Tornado Ellie
Tornado Ellie Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Contents
90 cards (76 animal cards; 14 special cards: 7x flash of lightning, 7x cloud)
1 tornado course 1 tornado base 1 big wooden disk (the eye of the storm) 1 small guide cylinder 4 cardboard holders 12 houses 12 cows 12 trees
Object of the Game
Each player has a farm in a region where the tornado season has just started. During the course of the game, the farms will be engulfed by tornados, bit by bit. The player who has the most valuable farm left in the end wins the game.
Set-up and Preparation of the Game
- Stick the four cardboard holders together and place this stand in the middle of the table.
- Put the tornado course on top of it.
- Take the tornado base and push the small guide cylinder through the hole in the middle. Put the tornado base on the tornado course in such a way that the guide cylinder is in the center of the large field. The outer tornado track is not used in the basic game.
- Generate the first level of the tornado column by placing the big wooden disk on the vortex, i.e., the upper end of the tornado, and stacking a card, face down, on top of it.
Shuffle the cards and deal four cards to each player, face down, that he takes into his hand. Put the remaining cards on the table as a draw pile.
Now each player takes 3 houses, 3 cows and 3 trees and sets them up in front of him; these make up each player's farm. Make sure that the distance between your farm and the farm of your neighbor to the left and the one to the right are approximately equal. Put any surplus farm pieces (if there are any) aside as a supply.
Course of the Game
The youngest player becomes the starting player. He plays any one card from his hand. After putting it on the space at the bottom end of the tornado, he rotates the tornado base in a clockwise direction until the bottom end of the tornado is oriented towards the next player's farm. You may use only one hand for rotating, but you are allowed to use your other hand to hold the stand.
Now, the next player has to play a card as well – a card that shows either
- the same species (e.g., playing a pig on a pig),
or
- a different species, but with a higher number of animals.
Cards with Special Functions
You can also play a special card, provided it shows an animal of the previously played species.
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Flash of Lightning: Now it's going to strike. If you play a flash of lightning, you don't have to rotate the tornado to the next player. Instead, he has to rotate it to himself – unless he can play a flash of lightning (no matter what animal(s) it shows!) as well. In this case, the next player after him has to rotate the tornado to himself. This goes on until a player can no longer play a flash of lightning – then this player has to rotate the tornado to himself. This can even be an entire round, if it strikes the player who was the first to play a flash of lightning.
-
Single animal: Alone in the storm. If you play a card with a single animal, the next player has to play a suitable card from his hand and, after that, draw the top card from the draw pile, which he then has to play as well. If the card is suitable – i.e., it shows either the same species or a larger number of animals of a different species – he may keep rotating the tornado to the next player. If the card is not suitable, he suffers storm damage (see below).
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Cloud: The wind is turning. If you play a cloud, the direction of play will be reversed. That means: If you have been rotating the tornado base in a clockwise direction, you now rotate it counter-clockwise until another cloud is played and the wind reverses its direction again.
Storm Damage
Every time you are able to play an appropriate card, you rotate the tornado to the next farm. If that player has no suitable card, storm damage occurs on his farm. The applicable storm damage is visible on the top card of the draw pile.
Example: Ralph plays a card showing 3 cows and rotates the tornado to Daniela. Daniela plays a card showing 5 sheep and rotates the tornado further, to Tim. Tim has no cards showing sheep in his hand; consequently, his farm suffers storm damage. To determine the damage, he checks what is depicted on the back of the top card of the draw pile (for example one cow and one house). These things are engulfed by the storm.
Tim removes one cow and one house from his farm and stacks them on the tornado column in any order: He places the house on the already-placed tornado card at the top end of the tornado and puts the card he just checked on top of it. Then he stacks the cow on top of this card and lays another card from the draw pile on top of that.
After a player has suffered storm damage and the tornado column has increased as described above, all players refill their hand cards to four. (Only in this case do players draw new cards. This means that a player suffers storm damage also if he has run out of hand cards.)
The player who has suffered storm damage becomes the new starting player.
He removes the cards from the tornado base that were played in the previous round; they are out of the game. Then he begins a new round by playing any one card and rotating the tornado to the next player.
Covered by Storm Insurance
Due to the storm damage to the players' farms, the tornado column gradually grows higher and higher and it becomes more and more risky to rotate the tornado base. If, during rotation, you cause the tornado column to collapse, you suffer storm damage as well. In this case, however, all the other players benefit from this and are allowed to take one lost piece – if available – back from the supply.
Example: Tim rotates the tornado to Daniela. She plays a fitting card; but while she is turning the tornado further, the tornado column collapses. All cards that have fallen down are removed from the game. All houses, trees and cows that have fallen down are put in the open supply on the table. Then Daniela suffers storm damage. Going by what's on the back of the top card on the draw pile, she builds up a new tornado column.
Those players who have already lost parts of their farm to the storm, however, receive compensation from the insurance. Each of them, in turn, takes one lost farm piece – if available – from the open supply (= insurance pot) and adds it to his farm. Tim, who has already lost all cows to the tornado column, takes a cow; Ralph chooses a tree.
Attention: If a player hasn't suffered any storm damage, he can't obtain any benefits from the insurance, i.e., he doesn't get any additional pieces for his farm. This also applies to the special case if, for example, Ralph has lost only one tree so far, but – when he is allowed to pick – finds only houses and cows in the supply; since he is not allowed to have a fourth piece in one category (e.g., house or cow), he gets nothing from the supply. After that, all players refill their hand cards to four, and Daniela becomes the new starting player.
Watch out: The storm is unpredictable and the tornado column can topple down also in the direction of your farm. Therefore, you should always keep track of what things you have on your farm.
End of the Game
The game ends either
- when the draw pile has been used up, or
- when one of the players can no longer cover the storm damage completely.
Attention: When one player loses his last farm piece, the game continues provided the player could fulfill the requirement of the card with this last piece. If, on another player's turn, a coverage by storm insurance occurs, the player concerned is allowed to take one farm piece of his choice back from the open supply and thus becomes "solvent" again.
When the draw pile has been used up or one player can no longer cover the storm damage completely, the game ends immediately. In the latter case, the player who wasn't able to fulfill the card requirement puts everything that he still owns back in the open supply and doesn't take part in the final scoring.
The other players count the pieces they have on their farms. Each house, each tree and each cow scores 1 point. For each complete set of 3 houses, 3 trees or 3 cows that you have on your farm at this moment, you score an additional 2 points.
The player with the most points wins.
Scoring example: When the draw pile is used up, Tim has 2 trees and scores 2 points for them. Daniela has 1 cow and scores 1 point. Ralph has 3 cows – this gives him a total of 5 points (1 point for each cow plus 2 bonus points, since he has a complete set of cows on his farm). Ralph wins the game.