Terra: Deutschland Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup
• The Terra Cards
• Object of the Game
• The Game
  • 1. Placing the Estimate Stones
    • Placing on an Area
    • Placing on a Scale
    • Placing Further Stones
    • Passing
  • 2. Scoring
    • Scoring the Areas
    • Scoring the Scales
    • Wrongly Placed Estimate Stones
    • Alone on a Scale
  • 3. Change of Start Player
• End of the Game

Components

• 1 game board
• 100 Terra cards
• 1 card box
• 30 estimate stones in 5 player colours

Setup

The game board is placed in the middle of the table. Each player receives 6 estimate stones in his or her colour. Each player places one of these estimate stones next to space 1 of the score track.

Fill the card box with Terra cards. It is best to fill the box until it is full, even though a game of Terra Deutschland only needs a limited number of cards.

Labels in the setup diagram: card box with Terra cards; estimate stones of the players; game board; Germany map; information box for scoring; score track; scales for year, length / distance and quantity.

The Terra Cards

The upper half of the card shows the information the players receive before placing their stones:

1. Theme: each theme has 3 tasks. The player whose turn it is decides which task to try to solve. If the title of a card contains a wording such as "highest", "largest", "smallest" and so on, it always refers to Germany, unless stated otherwise.
2. Photo: always refers to the thing being sought and may give more or less concrete hints. Caution: the photo does not in all cases show exactly what is being sought.
3. Task 1: the number of areas in which the theme of the card can be found.
4. Tasks 2 and 3: categories to be estimated. These relate to 2 of the 3 scales on the game board and are marked in colour as follows:
   • Blue box: relates to the Year scale.
   • Purple box: relates to the Length / Distance scale.
   • Green box: relates to the Quantity scale.

These details are visible while the card is in the card box.

The lower half of the card shows the solutions as well as some short additional information about the task set.

5. Solution for Task 1: the area or areas in which the sought item is to be found.
6. Hint for the solution of Task 1: a map of Germany for quickly finding the sought areas.
7. Solutions for Tasks 2 and 3: the answers to the categories to be estimated.
8. Info box: additional information on the theme of the card.

The lower half of the card stays hidden in the card box while the estimate stones are being placed. The solutions only become visible when the card is taken out of the card box for scoring.

Note: The divisions of the areas are shown in simplified form and follow the borders of the German federal states. Because the game mechanics require more areas, some of the larger federal states have been subdivided into further areas. The names follow historical divisions and/or current districts.

Object of the Game

Each round the players guess areas and estimate figures relating to the theme of a Terra card. In turn they place their estimate stones on the map of Germany and on the matching scales. At the end of a round, points are awarded for correct and nearly correct estimates, while incorrectly placed estimate stones must be given up. The player who has collected the most points at the end wins.

The Game

In a game of Terra Deutschland, each player should be start player equally often. Before the game begins, you can decide for yourselves how many cards you want to play through.

Suggestion:

• With 2 players, 4 cards each: the game ends after 8 rounds.
• With 3 players, 3 cards each: the game ends after 9 rounds.
• With 4 players, 2 cards each: the game ends after 8 rounds.
• With 5 players, 1 card each: the game ends after 5 rounds.

The game is played over several rounds. A round consists of:

1. Placing the estimate stones
2. Scoring
3. Change of start player

1. Placing the Estimate Stones

The start player receives the card box and reads out the theme and the tasks on the frontmost card, without taking the card out of the box. All players consider where they want to place their estimate stones. The other players may look at the card in the box themselves, but may not pull it out of the box.

Beginning with the start player, each player must, clockwise, place one of his or her estimate stones on the board, either on a free area or on a free space on one of the scales.

Placing on an Area

An own estimate stone may be placed on any area on the map of Germany in which no other stone, neither a foreign nor an own one, is yet present. Sea areas are marked by a frame around the name.

Note: A sea area includes, in addition to the stretch of sea, the islands that lie within it (such as Sylt or Rügen).

Example: Weser-Ems, Bremen, Lüneburg, Holstein and Schleswig are land areas. The North Sea is a sea area, to which the islands lying in it also belong.

Example of placing an estimate stone: Player Green wants to place one of his estimate stones in an area. Westfalen, Hessen and Thüringen are already occupied by stones. Player Green must therefore choose another area in which to place his estimate stone, for example Südöstliches Niedersachsen.

