Karakum Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Contents
• Overview
• Card Anatomy and Symbology
• Setup
• How to Play
  • Gather Resources
  • Buy a Camel
  • Building a Camel Caravan
  • Buying a value "1" Camel
• End of the Game
• Scoring

Contents

• 71 Resource cards (13 cards of each Goods type, 6 Gold cards)
• 4 Caravan Master cards
• 35 Camel cards

Overview

Karakum is a small card game of Resource management and Camel acquisition. During the game, players will gather many different Goods, which they will later spend for Camels to form their personal Caravans. However, Camels in your Caravan will only follow a similar Camel. This means that players will be able to form their personal Camel train only if each Camel has something similar to the previous one — the color or the number.

As soon as the Market cannot be refilled with Camel cards, the game ends, and the player with the strongest Caravan is the winner.

Card Anatomy and Symbology

There are three types of cards in Karakum — Caravan Master cards, Resource cards and Camel cards.

Caravan Master

Caravan Master is the person leading your Caravan through the Karakum desert. This is your starting card.

Goods cards

1. Symbol — Each Goods card has a Goods symbol. There are 5 types of Goods in the game: jewelry (blue), silk (purple), spices (red), honey (orange) and paper (green).
2. Color — Color of the Goods card. You can identify cards either by their symbol or color.

Gold cards

Besides Goods, there is one type of special Resource card — Gold, which can be used as any single Goods card.

Camel cards

1. Silhouette of a Camel
2. Color — The color of the Camel card determines what color Goods cards a player has to spend to acquire the Camel card.
3. The cost and point value — The number on the Camel card determines how many Goods cards a player has to spend in order to acquire that Camel card. The number is also the number of victory points this Camel is worth in your Caravan.

Setup

1. Separate all cards into three groups by type: Caravan Master cards, Camel cards and Resource cards.
2. Each player takes a Caravan Master card and places it in front of them. Return any remaining Caravan Master cards to the box. Caravan Master cards are double-sided (the only difference is visual) and a player may choose the side to play with.
3. Remove 12 random Camel cards for a two-player game. Remove 8 random Camel cards for a three-player game. Keep all Camel cards for a four-player game. Then shuffle all Camel cards and place them face-down in the center of the table. This is the Camel deck.
4. Reveal the top 5 cards of the Camel deck and place them face-up in a row near the Camel deck. This is the Market.
5. Shuffle all Resource cards and place them face-down below the Camel deck (as shown in the example). This is the Resource deck.
6. Deal 5 cards to each player from the Resource deck face-down to form their starting hand.
7. Reveal the top 5 cards of the Resource deck and place them face-up in a row near the Resource deck.

With this, the setup for the game is complete. The youngest player takes the first turn, and the game proceeds with players taking turns clockwise.

How to Play

Each turn, a player takes one of two possible actions:

• Gather Resources
• Buy a Camel

Gather Resources

A player may draw a single face-up Gold card or 2 Goods cards, choosing between the face-up cards or the face-down cards from the Resource deck. If a face-up card is drawn, a replacement card is immediately revealed from the Resource deck. If the Resource deck ever runs out, shuffle the discard pile to form a new Resource deck.

A player may not take a face-up Gold card if it is their second card to draw.

Note: If a player draws a Gold card from the face-down Resource deck, they can still draw their second Resource card as long as it is not a face-up Gold card.

There is no limit to how many cards a player can have in their hands.

Buy a Camel

A player may buy any one of the face-up Camel cards in the Market. In order to buy a Camel, a player must discard Goods cards matching the cost of the Camel.

A player may also use two of the same type of Goods cards to replace any one Goods card when buying Camel cards.

Example: A player may use two jewelry cards as one silk card when buying a Camel card.

When buying Camel cards, it is important to check which Camel cards currently have an additional tax payment. The color of the Camel card right next to the Camel deck determines which color Camel cards have an increased cost of +1 extra Goods.

Note: We recommend slightly sliding up the first Camel and other Camels of matching color so it is easier to recognize them.

Example: Oliver wishes to buy a Blue "3" Camel. In order to do that, he needs to discard three jewelry cards from his hand. Continuing the example, the first Camel card to the right of the Camel deck is also Blue. This means that the Blue Camels currently have an additional tax payment and Oliver has to pay an additional jewelry card in order to buy it. If he does not have another jewelry card in his hand, he can decide to spend his Gold card, which can be used as any single Goods card.

After buying a Camel card, move all Camel cards to the right so that the first space right next to the Camel deck is free and reveal a new Camel card from the Camel deck. This means that after every Camel purchase, the color of the Camel cards which have an additional tax payment may change.

Example: After buying the Blue "3" Camel, the cards in the Market are moved to the right to fill in the empty spot. Once the spot to the right of the Camel deck is empty, a new Camel card is revealed. Since the Green Camel is now the closest one to the Camel deck, all Green Camels in the Market have an additional tax cost of +1 paper.

Building a Camel Caravan

After buying a Camel card, the player must immediately add it to their Caravan. Camels are placed to the right of their Caravan Master or previously purchased Camel cards. Any Camel card can be placed after a Caravan Master, however, all other Camels must be of the same color or the same number as the previous Camel.

If the purchased Camel does not match the color or the number of the previous Camel, then it can be placed to the left of the Caravan Master card. This option can only be used if a player cannot add the purchased Camel to their Caravan. Such Camels are not considered to be a part of a player's Caravan and will score half of the points (rounded down) at the end of the game. As soon as the Camel cards to the left of the Caravan Master can be added to the Caravan, the player does so immediately.

Example: Later in the game Emma decides to buy a Camel. Since the last Camel in her Caravan is a Red "3", she can only add a Red Camel or a Camel costing "3" as the next Camel in her Caravan. There are no Red Camels in the Market, but there are two Camels with a cost of "3" — Purple and Green. Since Emma does not have enough Purple or Green Goods cards in her hand, she chooses to buy a Purple "1" Camel and place it to the left of her Caravan Master. Since this is a value "1" Camel, Emma gets to take a Resource card and add it to her hand.

Buying a value "1" Camel

When a player buys a value "1" Camel card (it does not matter if it is added to the Caravan or in front of it), the player gets to take a free Resource card. A player can take a Resource card from the deck or any face-up Resource card (even the Gold). If the player takes a face-up Resource card, replace it with a new card from the deck.

End of the Game

If at the end of a player's turn the Market cannot be refilled with a new Camel card (because there are no more cards in the Camel deck), the game ends and players proceed to scoring.

Scoring

Each player adds together the points of the Camel cards in their Caravans. The points for the Camel cards which are placed to the left of the Caravan Master are added up separately, and a player scores half of the points shown on these cards (rounded down).

The player with the most points wins. In the event of a tie, the player with the longest Caravan wins the game. If there is still a tie, then the tied players share the victory.