Maatatahay Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Contents
• Main Components
  • Game Map
  • Warrior Tile
• Setup: The First Game
  • A. Basic Setup
  • B. Tile Stream Setup
• Round Flow
• 3.1 Placing Tiles and Applying Power Bonuses
• 3.2 Settling the Life and Death
• Endgame and Scoring
• Standard Game
  • A. Basic Setup
  • B. Tile Stream Setup
  • Gameplay
• List of Warriors
• Acknowledgements

Overview

Maatatahay is a two-player-only strategy game, playing up to 12 rounds on a 5x5 suedette game map. You and your opponent play as the leaders of Balan and Wazu, sending your fearless warriors to the field to fight for the glory. Surrounding your opponent's warriors to defeat them while allocating your valuable unit in a safe spot is the key to victory. You can also collect crystal powers to enhance your warrior's strength or visit the Shrines to seize more strategy opportunities. When the endgame condition is met, the player with the most victory points from their surviving warriors, Spirit Crystals, and relics bonus wins!

Contents

Players: 2 Time: 20~45mins Age: 9+

• 1 suedette game map
• 24 warrior tiles (12 warriors for each tribe)
• 5 Shrine Relics
• 60 crystals (15 Spirit Crystals, 45 Energy Crystals)
• 1 cloth bag
• 1 active player token
• 1 spirit track marker
• 1 rulebook (CH/EN)

Main Components

In this chapter, we will look at the main components: Game map and Warrior tile. You can come back and look up for terminologies after reading the following chapters.

Game Map

The map shows the Acquired Relic Track, Crystal Storage, the Barren Area in the center, the Woods and Grassland peripheral areas, the Spirit Track, Crystal Niches, and Supporting Arrows.

Acquired Relic Track: Put acquired relics on corresponding positions on the track and score different VPs (from 1 to 5).

Crystal Storage: Store crystals collected during the game with a limit of 4. The surplus amount must be spent before your turn ends.

Spirit Track: Keep track of the total amount of defeated warriors. It is also one of the endgame conditions: The game ends in the same round when the Spirit Track hits the last space.

Supporting Arrow: Increase the Strength of the warrior that is placed next to the arrows.

Warrior Tile

Warriors are the core of the game. Each warrior tile has two values: Strength (claws on the necklace) and Sanity (gems on the forehead). Each tile also carries a tribe symbol - one symbol for Wazu, a different symbol for Balan.

Basic warrior tile:

• Supporting Arrow: Each arrow gives 1 Strength to the tile pointed at adjacently. To do so, put an Energy Crystal from the supply on the tile.
• Sanity: Each embedded gem stands for 1 Sanity value. It is worth VP if the warrior survived at game end.
• Strength: Each claw stands for 1 Strength. It can be reinforced by Energy Crystals or Supporting Arrows from the map and allies.

Special warrior tile - Elder and Convert (Balan tiles as example):

Elder and Convert are unique in the game, for having tribe symbols instead of Supporting Arrows.

"Battle scars mark my face. Though less fierce, with your support, I fear nothing!"

"Enemies thrill me!"

Both Elder and Convert are worth 4 VPs. They have no natural Strength.

• Elder: An orthogonally adjacent ally grants 1 Strength to Elder.
• Convert: A diagonally adjacent enemy grants 1 Strength to Convert.

Check out List of Warriors for more details.

Setup: The First Game

For your first game of Maatatahay, we suggest that you set up the game by following the steps below to get into the world in a more accessible approach. Check out Standard Game to dive into a deeper game.

A. Basic Setup

1. Place the game map in the center of the table.
2. Put the Spirit Marker on the first (empty) space of the Spirit Track.
3. Place 1 Spirit Crystal and 1 Energy Crystal to each player's Crystal Storage, respectively.
4. Put 13 Spirit Crystals and 13 Energy Crystals into the bag. Set aside the rest of the 30 Energy Crystals next to the game map to form a general supply.
5. Refer to 1 of the 4 recommended openings to set up the Shrine Relics.
6. Draw crystals from the bag and put them on each Crystal Niche without a Shrine Relic.
7. Choose your tribe: Wazu (blue) or Balan (red).
8. Toss the Active Player Token to determine who is the start player.

