Jäger und Sammler
Jäger und Sammler Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Game Idea
Jäger und Sammler has two phases: In the summer, players mainly collect food for the winter and store it in camps. In winter, they then use the weapons to hunt mammoths and to get more food in order to get through the cold season.
At the end of the game, the player who has collected the most points wins. Berries, tubers, herbs, and mammoths each pay the printed points. The goods get more points, the more each of them the player has collected. Also supply packs provide points at the end of the game if they are in a camp.
Components
- Players: 2–4
- Age: 10 and up
- Duration: about 45 minutes
- 200 tiles: 112 summer tiles and 88 winter tiles
Food
- Berries = 1 point (30 tiles in summer / 30 in winter)
- Tubers = 2 points (18 / 18)
- Herbs = 3 points (5 / 5)
Valuable Goods
- Jug (10 / 0)
- Necklace (10 / 0)
- Pelt (0 / 10)
- Skull (0 / 10)
Weapons and Mammoths
- Weapons (12 / 3)
- Mammoths = 3–8 points (3 / 12)
Other Components
- 1 game board
- Path tiles (19 / 0)
- Cave tiles (5 / 0)
- 16 pawns (4 each in the 4 player colors)
- 16 storage boxes (4 each in the 4 player colors)
(Tile counts are given as summer / winter.)
Board Elements
Winter Camps
The winter camps remain free at the beginning of the game.
Supply Packs
Each player takes his four supply packs and puts them in front of himself.
Cave Tiles
The cave tiles remain on the board for the entire game. When a character is moved onto a cave tile, it can cover large distances.
Summer Camps
Each player places one of his characters in each of the four summer camps.
Path Tiles
The path tiles remain on the board for the entire game.
Game Preparation
The board is placed in the center of the table. It shows four summer camps, four winter camps, and 112 other spaces.
The tiles can be sorted by their back side (summer or winter). All summer tiles are shuffled and placed face-up onto the blank spaces on the board as desired, one on each field (summer and winter camps remain free). The winter tiles are initially returned to the box.
Each player takes characters and supply packs of one color. He puts each one of his characters in the four summer camps and puts his supply packs in front of himself.
Gameplay
The hairiest player starts, then play goes in a clockwise direction.
Move Characters and Take Tiles
On your turn, you have two movement steps, which must be either:
- one of your own characters moved to get two tiles, or
- two separate characters, each moved to get one tile.
Note: Characters can only be moved onto spaces with a tile or a camp. At the end of the turn, there may only be one character per tile (see special cases below).
When a character moves off of a tile, take the tile from the board, and place it face-down in front of yourself. You may not look at taken tiles again until the end of the game.
Exceptions:
- Path and cave tiles are not taken from the board.
- Weapon and mammoth tiles sit face-up in front of you.
Example: The white player moves his character two spaces. He takes the "necklace" and "tuber" tiles and puts them face-down in front of himself.
Special Cases
- Characters may be moved into any camp. More than one character can be there.
- A character may jump from a cave tile to any other cave tile, rather than just a neighboring tile. This counts as one movement step. Any number of characters can be on a cave tile.
- A character may move two steps over an occupied tile, to end its move on a free tile, a cave, or a camp. Occupied tiles may not be taken.
- A character may only be moved onto an unoccupied mammoth tile when the player has a weapon tile or receives one in the same move. The player spends the weapon tile, putting it back in the box.
- Instead of moving a character on the board, a player may take one off the board. This action counts as one movement step, and the player may take the abandoned tile for himself. This is mostly useful only at the end of summer or winter, as characters cannot be put back on the board within the respective season. If a player has no more characters on the board, the other players play to the end of the season without him.
Storing a Supply Pack
Whenever a character moves onto or through a winter camp, that player immediately deposits a supply pack there. The deposit is not a movement. There may only be one storage box for each color in each camp.
Example: The blue player moves his character through a winter camp. He obtains the "tuber" tile and deposits a supply pack.
End of Summer
As more and more tiles are removed from the game board, the movement of characters is inherently restricted more and more. Summer ends when all the tiles, with the exception of the path and cave tiles, are taken from the board, or are inaccessible.
Leftover (unreached) tiles are removed from the game. Only the path and cave tiles remain where they are. Each player retrieves any of their own characters that are still on the board.
The leaves fall, the days are short, winter is coming! Happy the man who is well prepared and now has enough weapons, because in the winter mammoths are most numerous on the path. And the search for berries and other delicacies will continue after the first snow falls...
The Beginning of Winter
The 88 winter tiles are mixed and placed face-up on the blank spaces on the board, one to each space.
Each player places one of his characters in every winter camp that has one of his own supply packs. So if a player did not reach all four winter camps during summer, he plays through winter with fewer than four characters. Each supply pack in a winter camp is replaced by a character.
All supply packs are returned to the players. Unused characters are placed in the box.
The player who killed the most valuable mammoth during summer is the starting player for winter.
The rules are the same as in summer, except that supply packs are now deposited in the summer camps, rather than in the winter camps.
End of the Game
Winter ends once again all tiles except the path and cave tiles are removed from the board, or are inaccessible.
Berries, tubers, and herbs pay the printed points (1, 2, or 3). Mammoth tiles pay the printed points. Weapons do not pay points.
The more of a single type of valuable good (pelts, skulls, jugs, necklaces) that you collected, the more points that type is worth:
| Tiles | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Points | 1 | 3 | 6 | 10 | 15 | 20 |
Each supply pack on a summer camp pays 5 points.
Now, total up each player's points. The player with the most points wins.
Scoring Example
The red player has collected the following tiles:
- 10 points for berries
- 10 points for tubers
- 12 points for herbs
- 23 points for mammoths
- no points for weapons
- 20 points for 7 jugs
- 1 point for 1 pelt
- 10 points for 4 skulls
- 10 points for 2 supply packs
The red player has reached a total of 96 points.
Note for Storage of the Game
Once you have liberated all the tiles from the sprues, please do not throw away the empty sprues! Simply use the box insert and place the empty sprues on the floor of the box. Then put the insert on top of the sprues.
This way, if the game is stored vertically, the box contents will not get jumbled.
The author wishes to thank all playtesters of this game that contributed to its development, in particular, Iain Adams, Jonty Blackwell, Sebastian Bleasdale, Chris Bowyer, Chris Dearlowe, Martin Higham, Ross Inglis, Kevin Jacklin, Simone Kane, Richard Kemp and Chris Lawson.