Orbita Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup
• Objective
• Gameplay
  • Round Order
  • Playing Cards
  • Moving the Planet
  • Winning the Round
• Game End
  • Scoring Example

Components

• 1 Rulebook
• 1 Game Board
• 4 Planet Markers (blue, green, orange and purple planet)
• 28 Planet Cards (7 of each type)

Setup

1. Place the game board in the middle of the table.

2. Place the planet markers next to the game board.

3. Shuffle all the cards and deal 14 cards to each player. Take the cards without changing the order. Hold the cards so that your opponent cannot see them.

   IMPORTANT: Do not change the order of the cards throughout the game!

4. Randomly choose the starting player.

Objective

Collect more cards in each type of planet. But try to beat the opponent by a small margin for more points.

Gameplay

The game is played over several rounds. In a round, each player will play cards and move the planet marker in turn. The round winner will take all the cards played and start the next round until a player cannot play cards.

Round Order

The starting player plays 1-3 cards of a planet from their hand and moves the matching planet marker along the game board's track by the same number of spaces as the cards just played.

The second player does the same except that they cannot play the same planet as the starting player.

Playing Cards

• A. You cannot play different planets together.

• B. 1–3 cards of the same planet which are next to each other must be played together.

• C. If there are 4 or more of the same planet cards next to each other, you can only play 1-3 of them. If, after doing so, 3 or fewer of the same planet cards remain together, you must play them all together.

  Example: If 5 of the same planets are next to each other in hand, you can play them separately over three rounds, playing 1 card first, then 1 card, then 3 cards.

• D. The second player cannot play the same planet cards as the starting player.

Tip: Depending on the order you play them, the cards that were once separated in hand may come next to each other.

Moving the Planet

• If the planet marker is not on the track, place it on "1" as its first movement.
• Once on track, the planet marker moves in a clockwise orbit. So the space after "7" is "7+", and the space after "1+" is "1".
• While moving, skip over any spaces already occupied; they do not count. This also applies when a planet marker is first placed on the track.

Example: The orange planet marker is not on the track yet and moves 3 spaces forward. Since "1" and "3" are occupied, the orange planet marker is first placed on "2", then moves to "4", then "5".

The track runs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7+, 6+, 5+, 4+, 3+, 2+, 1+.

Winning the Round

The player who played the larger planet cards wins the round. The planet marker closer to the upper edge of the game board is larger. You can also check this with numbers. The larger number means the larger planet. If the numbers are the same, the one with the + sign is larger.

While we now know that a planet's influence depends on proximity, our ancestors rather simply believed that the planets that looked bigger to the naked eye had stronger influence.

The winner takes all the cards played this round and sorts the cards by planet in front of them face-up. It is important to sort the cards so that players can check the number of cards their opponent won.

The winner becomes the new starting player and the play moves to the next round.

Game End

At any time during the game, if a player cannot play cards either by having no cards in their hand or by only having the planet cards the starting player just played, the game ends. Players discard all the cards in their hands and the cards the starting player played (in case the second player only has the planet cards already played).

For each planet type, check who has more cards in front of them. The player with fewer cards flips those cards face-down and gives them to their opponent. These are worth 1 point per card. If both players have the same number of cards for a planet type, neither player scores.

After scoring for all 4 planet types, the player with more points wins the game.

In case of a tie, the player with more face-up cards in front of them wins. If the tie is still not broken, the player who was not the starting player in the last round wins.

Scoring Example

For the green planet, Betty has fewer than Adam, so she flips her 3 green cards and gives them to Adam. Betty has 4 orange planets and Adam has only 2. So Adam flips his 2 orange cards and gives them to Betty.

Adam and Betty have 3 blue planets each, so neither flips blue cards. Betty has more purple cards than Adam, but Adam has no cards to flip and give to Betty.

Adam wins: Victory!