Morisi Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Objective
• Contents
• Three/Four-Player Game
  • Preparation
  • Game Play
  • Movement
  • Building Trade Routes
  • Parallel Trade Routes
  • Placing Trading Houses
  • End of the Game
  • Ruler of Morisi
• Two-Player Game
• Prediction Variant

Objective

The object of the game is for the players to connect cities (gray hexes) via trade routes. These trade routes will pass through the various economic regions of Morisi: farmland (yellow), pastures (orange), wineries (red), timberland (green) and fisheries (blue). Before trade routes can be built, the players must gain knowledge about these various region types by traveling through them with their pawn. As cities are connected by trade, the players' success is represented by the size and number of their trading houses in the connected cities.

Contents

• 39 hexagonal tiles
  • 9 city tiles (gray)
  • 30 land tiles (6 each of yellow, orange, red, green and blue; 2 of each set of 6 are marked with a circle)
• 70 resource blocks (14 each of yellow, orange, red, green and blue)
• 4 cylindrical pawns (1 each of white, black, gray and brown)
• 80 sticks (20 each of white, black, gray and brown)
• 12 large houses (4 each of white, black, gray and brown)
• 22 medium-sized houses (6 each of white and black, 5 each of gray and brown)
• 36 small houses (cubes) (9 each of white, black, gray and brown)
• 4 screens

Three/Four-Player Game

Preparation

Each player chooses a color (white, black, gray or brown) and takes their corresponding pawn, sticks, and variously sized houses. Note: the white and black players return one medium-sized house to the package; these are only used in the two-player game. Each player also takes a screen.

The land of Morisi must be created. All hexagonal tiles are turned face down and shuffled. They are then laid out, face down and adjoining each other, in any shape the players wish. However, two layout rules must be followed:

1. Each tile must be adjacent to at least three other tiles.
2. The boundary of Morisi cannot exceed 22 tiles.

Variant: Allow the map to include empty spaces (for example, 3 or 4). In this case, there is no boundary limit. [Note: this variant is not in the original rules but was suggested by the game designer.]

When the land of Morisi has been assembled, the tiles are then turned face up and the resource blocks are placed onto their respectively-colored tiles. In the three-player game, each hex receives two blocks. The ten extra blocks are returned to the game packaging. In the four-player game, each hex receives three blocks except those hexes marked by a circle, which only receive one. City hexes receive nothing.

[Personal note from the translator: players may want to exchange city tiles with land tiles to create a more even distribution if they feel that the distribution of cities on the board is lopsided.]

Game Play

Play begins by the random selection of a starting player. The starting player will place his or her pawn on any tile; if the tile is a land tile (i.e., a non-city tile), he or she may take one of the colored blocks located there. The other players will follow suit in clockwise order. Players may not place their pawns onto hexes which already contain another player's pawn.

After all pawns are placed, players will take their turns in clockwise order, again beginning with the starting player. There are two actions to each turn: movement of the player pawn and the optional building of one trade route.

Movement

Each turn the active player moves his pawn onto an adjoining tile and collects a colored block, if available. The player can move onto any type of tile, land or city. If the new tile is a land tile (i.e., a non-city tile) and there are one or more blocks on that tile, the player takes one of these blocks. The player does not receive anything for landing on a city tile. The blocks represent knowledge of that respectively colored land type, and can be used to create trade routes. The players' supplies of blocks are kept behind their screens.

There are two constraints to the pawn movement.

• The pawn must move. It may not stay on the same tile.
• Pawns cannot move into a tile which already contains another player's pawn. However, players can jump over opponents' pawns to a free tile. If that tile is also occupied by an opponent, then the player can jump one step further in a straight line until an unoccupied tile is reached. See example 1 for possible moves.

