Nomad Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Game Contents
• Setup
• Overview of a Round
• The Course of the Game: the 3 Phases in Detail
  • Phase 1: PRAYER
  • Phase 2: EXPLORATION
  • Phase 3: ACTIONS
    • a) Moving the hunter (or hunters)
    • b) Moving the tent camp
    • c) Placing a terrain tile
  • Placing an Animal Tile (does not count as an action!)
• End of the Round
• End of the Game
  • Example: Scoring for the accompanying game state
• Bonuses Available on the Camp Board

Game Contents

• 122 terrain tiles, of which 12 are marked with a distinguishing symbol and also serve as the round marker
• 1 shaman mound: stepped action-selection piece
• numbered steps
• turn order track
• 22 predator tiles; orange paw-print back
• 46 prey animal tiles; green paw-print back
• 8 action-selection sacrifice baskets in four colours (2 per player)
• 40 white marker discs (10 per player)
• 12 hunters in four colours (3 per player)
• 4 yurts in four colours (1 per player)
• 4 terrain boards (1 per player)
• 4 camp boards (1 per player)

Setup

• Shuffle separately the terrain tiles bearing the round marker (light brown back) and the other terrain tiles (dark brown back), and place them on the table face down in 8 decks (1 deck of round-marker tiles, 7 decks of the other tiles). Then turn face up in the middle of the playing area (the display) 1 of the round-marker tiles and 7 of the unmarked tiles (take 1 from each deck).
• Put the prey animal tiles into the green drawstring bag and the predator tiles into the orange drawstring bag, then draw 2 prey animal tiles and 1 predator tile into the display next to the terrain tiles placed in the middle of the table.
• Assemble the shaman mound according to the illustration and place it in the middle of the table, within everyone's reach.

Then each player takes:

• One terrain board with its camp board. Each player places 2 hunters of their colour on their camp board, and places the yurt and 1 hunter on the starting space in the upper left corner of the terrain board.
• The 10 white marker discs, placed next to the camp board.
• 2 randomly drawn terrain tiles (these can never be round-marker tiles!).
• In a 3 or 4 player game, one sacrifice basket of their colour; in a 2 player game, two sacrifice baskets of their colour.

Draw lots for the starting player. They place their sacrifice basket on the leftmost of the order spaces at the bottom of the shaman mound. The others, one after another clockwise, place their baskets on the next empty spaces.

Overview of a Round

You have 12 rounds to reach the goal. In every round 1 round-marker tile (light brown back) comes into play, so you can track exactly how far the game has progressed. Every round consists of 3 phases.

1. Phase 1: PRAYER - Starting with the starting player and proceeding according to the order track, place your sacrifice baskets on one of the steps of the shaman mound, thereby determining your options for the rest of the round.
2. Phase 2: EXPLORATION - This time you proceed on the shaman mound from top to bottom, and depending on your chosen position you take terrain tiles and/or animal tiles (0-5 in total).
3. Phase 3: ACTIONS - You may carry out as many actions as the position you obtained on the shaman mound allows (0-5). (If you cannot or do not want to carry out the number of actions corresponding to your chosen position, you may carry out fewer.)

After this you must check that you have no more than 7 tiles left in your hand (if more, you must discard the excess to the place marked on your camp board), and you must determine the player order of the next round (see End of the Round).

The Course of the Game: the 3 Phases in Detail

Phase 1: PRAYER

In this phase, starting with the starting player, in the order determined on the order spaces, place your baskets on one empty step of the shaman mound (only a single basket may be placed on each level). This determines the order of action in the next phase, and how many game components and actions each player obtains in the round.

Some examples:

• The yellow player placed their basket on the step marked with the number 1 (topmost). In the exploration phase they take no terrain tile and/or animal tile; in return, in the action phase they can carry out 5 actions, and they will surely be the last player of the next round.
• The purple player, however, placed their basket on step number 5, so they will have 4 explorations and 1 action, and from the next round they will presumably take over the role of starting player - if no other player has a basket on the lowest step.

2 players: Both players use 2 baskets each during the game. In every odd-numbered round you each place 1 basket, and these stay in place for the next round. In even-numbered rounds turn the baskets on the shaman mound upside down (to indicate that they were placed there the previous time), and place the other basket on one of the still free spaces in the current player order. Only after this may you remove all 4 markers from the shaman mound.

Phase 2: EXPLORATION

You explore according to the position you obtained in the previous phase: everyone may take from the display at most as many terrain tiles (the round-marker tile also counts as a terrain tile) and/or animal tiles in total as the shaman mound shows next to their sacrifice basket.

The owner of the basket standing on the highest level of the shaman mound begins the selection, and the other players follow from top to bottom.

