Zwerg Riese
Zwerg Riese Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
- 1 game board
- 1 Giant Rick
- 4 gnomes
- 4 gnome boards
- 16 gold coins
- 51 landscape cards (showing the symbols forest, field, pasture, clay, water and mountain)
- 9 robber cards (eight brown and one red)
- 1 cloud (for the variant game)
Setup
Place the game board in the centre of the table. Each player takes a gnome and the gnome board of the matching colour and places them in front of themselves. Decide which town you will all start from and place your gnomes there. Gnomes or gnome boards that are not needed in the game are returned to the box.
Shuffle the gold coins and place them face down in a stack next to the game board. Then place one gold coin face down on each town, except the town you are all starting from. Then turn the gold coins face up.
Now shuffle all the cards and place them face down in a stack. Prepare Giant Rick.
The cloud is not needed for the basic game. See the following page of these instructions for the expert variant, which uses the cloud. Once you know the basic game well, you can move on to the expert variant.
How to Play
Play proceeds clockwise. The smallest gnome begins. If you cannot agree, the oldest player begins.
On your turn, you may choose between the following options:
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Draw cards Turn cards from the stack and take them. You will need them to travel with Rick. Be careful! Only landscape cards are suitable for travelling. If you draw a robber card, you are out of luck.
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Travel with Rick When you think you have collected suitable cards, you may lay them out to travel with Rick to another town.
Option 1: Draw Cards
If you have already collected landscape cards earlier, place them on your gnome board to free your hands. Now draw a card from the stack.
What kind of card is it?
A landscape card? Excellent! Place it face up in front of you and choose one of the following:
- You may decline to draw any more cards. In this case, all the cards you collected during this turn stay with you. Take them in your hands, together with those you already placed on your gnome board.
- You take a risk and draw another card.
Remember: if you have decided to draw cards from the stack during your turn, you may not travel with Rick during that same turn.
Before drawing a card from the stack, place all the cards you have already collected on your gnome board. Then plan your next move.
A brown robber card? Out of luck! Pass all the cards you have collected in this round to your right-hand neighbour, who chooses one landscape card for themselves and passes the rest to their right-hand neighbour. That player also chooses one landscape card and passes the rest on, and so on, until no landscape cards of yours remain.
Attention: you are not allowed to take your own card!
The robber card is turned face down and placed at the bottom of the stack, and your turn ends.
A red robber card? You do the same as when you draw a brown robber card. However, after that you place the robber card at the bottom of the stack, take the stack, and shuffle it thoroughly.
Special rule If, during your turn, the first card you draw is a red or brown robber card, you are lucky. Your turn ends, but you now become the robber and may take any two cards from other players. Choose two cards from the hand of one or two players. If the players have no cards at all, you naturally receive none.
Option 2: Travel with Giant Rick
You want Rick to take your gnome to another town to collect the gold there.
You will need free hands so that you can move Rick. Pass the cards to your right-hand neighbour, who will fan them out in front of you.
The symbols on the cards show which areas of the game board Rick may step on. For each step, you must lay out the matching landscape card (pasture: the pasture card; river: the river card; and so on).
Take Rick and touch one of his feet to the window in the tower of the town where your gnome is currently standing.
Then turn the giant over and place his second foot where it will be convenient for the next step.
Important rules for travelling with Rick:
- For each step of Giant Rick, you lay out the matching landscape card, which your helper player sets aside.
- Once you have placed Rick's foot, you cannot cancel that move.
- For the last step into a town, you do not need to lay out a card.
- Rick is considered to have arrived in a new town as soon as one of his feet touches one of the squares on the game board that depicts a town. Place your gnome in that town and lay Rick down next to the game board. As a reward, you receive the gold coin from that town and place it face down on your gnome board.
- Landscape cards that were laid out by the player are placed at the bottom of the stack.
Important: If you miscalculated the distance and Rick does not reach a town, your gnome stays in the town where it was. You may take back your landscape cards, including those you used in your attempt to move to another town. Then, on your next turn, you may either make another attempt to travel, or decide to collect more landscape cards for the next attempt to travel.
Replenishing the Gold Coins
As soon as your gnome leaves a town, take a new coin from the stack and place it on that town. If the stack of coins has been used up, you obviously place nothing on the game board.
End of the Game
The game ends as soon as the last gold coin has been collected. Each player counts the gold coins on their gnome board. The player with the most gold wins the game. In case of a tie, the player with more cards in hand wins. If there is still a tie, there are several winners.
Variant with the Cloud: Expert Gnomes
As promised from the start, there are additional rules for the expert variant using the cloud:
- At the very beginning, place the cloud on any space of the game board, anywhere except on a town.
- The player who draws a robber card still has to distribute the cards they earned in this round between the other players, but now they must also move the cloud to another space on the game board.
- The giant may not step onto the cloud during a turn, and must therefore go around that space on the way to the next town.