Mine Cart Mayhem

Last week, I posted about my first prototype for a race game I spent some time working on.  After its first playtest, I threw that prototype into a pot with some additional playtests and a plethora of unremarkable art skills, and a game started brewing.  It's been a few weeks, and I need the counter space, so I'm going to go ahead and serve this game up whether it's ready or not.  Here's the first part of a write-up detailing what's in the pot.

This is going to be wordy, and I can't promise it'll be entertaining.  I want to better my ability to convey game mechanics through text.  It's an exercise I've done a few times before, and each of those times sucker slapped me in the face with a surprising amount of challenge.  It's hard.  I want to improve.

So, if you're not feeling this, this isn't for you.  This is for me.  Thanks for understanding.

Mine Cart Mayhem - A Race Game

The year is 1893.  You live in a small Colorado town that didn't exist before the Colorado Silver Boom.  For 14 years, your town prospered.  Then, with little warning, the boom ended.  Most towns in the area have been abandoned.  Your own town is a shell of its former self.  Lining your town's borders, miles of crisscrossing railroad tracks lie in disarray.  Once used to shuttle precious metals, now they exist to rust.  Your town is poor, but worse than that, your fellow townspeople have grown despondent.

Hope looms on the horizon, however!  Word has just come in that a golden mine cart has been spotted a few miles outside of town, resting on some of the out-of-service tracks.  Where did it come from?  An eccentric philanthropist, perhaps.  Who knows?  Not you!  No more time for questions!  Bringing this golden mine cart back to your town could be just what the townspeople need to lift spirits that have been falling for years.

The objective:
You and your teammate must lay down track and build a path that will lead the golden mine cart from the abandoned tracks to the open arms of your town's people.  Securing this treasure will bring pride and prosperity back to your town.  Hurry though!  It seems the golden glimmer has caught some hungry eyes from a neighboring town.  It's a race to see who can guide the golden mine cart back to their town first.  It's a game of gold and wits!  The race is on!

Game components:

• 1 game board
• 2 red mine cart game pieces
• 2 blue mine cart game pieces
• 1 gold mine cart game piece
• 1 track switch game piece
• Game cards (track cards and pit cards)

The Game Board

The Game Pieces

The Card Types

Setup:

Lay the game board out flat on a hard surface.  Pick a location where each of the four players can sit along a different edge of the game board.  A small, four-sided table is ideal.

From this point on, all mine cart game pieces will be referred to as follows: color + "cart".  For instance, "gold cart" references the golden mine cart game piece while "red cart" references one of the red mine cart game pieces.  The track switch game piece will be referred to as the "switch."

Place the gold cart on the center tile of the game grid.  This center tile is the only tile with tracks printed on it.

Lines, both black and colored, printed on the game grid and game cards are called tracks (see "The Card Types" image above).  When tracks on adjacent tile connect, a path is formed (more on this later).

Place the switch on any of the three colored tiles (green, orange, fuchsia) found on the game board next to the game grid.  Your color selection at this point is not important as you will be given the opportunity to move the switch during your first turn of play.

The remaining four carts get placed on the four towns, one cart per town.  The colors of the town must match the color of the cart placed onto it.  For instance, a red cart cannot be placed on a blue town.

Remove the four pit cards from the deck of game cards.  Pit cards have a black hole printed on their faces.  Shuffle the deck of track cards, and then lay the deck face-down on the game board on top of the space labeled "deck."

Next, each player takes one pit card and places it onto an empty tile of the game grid.  The only restriction on placing these pit cards is that pit cards may not be placed on the four tile surrounding the tile the gold cart occupies.  The tiles marked with red X's in the image below cannot have pit cards placed on them.

Nope!

Make sure your game grid contains four pits before proceeding.

Each team draws three cards from the deck and lays them face-up on the their factory spaces.  Factory spaces are the spaces with images of factories printed on them.  There are six factory spaces - three for each team.  The factory spaces attached to your team's town is your team's factory.

Order of play:

The game is played with four players separated into two teams of two players each.  The red team controls the two red carts, and the blue team controls the two blue carts.  Teammates share control over their carts and track cards.  Teammates are expected to communicate each turn and come to an agreement on the optimal moves to make.

To determine the order of play, all players must reveal their middle names.  Play starts with the team whose player has the most embarrassing name as determined by consensus.  Players who choose not to reveal their middle name automatically forfeit the chance for their team to move first.  If a starting team cannot be determined with the aforementioned middle name shenanigans, players must play a rote (read: not very fun) game of rock, paper, scissors to determine the order of play.

What does a turn look like?

Each turn is separated into four distinct phases:

• Lay track
• Pull lever
• Move mine carts
• Discard/draw

These phases will be described in detail in a future post.

Wordy.  I warned you.

Cheers,

Danny