We are almost there. Let's set up the Tile Stream.

B. Tile Stream Setup

1. Pick the following tiles from your tribe and group up (example for Wazu): Convert and Elder in one group, Champion (strength 4, sanity 1) and Berserk (strength 5, sanity 1) in another group. Set the rest of the tiles in two piles with the same amount.
2. Take one of the two remaining piles and shuffle it with the Convert-and-Elder group. Place the new pile face down on the table.
3. Take the other remaining pile, shuffle it with the Champion-and-Berserk group, and put it on top of the first pile to form a Warrior Pile.
4. Put both players' Warrior Piles together on a side of the map. Flip the top 3 tiles from each pile and place them in 2 rows to form 3 pairs.

It's all set. Let's play!

Round Flow

1. Pick a pair: The active player, whose Active Player Token is facing up, chooses one of the three pairs to be played in this round.
2. Decide who goes first: The player with the weaker Strength in the pair of warrior tiles chooses who will play their tile first. If the Strength is the same, the player with the Active Player Token facing up decides the order.
3. Take turns to place your tile: Place the warrior tile on one of the free spaces or a space with a Shrine Relic and apply power bonuses (see Placing Tiles and Applying Power Bonuses); if settlements occur (the phase that determines the life and death of the warriors on the field, see Settling the Life and Death), resolve them all. When both sides' warriors are placed on the field and settled, proceed to step 4.
4. Advance the Spirit Track: Check the number of warriors on both sides that died this round. Each dead warrior advances the Spirit Track by one step. If any of the endgame conditions is met (see Endgame and Scoring), the game enters final scoring. If not, continue to step 5.
5. Prepare for the next round: Flip the top tile from each pile to fill the Tile Stream. If there is no tile left in a pile, skip this step. Then, the current active player flips the Active Player Token to the other side. Go back to step 1.

Details about "3. Take turns to place your tile":

1. Choose a space
   • a. A free space, with or without crystals
   • b. A Shrine: pay the offering, retrieve the relic, and receive a favor in return
2. Place and Rotate
3. Gain Arrow Bonus
4. Trigger abilities of Special Warriors
5. Enhance the Hot Tile with crystals

Then, either no settlements occur (the other player takes their turn / end this step), or settlements occur: settle tiles other than the Hot Tile first, then settle the Hot Tile, then the other player takes their turn / end this step. Either way, the round flow then proceeds to step 4, Advance the Spirit Track.

Note: The tile being placed by the current player is called the Hot Tile.

3.1 Placing Tiles and Applying Power Bonuses

① Choose a space: There are two situations -

a. A free space: Collect all crystals in that space (if any) and place them to your Crystal Storage.

b. A Shrine (a space with a relic):

Offering: To place the tile in a Shrine, you need to pay crystals.

• Each Shrine requires 4 crystals to enter.
• The crystals required for offering come from your Crystal Storage, and each offering must include at least 1 Spirit Crystal.
• For each warrior that had been placed adjacent to the Shrine, the cost for the offering is reduced by 1.
• Even if there are warriors on all 4 adjacent sides to the Shrine, at least 1 Spirit Crystal must still be paid.
• When paying the crystals, you put them into the general supply (Spirit Crystals too).

Retrieve the Relic: After paying the offering, retrieve the relic and place it on your own Acquired Relic Track following the arrows.

Favor in return: Finally, draw two crystals from the bag and put them in your Crystal Storage.

The symbol on the map indicates: "Relic: +crystal +crystal".