Building Trade Routes

After the player has moved, he or she may then build one trade route. The trade route will consist of a line of sticks connecting a city to another city, a city to an existing trade route, or two existing trade routes to each other. The rules for placing sticks and creating trade routes are as follows:

1. Sticks are placed across two tiles, from the center of one tile to the center of another. One of these two tiles must either be a city tile or a tile which already contains one or more of the player's sticks. The other tile must be a land tile, and the player must hand in from his supply a block of the same color as that land tile. These blocks are out of play and are returned to the game packaging.
2. The player may lay as many sticks as he or she wants, provided that he or she has the appropriate blocks to do so.
3. The player may lay the sticks down in any order provided that rule 1 is observed for each and provided that when the player is done all newly-placed sticks are connected to each other.
4. Sticks must be placed so that a trade route is created; that is, all sticks positioned on the tiles must form a connection between a city and another city, a city and an existing trade route, or two existing trade routes. No dead ends are allowed. Only one trade route may be built in a turn. Only routes that add new houses to cities are allowed (see Placing Trading Houses).

See example 2 for further illustration of building trade routes.

Parallel Trade Routes

If a player wishes to lay a stick which would be parallel to another player's stick (i.e., the same two hexes would be connected), the cost in blocks is doubled. If two sticks already exist between two hexes, the cost is tripled, and in the case of three existing sticks the cost is quadrupled. If this occurs more than once in the course of a new trade route, the penalty must be paid for each instance.

Placing Trading Houses

When a player connects two or more cities by building trade routes, he or she adds trading houses of his or her color to those cities. The player adds one house (small cube) in each city for every other city that was connected.

• Example 1: If two cities are connected, each receives one trading house.
• Example 2: If city "Maa" is connected to an existing trade route that connects "Zoe" and "War," Zoe and War each receive one block for the new connection to Maa, and Maa receives two blocks for the new connections to two cities.

The medium-sized houses are worth 2 houses, while the large houses are worth 3 houses. Players may exchange the trading house pieces so long as the value is maintained, i.e., a large house and a small house, together valued at 4, can be exchanged for two medium-sized houses, also together valued at 4.

Note: If two cities are connected by two different routes by the same player, no new blocks are awarded.

End of the Game

The game ends at the end of a turn during which a player takes the last block of any one color. That player may still lay down a trade route at the end of that turn.

The game also ends if a player exhausts his or her supply of trading houses.

Ruler of Morisi

Any player who exhausts his supply of trading houses wins the game.

If, however, the game ends by the exhaustion of one color of resource blocks, the winner is decided by the players' trading houses. Players receive four points for each city that they have connected to another city. In addition, they receive points for their trade houses in the three cities of greatest economic importance. This means the three cities that contain the most trading houses total (note: the large houses are worth three, and the medium-sized houses are worth two). If cities are tied for the top three places, all tied cities are counted. Example: if the biggest city has a number of houses equal to 17 connections and the three second-biggest cities all have a number of houses equal to 14 connections, all four of these cities are counted and no more.

Scoring example: if a player has trade houses on 7 cities, and has trade houses worth 6, 3 and 3 on the top three cities, she would receive 40 points (7 x 4 = 28, 6 + 3 + 3 = 12, and 28 + 12 = 40).

If there is a tie, the tied player with the most cities with at least one connection is the winner. If there is still a tie after that, the tied player who has laid down the most sticks wins. If that has not determined the winner, the tie is broken by the greatest number of trade houses played.

Two-Player Game

The two-player version is an easy way to become familiar with the game. The game is the same as the three/four-player game with the following exceptions.

1. Players can choose for their color only black or white.
2. Before creating the land of Morisi, players return to the game packaging one circle-marked tile of each color and one city. When creating the land of Morisi, the boundary cannot exceed 21 tiles (it is recommended the boundary be 20 or 21 tiles). After creating the map, place one block on marked land tiles and two on all other land tiles.
3. In the two-player game, sticks are not allowed to be placed parallel to each other (i.e., connecting the same two hexes).
4. If the game ends because of the exhaustion of one color of land tile blocks, only the largest city is counted rather than the three largest cities. All largest cities count in the case of a tie.

Prediction Variant

Players can try to forecast which cities will become the largest cities. All players write their predictions of the three largest cities, in order of size, along with their name, on pieces of paper which are held in secret until the end of the game. Five points are awarded for each city predicted in the correct rank, and two points are awarded for cities which were predicted for the top three but in the incorrect rank. These points are added to the player's total at the end of the game.