken by the player who triggered the final phase.

Walls that are removed from the board in this final round are not put back into the supply. If a player cannot take 2 pieces, he takes what he can.

Scoring

Each player scores points for the villages that he controls at the end of the game, regardless of whose pieces are in the stack. Only the top tile determines who controls it. The villages are scored one after the other and each player's points are added up. In order to keep track, it is recommended to re-stack the tiles of each village after they are scored.

In villages where there is neither any 'plague' nor 'ginseng', the tiles score depending upon their location:

• Chinese in China and Mongolians in Mongolia, each score 3 points
• Chinese in Mongolia and Mongolians in China, each score minus 3 points
• Farmers, regardless of location, each score 3 points

In villages where there is at least one 'plague' but no 'ginseng', all tiles score negatively regardless of their location:

• Mongolians and Chinese, each score minus 3 points
• Farmers, each score minus 3 points
• the 'plague' itself scores nothing, 0 points

In villages where there is at least one 'ginseng' but no 'plague', all tiles score positively regardless of their location:

• Mongolians and Chinese, each score 3 points
• Farmers, each score 1 point
• the 'ginseng' itself scores nothing, 0 points

'Plague' and 'ginseng' cancel each other out. Villages which contain both, regardless of how many, score as villages with neither.

The winner is the player with the most points.

Example of the Start of a Game

Figure 10: Green takes a tile and a wall and decides to place tiles. The tiles are placed face-down without revealing what they are; they are only shown face-up here in order to explain Green's plans.

Green has a plague, a Mongolian horseman and a Chinese warrior in front of him. He decides to place the plague near an open wall on an empty space in order to tempt his opponents to conquer it.

Green places the Mongolian horseman on the neighbouring space. He would like to use his third tile, a Chinese warrior, to conquer a red tile. He moves his scout on to and along the Great Wall. He cannot go where the red scout is, so he descends the wall next to the other red tile and takes control of that village. Hoping for a good catch, Green can now look at the tiles in this village. The pieces of wall used for ascending and descending the wall are closed by turning them over.

Figure 11: This greatly annoys Red. He remembers that his tile was Chinese so decides to convert the village into Mongolian territory so that Green will lose points. Red takes a wall and a tile and now has three walls. He places these around the green village forming a loop. Since the new route is longer, having 3 pieces of wall, the shorter section of one piece is removed.

Figure 12: Blue keeps out of the battle between the other two. During the preparation phase, he intentionally placed two Mongolians in China (face down; shown here face-up only to make the explanation clear). If he succeeds in re-routing the wall and making this area Mongolian, then it will be very hard for it to be converted back again. That would require an even longer section of wall. So Blue takes two walls and relocates the end of the wall to an eastern tower nearer the bottom. At 4 pieces long, this new section of wall is longer than the current route. The 2 walls of the original end section are removed and both villages become Mongolian territory. Blue will now score points for these villages instead of losing points – so long as the area does not become Chinese again.