Visiting Kaunas V2

A few weeks ago I published the game about tourists visiting Kaunas. I wasn’t happy with the way event card worked, so I though about it a lot. I think, I found a better way. For that I had to redesign all event cards and event board, but all the rest parts of the game are mostly the same.

People like to talk about multi-use cards. Let’s talk about multi-use dice.

Player count: 2-4.

Inventory: 

Building cards: 102

Event cards: 40 (level1 – 10; level2 - 14; level3 - 16)

Upgrade cards: 32

Ship meeples: 8 (2x color)

Tourist meeples: 40 (10x color)

Grande meeples: 4 (1x color)

Coins: 1 coin x100, 2 coins x50, 5 coins x30, 10 coins x25, 20 coins x20, 50coins x10.

Dice: 3

Event boards: 1

Determining first player. Roll the dice, who has the lowest number will be starting player.

Preparation for the game. Mix building cards, place them in the grid appropriate for the player count:

    • 4 players – 7x5;

    • 3 players – 6x4;

    • 2 players – 5x3;

Place ship meeples. One ship for each player on the top starting from the right to left: 1, 2, 3, 4. One ship for each player on the right side starting from the top to the bottom: 4, 3, 2, 1. Your building grind should look something like this:

Mix event cards, each level separately. Mix all the cards for level 3, when take 9. Place level3 cards on the bottom. Mix all the cards for level 2, when take 12. Place level2 cards on level3 cards. Mix all the cards for level 1, when take 6 and place them on level2. Take 3 level1 cards from the top of the deck and place them on event board face down. 

Mix upgrades cards and place next to the event deck. 

Give each player the starting building (Modern art museum) and 8 coins. Place tourist meeples and grande meeples, dice, money that it would be easy to reach for everyone and now you can start the game. 

The goal of the game. Person with the most money at the end wins the game. 

Playing the game. Each players turn consists of two main parts:

    • Buying a new building

    • Dice manipulation 

Buying new buildings. Player chooses the ship of his color and moves it. He can choose the one on the side of the column or on the top of the grid. He can move only one ship. He can move as far as he wants, but he can’t stop at the spot that is already taken by another player. 

Player gets the building where two of his ships intersect. He has to pay for that building as much as he moved multiplied by the number on event deck. So if he moved 3 cards from his current position at the beginning of the game he has to pay 3 coins for a new building.

If player doesn’t have enough money to pay for that, he can’t move that far. In extremely rare cases when player has no coins, he doesn’t move his ship and doesn’t get any building. 

After taking the building card player has to place that card in his city. The street consists of two rows, because of walking part in the middle and building on each side. At the start of the game each player has only one building, so it’s one row.

Player can put his building at the end of any of his two rows. Buildings are always placed from left to right. So player starts on the left and continues building his street to the right. 

The building card taken form the grid is replaced by the new card from the top of buildings deck. 

Dice manipulation

Player takes 3 dice and rolls them. Dice can be allocated to event cards or executed for actions of their pip values. After assignment is done, dice are executed from the highest value to the lowest. For example if player has 3, 5, 2. First he will execute 5 dice action, when 3 and 2 last. If there are two or more dice with equal values, player can decide the order of execution.

Actions for values:

6 – Grande meeple can be moved. If Grande meeple is not yet in the city it can come in. This the only way how Grande meeple can come to the city. Grande meeple follows the same movement rules as regular tourist meeples. This action only affects active player. 

5 – Player can place this die on the left side of the grid. Where die and players’ ship intersects he can get that building for free. Other players can also get building where die and their ships intersect, however other players have to pay two coins multiplied by the number on event deck. 

If a player rolls more than one 5 die, he can use all of them to get buildings, however they can’t be placed on the same row. 

4 – Player can place this die bellow the grid. Similar like in case of 5. Where die and players’ ship intersects he can get that building for free. Other players can also get building where die and their ships intersect, however other players have to pay two coins multiplied by the number on event deck. 

If a player rolls more than one 4 die, he can use all of them to get buildings, however they can’t be placed on the same column. 

3 – Player can buy an upgrade. See: upgrades section. 

2 – Two cards on event deck can be changed places or discarded. You can also, discard one, and change place of one card.

1 – Player can review discarded event cards and place one event card into face up row.