Example: Take a look at the Shrine in the woods (i). There is a Wazu warrior adjacent to this Shrine. To enter the Shrine you need to offer 3 crystals. A Wazu warrior and a Balan warrior are adjacent to the Shrine (ii). To enter this Shrine you need 2 crystals. 3 Balan warriors and 1 Wazu warrior are adjacent to the Shrine (iii). You still need 1 Spirit Crystal to enter this Shrine. After paying the offering, retrieve the relic and place it on your own Acquired Relic Track. (Oh, and don't forget to draw 2 crystals from the bag).

② Place and Rotate: Place your tile and rotate it at will.

③ Gain Arrow Bonus: Place the same number of Energy Crystals (from the general supply) on the Hot Tile as the number of arrows pointing to it. The new Strength value of that warrior becomes the sum of the number of "claws" and the number of Energy Crystals on the tile.

IMPORTANT:

• Arrow Bonus only applies to the Hot Tile.
• Arrows on the Hot Tile do not give Strength to existing warriors on the field.

Example: Wazu player placed "Support" first, and then placed "Bravery" under "Support". The "Bravery" got an Energy Crystal from the supply due to "Support". The third tile placed in the upper left corner, the "Elite", also got an Energy Crystal from the supply due to "Support". Lastly, "Rookie" received Arrow Bonuses from the previous 3 tiles, totaling 3 Energy Crystals (from the supply). At this moment, the Strength of each warrior:

• Rookie is 4 (1 claw + 3 bonuses);
• Elite is 4 (3 claws + 1 bonus);
• Bravery is 3 (2 claws + 1 bonus);
• Support is 0 (0 claw + 0 bonus).

Notably, since the arrows can only affect the Hot Tile, only earlier warriors can give the arrow bonuses to later ones. So, "Support" doesn't get the bonus from "Rookie."

④ Trigger abilities of Special Warriors:

• Elder: Each orthogonally adjacent ally grants 1 Strength to Elder.

• Convert: Each diagonally adjacent enemy grants 1 Strength to Convert.

• Even if the special warriors are not Hot Tiles, as long as the conditions are met, the bonus will be triggered immediately, that is, the bonus may increase with the appearance of surrounding warriors in each round. The surrounding warriors that meet the conditions can provide bonus regardless of life or death.

• The bonus from special abilities can be increased to a maximum of 4 Strength (from up to 4 edges or 4 corners). If it is a Hot Tile, you can still get bonuses in step ③ and step ⑤.

⑤ Enhance the Hot Tile with crystals (Energy or Spirit):

• Crystal enhancements can only be performed on the Hot Tile.
• At the end of a player's turn, they can keep up to 4 crystals in their Crystal Storage. Excess crystals must be placed on the Hot Tile, with the player's choice on which to keep.
• You can place as many crystals on the Hot Tile as you have in your Crystal Storage. For each Energy Crystal placed on it, its Strength is increased by 1. For each Spirit Crystal placed on it, it is worth 1 VP at the end of the game.
• Crystals in the Crystal Storage score nothing at the end of the game.

3.2 Settling the Life and Death

When a warrior is fully "surrounded" (no available spaces on all four adjacent sides), a siege happens and the settlement is carried out.

• Fewer surrounding warriors are needed to get settled in the periphery area (that is, woods and grassland areas, see Main Components).
• A Shrine (with a relic) is still an available space.

In a settlement, compare the Strength of the warrior being surrounded (the sum of claws and Energy crystals) with the total value of the "enemy" warriors involved in the siege. If the Strength of the surrounded warrior is greater than or equal to the enemies' total Strength, the warrior survives; otherwise, it dies.

"Unite in attack, stand alone in defense; allies can't aid in the settlement."

When a "surrounded" warrior dies, flip the warrior tile to the back and return all the Energy Crystals on the tile to the general supply (see Example 1); Spirit Crystals are "looted" by the Hot Tile and placed on it, regardless of whether the Hot Tile is adjacent to the "surrounded" warrior (see Example 3). If the Hot Tile also dies after the settlement, return the Spirit Crystals to the general supply (see Example 3).

