Description

Establishing a portal to another world is a major milestone by any yardstick. The Constellars are often tasked with the conveyance of armies across realms during wars and this ability is crucial to their role.

Setting up and preparing for the ritual is the easy part, the real challenge comes in maintaining a delicate balance of the cosmic forces as one disrupts the fabric of space and time so that others may arrive at their intended destination safely.

TKG ARENA: A Rift of Portals is a game for 1 player.

Components required for this game:

WORLD TILES: 48
OINKS: 15 from each element for each player (Default)

Winning Conditions

The objective of the game is to stabilize the portal once it is set up and this is represented by fulfilling a number of conditions.

1. The number of Oinks in the Inner Gate must be equal or more than the Oinks placed in the Outer Void.
2. The number of elemental insignias placed on any linear sides of the Boundary must be equal.
3. The elemental insignias on each tile must be matched by a placed Oink representing the same element.

Ending Condition

The game ends when all tiles are played and all unmatched Oinks on any tile on the Boundary are moved to the Outer Void. The player loses when the winning conditions are not achieved when the game ends.

Setup

A player starts the game by drawing randomly from a stack of world tiles to be placed in a 3 x 3 grid manner as below.

X A B C O
D I E
F G H

1. Shuffle the 48 world tiles into a stack. World tiles are referred to as tiles.

2. Draw 3 tiles from the stack. From these 3 tiles, flip 1 over to the grid side to form the Outer Void (This is represented by the faced down tile O in the diagram), 1 to form the Inner Gate (This is represented by the faced down tile I in the diagram).

3. Gain the Oinks matched by the elemental insignias of the last remaining tile and discard it, an area such as X can be designated for discarded tiles in the diagram.

All world tiles built are placed faced up with their elemental insignias visible. Tiles A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H surrounding tile I forms the Boundary. To fulfill winning condition 2, the sum of the number of elemental insignias on the Tiles A, B, C; Tiles C,E, H; Tiles F,G, H and Tiles A, D, F are equal.

On each turn

Draw 3 tiles from the stack and the player must perform ONE of each of the following actions in the following order:

1. Gain - Play a tile, gain the Oinks indicated on the elemental insignias and discard it. Put the Oinks gained in the Inner Gate.

2. Build - Build a tile, if it is the first tile, place it adjacent to the Inner Gate, if it is not, it must be placed adjacent to another tile that has been built that bears at least one of its own elemental insignias. If the intended location is adjacent to two or more world tiles, then all adjacent world tiles must bear at least one matching elemental insignia between them.

If you are unable to or do not wish to build for any reason, gain the Oinks indicated on any one of the remaining tiles that has not been played and put them into the Outer Void. You can also replace any tile built with any tile in your hand but all Oinks placed on the built tile will be placed in the Outer Void.

3. Move - Play a tile, you can move Oinks indicated on the elemental insignias of this tile from the Inner Gate to any built tile, or to move any Oink from a built tile to an adjacent built tile. If you are unable to or do not wish to move any of the Oinks indicated for any reason, gain the Oinks instead and put them into the Outer Void.

The player cannot skip any action and each action must be fulfilled in totality. E.g. During a Move action, a tile with 3 Fire Insignias has been chosen but the player has only 1 Fire Oink in the Inner Gate. You may NOT move the existing 1 Fire Oink to any other tile, gain 2 Fire Oinks and then placed them in the Outer Void. 3 Fire Oinks should be gained and placed in the Outer Void.

Scoring

For each Oink placed in a tile that bears the same insignia, gain 1 Victory Point. The player with the most Victory Points wins the final victory if multiple players are competing. Ties are broken by the difference in Oinks between their Outer Void and Inner Gate. The player with the greater difference wins. If the differences are the same, the players shared a joint victory.

Variant

The game can be scaled up with a BOUNDARY with sides featuring more tiles. (E.g 4 or 5). The rest of the rules remain unchanged. In this case, players can choose to leave the space representing the Inner Gate empty instead of a faced down tile I. Players can choose to use other appropriate counters to represent Oinks during play.