Fish & Ships
Fish & Ships Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Gaming Components
- 7 water cards
- 4 wooden ships (1 in each colour: white, green, pink, brown)
- 28 sailor cards (7 in each colour)
- 1 player aid (without illustration)
- 12 journey tiles with ship (3 in each colour)
- 2 journey tiles with duck
- 1 journey tile with pirate flag
- 12 resource cubes
Game Overview
Four ships are sailing on a waterway made up of playing cards. As soon as a ship reaches the final card, the game is over. Now your sailors are going to score, provided their ships have ended up on cards with fishes.
Game Preparation
General setup
The ships do not belong to any particular player!
- They start on the harbour card on the left.
- Shuffle the remaining six water cards and place them randomly in a row to the right of the harbour.
- Place the resource cubes above the water cards.
- Place the journey tiles face-down below the water cards and give the tiles a quick shuffle.
[Setup diagram: 4 ships in the harbour; the water cards in a row with the final card on the right; the resource cube supply above; the journey tiles face-down below.]
Player set-up
Each player gets 1 resource cube.
Each player gets 7 sailor cards from the face-down, shuffled deck. All other sailors are going back into the box face-down.
Each player looks at their sailor cards, chooses one and passes it on face-down to their left neighbour. All players now pick up the passed-on card, look at it secretly and take it into their hand.
Game Play
The player who lost a game last becomes the start player. You play clockwise in turn order. In your turn, you reveal journey tiles or send off a sailor.
Revealing journey tiles
In your turn, you first need to say if you intend to reveal 1, 2 or 3 journey tiles:
- If you say 1, take a resource cube from the supply (if available). Reveal exactly 1 tile.
- If you say 2, you do not take any resource cubes. Reveal exactly 2 tiles.
- If you say 3, you pay one resource cube into the supply. Reveal exactly 3 tiles.
Ships
If you reveal one or more ships, you have to move one ship forward. Choose any of the revealed ship colours and move the wooden ship of that colour forward 1 space.
Example: Max pays one resource cube and says "3 tiles". He reveals a green ship, a green ship and a brown ship. Max has to move either the brown or the green ship. He chooses the green ship and moves it forward 1 space.
Ducks
You can ignore any revealed ducks. If you only reveal ducks, you do not move any ships.
Example: Frieda says "2 tiles" and reveals a duck and a pink ship. She has to move the pink ship forward 1 space.
Pirate
If you reveal the pirate flag, all other players have to discard one resource cube into the supply (if they have at least one). You do not have to discard any resource cubes.
Example: Willi says "2 tiles" and reveals a green ship and the pirate flag. All other players lose one resource cube each, if they have resources. Willi has to move the green ship forward 1 space.
Sending off a sailor
Instead of revealing tiles, you can put one of your own sailor cards face-down into the box.
In return, you can move one ship of your choice forward 1 space or backward 1 space. Additionally, take a resource cube from the supply (if available).
[Diagram: sailor into the box; ship forward or backward; +1 resource cube.]
Important: You cannot move a ship onto the final card by discarding a sailor!
Next, please
When you have finished your turn, leave all revealed tiles face-up on the table. Now it's your left-hand neighbour's turn ...
Re-set journey tiles
If there are less than 4 face-down tiles on display at the beginning of your turn, flip over all tiles and reshuffle them. Then carry out your turn ...
[Diagram: fewer than 4 face-down tiles, with all 15 journey tiles shown face-down in three rows.]
Game End and Scoring
The game ends as soon as a ship reaches the final card. Now every sailor card scores as many points as there are fishes on the water card under the ship of the corresponding colour.
- The white and the brown ship are on a water card with 3 fishes. Each polar bear and each sea lion scores 3 points.
- The pink ship is on a water card without any fishes. Flamingos do not score any points.
- The green ship is on a water card with 2 fishes. The frog scores 2 points.
Example: The booklet illustrates scoring with three groups of sailor cards, scoring 9 points, 0 points and 2 points.
Winner is the player who scores the most points overall. In case of a draw, the player with more resource cubes wins the game. Still a draw? It's a tie for first place!
Transcription notes
- In the scoring bullets, the printed text overprints "white" and "polar bear" with pasted-on word labels; the words are transcribed as they appear on the final printed sheet.
- The booklet's setup, reset and scoring diagrams are described in brackets rather than reproduced.