Artifakes, A Stonehenge Humor Game by Sean Fletcher
Stonehenge was built as giant pant forms for druidic fashion designers specializing in very large pants. Sadly, very large pants have no place in this game at all.
Game Rules
Number of players: 2
Object of the game: Be the first archaeologist to dig your way out of debt by passing off your buried junk as genuine artifacts.
Getting Started
Equipment: You will need the board, the card deck, the neutral figure and a figure for each player. Each player will also need all ten bars and disks of their figure's color.
Setup: Remove the five trithilon cards from the card deck and set them aside; those represent real artifacts with actual historical value, which have no place in this game at all. Shuffle the remaining cards and place the deck face down in the center of the board. Place the player figures in front of the first bluestone, and the neutral figure. The neutral figure (the Chief Inspector) sits on the line between space 30 and space 1.
Players gather their bars and disks (fraudulent artifacts, by this or any other name) in a pile in front of themselves. It should be noted that the only functional difference in this game between a bar and a disk is that a disk is worth one movement point and a bar is worth two. Otherwise, both represent some shiny geegaw worth absolutely nothing to any respectable anthropologist. Luckily, respectable anthropologists have no place in this game at all.
Decide amongst yourselves who will go first by using a traditional method of your choosing, such as "Rock, Paper, Scissors" or a shovel fight.
Playing the Game
The game is played in rounds of three phases: Burying, Digging and Scoring. Burying always happens first.
Burying
Players take turns placing any one of their bars or disks from the pile in front of them (this is important in subsequent rounds) onto any of the thirty spaces on the board, as if burying them to be found later. Players may put a bar or a disk on a space already containing their opponent's pieces, however no space may have more than five movement points worth of bars and disks. This means that, for example, if a space already has two bars buried in it, a player may only put a disk in that space.
It is recommended that the first time this game is played, players should aim for a generally random arrangement of their buried junk. You'll want some junk on red spaces, some junk on blue spaces, some on crowded spaces, some all by itself. The Chief Inspector's records will look less suspicious that way.
Burying continues until all available bars and disks have been buried. When no one has anything left to bury, it's time to start digging.
Digging
Deal each player five cards from the top of the deck. If there are no cards left in the deck, shuffle the discard pile and replace the deck.
The player who buried second in this round gets to dig first. A digging player plays a card, moves the Inspector General according to the card they played, and sorts out the items dug up in the Inspector General’s new space.
There are two ways to play a card: for its number or for its color.
To play a card for its number, you must have at least one item buried on the space of the board that shares the number. Place the card in the discard pile and add up the total number of movement points buried in that space, then move the Inspector General that many spaces. You may move the Inspector General either clockwise or counterclockwise; as long as you're the one paying him off at the moment, he'll look where he’s told.
To play a card for its color, place the card in the discard pile and count up how many spaces on the board of that card's color hold at least one of your buried items. Then move the Inspector general that many spaces either clockwise or counterclockwise - again, your call.
Of course, sometimes you'll find that a card won't move the Inspector General at all. In that case, the card is a dead card. When you play it, place it in front of you and don't move the Inspector General. You've now wasted his time and given him nothing for his effort. That's a bad thing.
Please note that the Inspector General is not a patient man. If at any point the Inspector General does not move for four turns (four consecutive dead cards are played), he declares the site "more cleaned out than Howie Mandel's hairbrush", storms off and ends the game (See Ending the Game).
Once the Inspector General has moved, instruct him how to sort the items getting dug up in that space. He'll declare all of your items as priceless finds of immense cultural significance. That's a good thing. Take any of your pieces from that space and place them in front of you off of the board. Next, the Inspector General will declare any items he found belonging to your opponent to be precisely what it is - worthless junk dressed up in an effort of chicanery - and deposit them in the center of the board next to the discard pile never to be used again.
Now it's your opponent's turn to dig.
When each player has played out all five of their cards, the Digging phase ends.
Scoring
Each player counts up the total number of movement points shown in their items they recovered in the last Digging phase. They then move their figure that many spaces along the bluestone path. If any player has dead cards, they move their figure back one space for each dead card they have, and they place those dead cards in the discard pile.
If neither player has won the game (see Ending the Game), then the next round begins with a new burying phase, and the player who scored the most points in the last scoring phase gets the first turn to re-bury their recovered junk.
Ending the Game
When either player advances to the final bluestone, they have scammed their way out of debt and won the game. If the game has ended during a digging phase because the Inspector General stormed off and ended the game himself, the player whose figure has advanced the most bluestone spaces is declared the winner. Either way, the loser can go cry in the corner.
Sean, whom also answers to "Spardo," is a professional art geek who would like very much to someday be a professional game geek too. You can see his artwork and download goofy paper model kits at www.thinkblotstudios.com.
This rule set is for use with
Stonehenge: An
Anthology Board Game™ from Paizo Publishing.
Stonehenge may be purchased at
paizo.com
or at your favorite local game store. ©
2012
Paizo Publishing, LLC. Titanic Games, its logo, and Anthology Board Game are trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries.
All rights reserved. This contribution was made under the Anthology Board Game Library Agreement, whose conditions apply to the material in this document. For more free
Stonehenge
rule sets, visit the Stonehenge
Library at
paizo.com/stonehengelibrary.
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webmaster@paizo.com.
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