The chosen terrain tiles go into your hand. A chosen animal tile, however, you must place immediately, either face up on your terrain board onto an unoccupied terrain tile with the same icon (of your choice), or you may store it on your camp board (on the spaces marked with a light paw print in the upper part of the board), postponing its placement. You may store at most 3 animal tiles there. If the 3 tile spaces are full, when taking a new animal you must free up a space: you can do this by discarding an animal or by placing it on the terrain board. (Placing an animal tile on the terrain board does not count as a separate action.) If you take an animal from the display, you must place it somewhere in any case, even at the cost of discarding another tile stored at the top of the camp board.

Important! If on the 5th or 6th step someone does not get a sufficient number of tiles from the display, they may draw the missing number at random from the still face-down terrain tile decks. (This can happen only after the last elements have been taken from the display.) However, they may not draw a tile from the deck of light brown (round-marker) tiles, nor from the animal bags.

Phase 3: ACTIONS

In the action phase you may carry out as many actions as you obtained on the shaman mound. The following 3 operations count as an action:

a) moving the hunter b) moving the tent camp c) placing a terrain tile

You may carry out any of these several times, provided you do not exceed your allowance. The order of the actions is also arbitrary, and you are not obliged to use all your action possibilities. Experienced players may carry out the action phase simultaneously, i.e. they do not have to wait for each other's operations.

a) Moving the hunter (or hunters)

With 1 action you may move your hunter figure to an edge-adjacent terrain tile (Figure 1).

If the hunter steps onto a terrain tile on which a prey animal (green-marked animal tile) was previously placed, you must turn that tile face down - indicating that the hunter has brought down that animal (Figure 2). Only a single hunter is needed to hunt a prey animal. (Every prey animal brought down and on the terrain board at the end of the game - a face-down green tile - is worth 1 point in the final scoring.)

A large predator (orange-marked animal tile) can only be hunted by a hunter (i.e. a hunter may only step onto a tile on which a predator is located) if the camp dwellers help with it. This is possible if the tent camp stands on one of the terrain tiles edge-adjacent to the big game (Figure 3). The predator brought down is likewise marked by turning the animal tile face down. (Every predator brought down and on the terrain board at the end of the game - a face-down orange tile - is worth 3 points in the final scoring.)

Hunting does not count as a separate action; it is merely a consequence of the hunter's movement. (In other words: the movement itself counts as 1 action, and the hunt costs no further action.)

If you already have several hunters in play, you may move with any of them, even the one you obtained during the previous action.

b) Moving the tent camp

To move the tent camp you must take an already hunted prey or predator tile off the board and move it to one of the three tile spaces marked with a yurt in the lower part of your camp board (Figure 4). With this you may move the yurt, representing the tent camp, to an edge-adjacent space (Figure 5). (Keep in mind that animal tiles removed from the terrain board do not count in the scoring at the end of the game.)

You may move the camp only onto a terrain tile that has already been explored (even water). The relocation is not affected if a face-down animal tile or a hunter is on the given space; however, you may not choose a terrain tile on which a face-up (not yet hunted) animal tile is located (Figure 6).

New hunters: When the third hunted animal tile is placed on your camp board (you have moved the tent camp three times in this manner), your team is enlarged by a new hunter. Take a hunter figure from your camp board and place it on the space where the camp currently stands. You may move the new hunter even with your very next action. Then remove these 3 animal tiles from the camp board (they leave the game) to make room for newly hunted animals. During the game you can bring a total of two new hunters into play in this way. (Figure 7)

c) Placing a terrain tile

Placing each terrain tile on your terrain board costs 1 action. You may place terrain tiles according to the following fitting rules:

• Everyone may place only tiles from their own hand.
• On touching terrain tiles the terrain types must match; there is no such requirement for the motifs found at the joins.

If you manage to place a terrain tile so that, as a result, along the sides the coloured motif halves form one or more complete motifs, you get the following extra possibilities:

• Green motif: Draw a prey animal at random from the green bag. You may immediately place the animal tile on your terrain board, on top of a terrain tile with a suitable icon. If there is no such possibility, put the animal tile on one of the 3 tile spaces marked with a white paw print in the top strip of the camp board.
• Orange motif: Draw a predator at random from the orange bag, then if possible place it on your terrain board on a terrain tile marked with a suitable icon. If there is no such possibility, the animal tile may also be put on the upper part of the camp board, on one of the three tile spaces marked with a white paw print.
• Pink motif: Choose one of the 16 bonus options visible on the upper part of your camp board, and cover it with a white disc. You receive the bonus immediately. Covered bonuses cannot be obtained again. During each game you can obtain at most 10 bonus options, using your 10 white discs.

Important! The pink motif can also be found on the terrain board itself. You may claim this bonus even if your freshly placed tile covered a pink round motif on the terrain board.