Placing on a Scale

An own estimate stone may be placed on a space of a scale (the area between two lines) in which no other stone, neither a foreign nor an own one, is yet present.

Note: There are three scales, each relating to different categories. For each card, categories for two scales are asked for.

• Year scale: questions asking for a point in time or a period (year or century).
• Length / Distance scale: questions asking for lengths, heights and distances (centimetres, metres, kilometres).
• Quantity scale: all other categories, for example questions about area (m² / km²), monetary units (€, DM etc.), degrees (°C), percent (%), hours (h), litres (l), tonnes (t) etc., as well as questions about the number of different things or their age.

Which categories are asked for is often noted in brackets for questions about quantity and year.

Once each player has placed one stone, then again beginning with the start player, each player in turn may either place a further stone or pass.

Placing Further Stones

When it is a player's turn, he or she places a further own estimate stone on a free area or on a free space of a scale. Over the course of a round a player may also place several stones on the same scale, just as he or she may place several stones in different areas, as long as he or she still has estimate stones to place.

Passing

If a player passes, because he or she does not want or cannot place any more stones, that player's placing is over for this round. It is not possible to join in later in this round. Once all players have passed, the round is scored.

2. Scoring

The Terra card is taken fully out of the box. First the areas are scored, then the scales. Each placed stone is scored only once and can bring in either 7 points (correct) or 3 points (adjacent). For example, if a stone is placed correctly (= 7 points) and is at the same time adjacent to a further correct space, there are no additional 3 points for it.

Scoring the Areas

Players receive 7 points for each estimate stone they placed in a correct area, and 3 points for estimate stones they placed in areas that lie adjacent to a correct area. The points are moved forward on the score track at the edge of the game board immediately.

Adjacent areas: Two areas are adjacent if they either share a common border line or meet as a land area and a sea area.

Example of scoring areas: On the Terra card "Largest shipyard" there is one correct area: Weser-Ems. The area Weser-Ems has 4 adjacent areas (3 land areas and 1 sea area). Player White receives 7 points, player Blue 6 points (2 x adjacent), and player Yellow receives no points (Lüneburg is not adjacent to the area Weser-Ems).

After the scoring of the areas, the scoring of the scales follows.

Scoring the Scales

As with the scoring of areas, players receive points both for exact hits and for answers that lie close by. There are 7 points for each estimate stone that a player has placed on a correct space of a scale. There are 3 points for stones that lie adjacent to a correct space. If the exact number given beneath a tick mark on the scale is the correct answer, both the space to its left and the space to its right both count as hits.

Example of scoring: Since the answer is 2000, the two spaces to the left and right of 2000 count as hits. If the answer were instead "2000s" or 2002, only the space to the right of 2000 would count as a hit. The space to the left of the year would in that case only be adjacent. In this example, players White and Blue each receive 7 points, and player Yellow receives 3 points. The points are moved forward on the score track immediately.

Wrongly Placed Estimate Stones

Placed estimate stones that brought in points during scoring return to their owners' supply. Estimate stones for which no points were received are collected next to the game board. They become available to the players again (in part) only after the change of start player.

Alone on a Scale

If a player is the only one to have placed one or more stones on a scale, he or she receives double the number of points scored there for all of them.

Example: Player Blue is the only player to have placed (2) stones on the Year scale. 1 stone is wrong, one is adjacent. He loses the wrongly placed stone, but for the other (adjacent) stone receives 6 points instead of the usual 3 points. (A hit would have brought 14 instead of 7 points.)

3. Change of Start Player

At the end of the round, the card box is passed to the next player clockwise. He or she thus becomes the start player of the new round.

Each player receives back one of his or her estimate stones from the supply next to the game board, if there is one available.

If a player now has fewer than 3 estimate stones in front of him or her, he or she tops up his or her own supply to 3 estimate stones, so that he or she has at least 3 stones to place in the next round.

End of the Game

The game ends after the number of rounds that was set at the start of the game has been played. The player with the most points after this last round wins. In the event of a tie, there are several winners.

Note: The information on the Terra Deutschland cards comes from various sources on the internet and from specialist books. Depending on the source, the details differ more or less strongly from one another. Sometimes the locations or the dates of the records also do not match across the various sources. Accordingly, the information on the cards is often an average of values from different sources. Some of the content queried in the game is also subject to annual fluctuations, or records are broken over time. In the game, an attempt has been made to base the figures on the current values from the years 2018 to 2020 as far as possible.