Rules Are Designed to Work for As Many As Six Card, Spin It, and (Having Popped Nothing) Finish Your Turn
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On Every Turn Each turn consists of several steps. The details of each step are given later, but this short reference list is all you will normally need. • Flip: Flip one facedown card faceup, if you can. • Spin: Spin one faceup card 180°. If the board is open (with some facedown cards), you can spin whatever you like. If the board is closed (all faceup), you must make a spin that will pop something. If you can’t pop a card on a closed board, the board is frozen. In this case, shuffle the board and rebuild it facedown, then restart your turn. • Check: Check around the edges of the card you’ve spun. If any Welcome! symbols on that card match the neighboring cards, then you “pop” the Girl Genius is a web comic of adventure, romance, and mad card(s) with more symbols. (Popping is defined below.) If two edges science, created by Phil and Kaja Foglio. It has been running con- have the same symbols and the same length, then both cards pop. stantly since 2001, and has won many accolades and awards. • Replace: Replace the cards you’ve taken with cards from your The story follows the adventures of Agatha Heterodyne, hand, faceup. mad genius and heir to a mysterious and powerful bloodline. • Draw: If you have fewer than five cards in your hand, draw back Girl Genius: The Works is a strategy card game designed up to five from the top of the deck. Note: If you ever find yourself with by James Ernest, and was first released in 2001 right alongside no cards in your hand, you draw one card. the comic. In The Works, everything in the world is a cog in a • End: The turn passes to the left. giant machine. Cards flip, spin, and pop, and have diverse and interesting effects (not all of which are good). Winning The strategy can be complex, but the basic game is pretty simple. There are hundreds of different cards in the set, with in- The goal is to collect the winning score in your Score Pile. You can teresting effects and combinations at every turn. win at any time, not just on your turn. The target score varies with the number of players, as follows: Let’s Play! Number of Players: 2 3 4 5 6+ Target Score: 75 50 40 35 30 Game Contents Note: These scores are based on the limits of a 60-card deck. If you This edition ofThe Works has four different 60-card decks. Each want to play with more cards, you can also play to a higher target score. deck covers a different segment of the Girl Genius storyline: Some cards provide alternate ways to win. Deck 1: Castle Wulfenbach Steps in the Turn, Explained Deck 2: Master Payne’s Circus of Adventure Deck 3: Castle Heterodyne Below are details on the steps in the turn. Once you are familiar Deck 4: The Siege of Mechanicsburg with them, you can usually go by the shorter list above. Each deck contains a unique mix of cards. The decks can be played Flip: If there are any facedown cards, flip one of them faceup. If alone, or they can be mixed together for even more variety. You can there are no facedown cards, skip this step. even pick and choose your favorite cards to make a custom deck! The direction in which you flip the card will determine which way Each deck also comes with three “Lose a Turn” cards. These aren’t it points, and you must flip the card without looking. necessary, but they can be useful when tracking complex situations. You need no other equipment to play! Spin: Spin one faceup card 180°. “Spinning” a card means turn- ing it around, not flipping it over. You are spinning a card to see if Game Overview anything pops, as explained below. The cards you are allowed to spin will depend on whether the board is open or closed. The game takes place on a 12-card board, shown below. On each Open Board: The board isopen if there are still some facedown turn, you will flipa card, spin a card, and check to see if anything popped. cards. When the board is open, you may spin any faceup card, whether (All of this is defined below.) When cards pop, they can have special ef- it will pop something or not. fects, which might lead to popping more cards, losing turns, or many Closed Board: If all of the cards are faceup, then the board is other interesting things. closed. Now you must make a move which will result in something pop- After you pop a card it goes into your Score Pile, where it is worth ping. This means you might be forced to pop a card you don’t want. points. The first player to collect enough points wins the game. Frozen Board: If the board is closed and there are no legal The Works is, at its heart, a two-player game. There is a good deal moves, then the board is frozen. If this is true in the Spin step, then of strategy in setting up moves for yourself, and this can be a little instead of spinning a card, you must pick up all twelve cards, shuffle more chaotic when you add more players. them, and deal them back out facedown. You will then flip just one Nevertheless, these rules are designed to work for as many as six card, spin it, and (having popped nothing) finish your turn. players, so don’t be confused if some wording implies more opponents Starting with a frozen board can be annoying, because you don’t than you actually have. get to pop anything. However, things are nearly as bad for the next Teams: If you play with four or six players, we recommend that player. Try it and see! you play in teams. The target score for a team is equal to the total Note: You must get permission from your opponents before you shuf- of the target scores for the individual players. For example, with four fle a frozen board. They might be able to show you a move you don’t see! players, the winners are the first team to score a total of 80 points. Breaking the Rules: Many cards break the basic rules, and when Check: When symbols match, cards pop. “Popping” generally they do, the card text takes precedence. This rulebook does not have means that something interesting is happening between those cards. an answer for every weird situation, so you might have to be clever. Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s bad! Every card has colored symbols around the edges, representing How to Begin different aspects of personality. They areLoyalty (Yellow), Knowledge (Purple), Heart (Red), Balance (Blue), and Nature (Green). Find the three “Lose a Turn” cards and set them aside. Shuffle the The number of symbols on each edge represents the amount of rest of the deck and deal a hand of five cards to each player. Then deal each trait that a card has. 12 more cards into the middle of the table and construct a “board” of cards, facedown, in one of the two patterns shown here. Point Value Card Name Deck Icon Details Edge Symbols Art Two board configurations (either is fine) Effect After building the board, flip up two cards at opposite corners, as indicated above. Place the deck where everyone can reach it. Determine randomly who will go first. Thereafter, play will pass The Deck Icon indicates which deck the card comes from. If you mix to the left. different decks together, this symbol helps you sort them out. When neighboring edges have the same symbols, those two cards Each time you are instructed to lose one turn, you take one lost have something in common, and they react to each other. turn card. When the normal turn order comes to you, you discard the Check the edges of the card you just spun, comparing them to the card and skip your turn. cards around it. If any adjacent pair of edges is the same color (same If you are instructed to “take another turn,” technically everyone symbols), then the card with more symbols pops. else takes one lost turn card. “Popping” means that you pick up the card, follow its instruc- If everyone (including you) has one lost turn card, they can all tions (if you can), and put it into your Score Pile. hand one back. Each deck comes with only three of these, but feel free If the matching edges are the same size as well as the same color, to improvise some extras if the game gets particularly weird. then both cards pop. When is the Board Frozen? It is possible that there will be a This step is theonly time that you will check the edges of the cards legal move on a board, and you just won’t see it. That’s the nature of in play. The board might be littered with matching edges, but you must this game. It’s also possible that you’ll pretend not to see a legal move check only the one card you spin in the second step of your turn. because you don’t want to take it. That’s also allowed. You will notice that if the colors line up right, it’s possible to pop However, before you shuffle the board, you must get permission several cards at once.