Event card selection.

There are totally six position for event cards. At the beginning of the game there are no face up cards, however during the game players will fill it with event cards. 

If there are no face up cards, player can assign dice only to the deck. If player wants, he can assign all three of his dice to event deck and even choose the same timezone. 

If player assigns one value dice to the deck, he takes the top card and executes it in the timezone he assigned before looking at the card. One tourist is moved. Card is discarded to trash.

If player assigns two value dice to the deck, he takes two cards from the top of the deck. He chooses one to execute and one to discard. 

If player assigns value three or more die to the deck, he takes appropriate number of cards from the top of the deck (three or more, i.e. the same as die value). He chooses one to execute, one to discard and others are placed face up in the event row. Player can place all card in one spot or all in different spots i.e. he has complete freedom. Face up zones have already assigned timezones, so they can be executed only in that timezone if the building allows it. 

Note: Cards from the deck are always executed in the zone chosen before looking at the cards. 

If player assigns dice to the deck, he can choose the zone he wants, however he doesn’t know what cards he will get. If player chooses face up cards, he knows exactly what he is getting, but he can’t choose the time zone. 

The amount of meeple tourists that can be moved is equal to the value of the die. 

Important: doesn’t matter which player activates the moved, all players get to move they meeples if they have a valid options to do so. 

Used event cards go to discard pile. 

Note: After moving meeple place it on the side that you could count how many meeples you moved and how much money you earned. After all calculations are done, change position of your meeples to standing one. 

If no die is assigned to event card, player has to place as many coins as he has buildings in the longest row to any event card spot of his choice (he can assign it to empty one too). 

Tourist movement. Tourist can move up and down. Tourist can move from left to right. Tourist never move from right to left i.e. backwards. If tourists reach the last building in the city, they leave the city. 

Grande tourist. Grande tourist is very rich, so he always pays double the price. When in the city Grande moves the same as regular meeples, however he can only come in the city using die with 6 value. When Grande comes into town, he can land on any building that has free spots. Wise choice would be to land him in the first or second building, however it can be the last building in the town if player wishes so (on the last turn of the game it could be a good move). Player can also choose any time zone if building has more than one. 

Event cards. There are three levels of event cards. First level cards just give a category and general command to move in or out. Second level cards give you a building (or a few) that is activated, meeples can move in or out. If card has more than one building you can activate them all if there are enough meeples to move. Third level cards give you exact directions move from category A to category B. Dice value 1 allows to move only one meeple, dice value 6 allows to move 6 meeples. 

Meeple that moved in, can’t move out on the same event card. 

Building cards. Each card has a category icon and building icon. Three time zones: morning, noon and evening. Each time zone can have different prices for the tourists. Buildings can also have maximum capacity. There can’t be more tourists on the card than maximum capacity. However prices and capacity can be changed using upgrades. 

Number above time zone icon is capacity of the building. Number bellow time zone icon is amount of $ for one customer. 

Upgrades. Player can buy an upgrade using die with value 3. Upgrade can be assigned to one building during the game and it can’t be reassigned later to another building.

Upgrade cards follow the same logic as building cards. There are three time zones. Capacity increase is above time zones, $ increase is bellow time zones.

To buy an upgrade player can take any card from face up row. If there are no cards of he doesn’t like what he sees, he can take up to three cards from deck. Before taking the cards from the deck player has to make decision how many cards he wants: one, two or three. If he takes one cards – it’s the upgrade he gets. If he takes two or three cards, he can choose one of them, other cards will be placed in face up row next to upgrades deck. 

Game end and final score. The game ends when there is no cards in event deck. Winner is the person with the most money. In case of a tie, winner is person that has more buildings. 

Luck factor. Read my previous thoughts about it. In short – it’s big. However with change of event cards I think that removed a bit luck factor and added a bit more strategy.

Design decision. So what have changed? New event board and all new event cards. I like event cards of this version. I think it’s lower on luck and more on strategy, however I am not sure if it’s final version. 

I was thinking of removing upgrade cards from the game. Upgrades are cool and I like the idea of them, but removing would make for more simple game. I still left them for now. 

Would you like to playtest it? PDF Files with building cards, upgrade cards, event cards, you will need your own meeples, dice and money. Any feedback is welcome