If you obtain another animal through the joining of terrain tiles (green or orange motif) or through the bonuses of the camp board, you may also decide to discard the freshly obtained animal tile instead of those on your camp board.

When you place a terrain tile on the terrain board, several bonus options may apply at once: for example, you may cover a pink motif, in addition motifs of the same colour may form along the tile joins, and you may immediately put a fitting animal tile on the placed tile. In such cases you can always choose the order of the operations yourself.

Placing an Animal Tile (does not count as an action!)

You may place an animal on your terrain board in the EXPLORATION phase, directly after taking it from the display, and also in the ACTIONS phase, from among the tiles stored on the camp board. Placing animal tiles never counts as a separate action.

You may place several animals in one round. An animal tile may only be placed on a terrain tile on which there is neither the tent camp nor a hunter figure, nor any other (face-up or face-down) animal tile. Furthermore, one of the animal icons shown on the terrain tile must match the icon of the animal to be placed. (The white icon shows the prey animal that can be placed on the space, the black one the predator.)

An animal placed on the board can later only be moved to another terrain tile and/or taken off the board with the bonus action intended for this. The face-down animal tile symbolising the game brought down remains on the board until you yourself remove it to move the tent camp (see above). Other animal tiles that may be discarded should be put next to the bag of the corresponding colour; do not put them back into the bag. When one of the bags would run empty, refill it with the tiles collected there.

End of the Round

After all actions have been carried out, the player standing on the highest level of the shaman mound takes their basket and puts it on the rightmost of the order spaces at the bottom of the mound. The next player - the one now standing on the highest position - puts their own basket next to the previous player's basket on the order spaces, and so on. Thus the starting player of the next round will be the one who in this round placed their sacrifice basket closest to the bottom of the mound.

Before starting a new round, discard all remaining tiles from the display (they leave the game), then lay out 8 new terrain tiles face up (of which 1 is a round-marker tile), and draw from the bags 1 predator and 2 prey animals next to them.

End of the Game

At the beginning of the 12th round the last light-brown-backed terrain tile comes onto the display. This indicates that the three phases of the last round follow, and the game ends when they are completed.

Then count, as follows, how many points you earned during your wandering:

• Every prey animal hunted (the face-down green tile on the terrain tiles) is worth 1 point.
• Every predator hunted (the face-down orange tile on the terrain tiles) is worth 3 points.
• On the terrain map formed on the terrain board by the end of the game, the individual connected terrain types can be converted into points according to their extent. The size of a terrain type is the number of connected terrain tiles over which it extends. In scoring the areas, ALL connected areas can earn points, even several of the same terrain type.

Terrain type	2	3	4	5	6(+)
Meadow (light green)	0	0	0	2	4 (+2)*
Forest (dark green), maximum 8 points	2	4	8	8	8
Desert (light brown)	0	0	2	4	6 (+2)*
Mountains (grey), maximum 8 points	2	4	6	8	8

* Every further terrain tile gives +2 points.

• According to the position of the tent camp, 16 points are awarded if you managed to reach the space of the ruined temple; if the camp stands on any other space, the reward is the points corresponding to the value of that space (according to the value readable on the board, between -6 and 12).
• Then subtract 1 point from the result for every space of the terrain board that is not covered.

The player who collects the most points is the winner of the game. In case of a tie, the position of the tent camp decides; if there is still a tie, the most hunted predators (remaining on the terrain tiles) decide among the tied players.

Example: Scoring for the accompanying game state

Item	Count	Calculation	Points
Prey animals hunted	3 hunted animals	1p x 3	3p
Predators hunted	4 hunted animals	3p x 4	12p
Meadows	6 areas + 8 areas	4p + 8p	12p
Forests	2 areas + 2 areas	2p + 2p	4p
Deserts	8 areas	10p	10p
Mountains	5 areas	8p	8p
Lakes

Bonuses Available on the Camp Board

The number in parentheses is how many times the bonus appears on the camp board (16 in total).

• Discard an already placed terrain tile from your terrain board. (1x)
• Draw a terrain tile (but not a round marker!) from the face-down supply and take it into your hand. (2x)
• Replace an already placed terrain tile with one in your hand (discard the tile). (1x)
• Move an already placed animal tile on the terrain board to another space (to a suitable place for the animal). (1x)
• Draw a prey animal tile from the bag. (2x)
• Discard from the terrain board a placed (but not face-down) animal tile. (1x)
• Draw a predator tile from the bag. (2x)
• Move your tent camp to an adjacent terrain tile. (1x)
• Choose: draw a prey animal or a predator from the bag. (2x)
• Relocate an already placed terrain tile on your board (according to the fitting rules). (1x)
• Move with your hunter to an adjacent terrain tile (and possibly bring down game). (2x)