The fallen warrior tile will not be flipped back, and that space will no longer be entered.

Note: Warriors that have survived from a settlement might still die in a later turn due to Elder or Convert's special abilities (see Example 3).

Hot Tile Principle: When there are multiple places that need to be settled, the current player can decide the order of settlement. The Hot Tile must be the last tile to be settled in that turn.

Example 1: Basic Settlement. When the Balan player places the Hot Tile Bravery, the Support from Wazu is surrounded and heads to the settlement. The Strength of Support (0+2=2) is lower than the total value of the surrounded Balan warriors (3+4=7). So, Support is flipped over with its Energy Crystals being returned to the general supply.

Example 2: Settlement with Loot. When the Wazu player places Convert, there are three warriors being "surrounded" (including Convert itself). The Wazu player decides to settle the Bravery from Balan first. Bravery is defeated and flipped over (3:13); the Spirit Crystal on it is "looted" by Convert. Next, the Elder is also flipped over (1:4) and the Spirit Crystal is also "looted" by Convert. Lastly, the Hot Tile Convert survived since there was no enemy alive.

Example 3: A settlement with the involvement of the Elder's ability. The Support and Rookie of Balan on the field survived in the previous settlement because their Strength are not lower than the surrounding enemies. But because of the presence of the Elder of Wazu, they can't let their guard down.

The Wazu player spotted an opportunity and placed Bravery under Elder. This action activated the special ability of the Elder, allowing it to gain Strength. However, it also put the Elder into a "surrounded" state. Hence, the Wazu's Elder and Bravery, and the Balan's "Support" and "Rookie" all need to be settled. But because the Bravery is the Hot Tile, it will settle last.

The Wazu player, having the choice to determine the settlement order, opted to settle Support first. With the Support's Strength at 3, and the Elder's Strength increase altering the surrounding Wazu Strength from 3 to 4, the Support was flipped. The Spirit Crystal on the Support was subsequently looted by the Hot Tile Bravery.

Next, Wazu chose to settle the Rookie. Despite the Rookie's Strength being 2, the surrounding Strength value of Wazu increased to 3, causing the Rookie to be flipped. Consequently, the Spirit Crystal on the Rookie was taken by the Bravery.

The Elder had no enemies on adjacent sides after the previous settlements, so it survived.

Lastly, the Hot Tile Bravery was settled. Although Bravery had a Strength of 3, the total surrounding Strength of Balan was 4, leading to its defeat. As a result, Bravery was flipped over and the Spirit Crystals it had gathered were discarded and returned to the general supply.

TIP: In a game where crystals are heavily used and warriors remain undefeated, the general supply may run out of crystals. In such a situation, players can replenish the pool by returning crystals from a warrior that has been settled and survived, provided the surrounding warriors are also settled.

Endgame and Scoring

The game ends after the round when any of the following conditions is met:

• Spirit marker hits the last space of the Spirit Track (6 tiles are flipped).
• One or zero free space remains on the map. A Shrine is not a free space.
• All 24 warriors are on the battlefield.

Calculate the score of your tribe:

a. the Gems on the foreheads of all surviving warriors, b. the number of Spirit Crystals held by the warriors, and c. the score of acquired relics.

The player with the highest score wins the game.

Example:

Score of Wazu (player above the map) = "1+1+2+2+4+2+1" (Gems for surviving warriors on the foreheads) + "2+1+1" (Spirit Crystals held by the warriors) + "1" (Score of acquired relics) = 18 VPs;

Score of Balan (player below the map) = "1+3+4+1+2+2+2" (Gems for surviving warriors on the foreheads) + "2+1" (Spirit Crystals held by the warriors) + "1+2+3" (Score of acquired relics) = 24 VPs;

24 versus 18. Balan wins the fight!

If there is a tie, the one with more surviving warriors wins. If there is still a tie, who has acquired the latest relic wins. If no one acquires any relic and there is still a tie, nobody wins the game. What about another game to settle the tie?

Standard Game

Hope you enjoyed your first game of Maatatahay! So, how does a more complete and varied game proceed? Let's start over with the game setup!

A. Basic Setup

1. Place the game map in the center of the table.
2. Put Spirit Marker on the first (empty) space of the Spirit Track.
3. Put 15 Spirit Crystals and 15 Energy Crystals into the bag. Set aside the rest of the 30 Energy Crystals next to the game map to form a general supply.
4. Draw crystals from the bag and put one crystal on each Crystal Niche.
5. Choose your tribe: Wazu (blue) or Balan (red).
6. Toss the Active Player Token to determine who is the start player.
7. The second player starts by taking one Shrine Relic and placing it on a map space, and also taking all the crystals (if any) from that space. Then the starting player places two Shrine Relics on the map, also taking all the crystals from those spaces. Finally, the second player places the last two Shrine Relics and takes the crystals from the spaces. All the acquired crystals go to the player's Crystal Storage.

Note 1: In this phase, you can only collect up to 3 crystals, regardless of their type. When selecting spaces, ensure that the total number of crystals in those spaces does not exceed 3. It's not allowed to land on space combinations to get more than 3 crystals in total and then discard the surplus.

Note 2: The Shrine Relics cannot be adjacent to each other; they can be placed on the diagonal or at least one space apart.

B. Tile Stream Setup

1. Place the 12 warrior tiles of your tribe face down on the table and shuffle them to form your Warrior Pile.
2. Put both players' Warrior Piles together on a side of the map. Flip the top 3 tiles from each pile and place them in 2 rows to form 3 pairs.

Gameplay

The basic Round Flow remains unchanged; only the scoring method of the relics has been adjusted: The score of each Shrine Relic will be determined by the overall order in which it is retrieved during the game.

Example: The Wazu player retrieves the first Shrine Relic from the field and places it in the first position on its track. Then, the Balan player takes their first and second Shrine Relics and places them in the second and third positions on their side. Finally, the Wazu player takes their second and third Shrine Relics and places them in the fourth and fifth positions on their side. At the end of the game, the Shrine Relics provide scores for both sides: Balan 2+3=5 VPs, Wazu 1+4+5=10 VPs.

Good Luck!

List of Warriors

Every warrior has a title above the tile (how they are called in Maatatahay) and below (how we called them). Each tribe (Wazu and Balan) uses the same set of titles and English names, in its own tribe color:

Title (Maatatahay name)	English name	Count per tribe
Papalizi	Convert	1
Punu	Elder	1
Maapa	Support	1
Abasan	Elite	2
Gizem	Champion	1
Magizem	Berserk	1
Abuk	Rookie	2
Aba	Bravery	3

That totals 12 warrior tiles per tribe, 24 in all.

Acknowledgements

The designers and the publisher of MAATATAHAY want to thank the closest friends of Compound Eye Fox Studio: Avenger Lin, Ays Chu, Alice Chang, Symbol Wang, and TL Hsieh. Thanks for their constant support every Sunday night for intensive discussions since this project was kicked off.

We also want to deliver our deepest appreciation to Smoox Chen, Kuan Chen, and their teams. We were inspired by their great suggestions and ideas during the game development and publishing. Thanks to Tracy Tsui and his family for the warm support during the difficult COVID time in Belgium. Last but not least, we want to thank all the game testers. Without your valuable comments, this game would not be in a proper shape. In the end, we want to thank you for purchasing our game. This is our first baby and we hope you enjoy the content that we created and loved. Wish you another great game night!

Publisher: Compound Eye Fox Studio Email: [email protected] Rule scripting & editing: WayMau & Ping Tseng Proofreading: Smoox Chen