Rio Grande Games 70 User Manual

Contents

A board showing a vast area divided into 60 territories of 4 different

types. These are grouped into

12 regions, each containing 5 territo­ries; these 12 regions, bordered by rivers, the shores of lakes, and the
edge of the board, are used only in the preparation phase of the
game. The 60 territories are of 4 types: forests (dark green), moun­tains (light gray), steppes (tan) and grasslands (light green). Also on
the board, but separated from the playing area, are a chart of the five
epochs of play and a scoring track of 60 spaces.

60 huts in 5 different colors (12 of each color)
5 secret clan cards in the 5 colors
5 small scoring discs in the 5 colors
12 village chips
1 rules sheet

Game idea

The game is set in late prehistory, a time of transition – when our dis­tant ancestors, who had struggled and barely survived for ages in very
small nomadic groups, began to feel that their lives would be more

Players: 2 – 4
Age: 10 and up
Lenght: 30 minutes

Region with
5 territories

60 huts

5 scoring discs

Board (12 regions - 60 territories)

Mountain

Forest

Grassland

Steppe

Grassland

Epochs chart

Village chips

5 Clan cards

Scoring track

secure and less arduous if they formed larger groups. This led to the
formation of the first villages.

14

End of the game

The game ends immediately after the 12th village is founded and
scored. This last village always scores the 5 bonus points, no matter
the territory in which it is founded. It can also happen that no more
moves are possible before the 12th village is founded. In this case,
the game ends immediately without scoring more villages.

At this point, all the players reveal their secret colors, turning their
clan cards face up. Remove the colored scoring discs from the board
that are not in play. The players move their scoring discs forward on
the scoring track to score the village chips they collected for founding
villages (1 point per chip). The player with the most points is the
winner!

Tactical hints

• Try to disguise your color as much as possible, at least at the begin­ning of the game. Avoid moves that favor it too much. Try to discover
your opponents’ colors, paying attention to their moves. You may also
want to create situations which force them to reveal themselves (for
example, force the next player to choose whether to move a certain
hut to a village or not).

• Often it is not possible to easily identify an opponent’s color, but
you can learn that a color is not his color. Thus, you can proceed by
elimination to discover the player’s color.
The fewer the players, the more this point becomes important.

• Founding a village is very important, because you gain extra points,
which can be very important in the final score.

• The more your huts are dispersed, the more occasions they will have
to be a part of founded villages. Also, try to concentrate your oppo­nents’ huts as much as possible in a few territories.
Pay attention to the territories in which there are all 5 colors! If you
only have one hut in a very valuable village, you can gain a big score,
but if all 5 colors are present, you will score nothing.
Move away the huts of one color and try to concentrate many huts of
the other colors.

• Don’t let the villages which contain your huts be founded in unfa­vorable territories. Try to found villages, which do not contain your
huts, in unfavorable territories.

• Remember that a village with 7 or more huts can no longer be
moved!

• Never forget the epoch chart: every time the epoch changes, the
favorable and unfavorable territories change. If only one move is
needed to form a village, try to accomplish it in the epoch, which is
more propitious for you and less for your opponents. If you realize
that a very dangerous village is about to be founded, try to change
the epoch in such a way that the village is founded in an unfavorable
territory.

• Creating two villages in the same move is often a big advantage,
especially if you cross two epochs. Then, you can decide which is
scored in which epoch! Be careful not to give an opponent such an
opportunity and be ready to exploit it if your opponent gives it to
you.

• The last village is also very important: not only does it have the
biggest bonus, but it also ends the game, destroying all unformed vil-

the first villages

© 2002 Venice Connection
© 2002 Winning Moves Deutschland

www.venice-connection.com

Leo Colovini

Example: in a
just founded vil­lage there are 9
huts: 4 black, 2
red, 1 green, 1
yellow and 1
blue. Since all 5
colors are pre­sent, the single
green, yellow,
and blue huts
are eliminated
and removed
from the board. The size of the founded
village is also reduced to 6.

5. Epochs

The game is played over 5 epochs. In each of the first four epochs,
one type of territory is particularly favorable for the formation of vil­lages while another type is extremely unfavorable, so that any village
completed there in that epoch is inevitably doomed. On the epoch
chart, the left side indicates the favorable type of territory, the right
side the unfavorable one.
In the 5th epoch every kind of territory is favorable.
When a village is founded in a favorable territory, the clans involved
score bonus points for the village. When a village is founded in an
unfavorable territory, it is destroyed and the clans involved score no
points!
The number of villages founded in each epoch corresponds to the
number of village chips in that epoch (4 in the 1st epoch, 3 in the
2nd and so on).
An epoch comes to an end when all of its village chips have been
taken. Then, the next epoch begins.
When player makes a move that causes 2 or more villages to be found­ed at once, that player decides the order that the villages were found­ed in. This can be particularly important when the founding cross
epoch boundaries. Also, if a player founds the 12th and last village
and more in the same move, he decides which is the 12th village (and
it scores with the 5 point bonus). Any other villages founded with the
12th village do not score.

The value of a village

When a village is founded, its basic value is the total number of huts
in it (after any strife). There are 3 possibilities:

1) The village is founded in the kind of territory that is neither favor­able nor unfavorable: in this case the basic value of the village is the
total value.

2) The village is founded in the favorable kind of territory for that

epoch (left side on the reference table): in this case, the value of the
village is increased by the value of the bonus in that epoch (shown
on the epoch chart), which increases from epoch to epoch.

3) The village is founded in the unfavorable kind of territory for that
epoch (right side on the reference table): in this case the village is
doomed, its value decreases to zero and all its huts are removed from
the board.

After calculating the value of the village, all the scoring discs of the
colors present in that village are moved forward on the scoring track
by the value of the vil­lage, regardless of the
number of huts of the
color. That is, having
more huts in a village,
does not give an advan­tage.

There are 5 huts in village
1: 3 blue, 1 yellow, and 1
red. It is founded in the
1st epoch in the forest:
the favored type of territo­ry. Thus, the village is
worth 6 points: 5 for the
huts and 1 bonus point.
The blue, red, and yellow
scoring discs are moved 6
spaces on the scoring
track.

3

How to play

There are always 5 clans in play (regardless of the number of players),
each clan identified by a color: red, blue, green, yellow, and black.
Each player tries to score points for his secret clan, while keeping his
color secret from his opponents.

1. Start

Choose a starting player by lot. That player starts and then play con­tinues in clockwise order.

2. Moves

There is only one kind of move in this game: the player, whose turn it
is, moves all the huts from a territory of his choice to a neighboring
territory, provided neither territory is empty. In this manner some ter­ritories become vacant while villages are formed in others.
There is an important restriction: a player cannot move huts from a
territory that already contains 7 or more huts. A player may move huts
to such a territory. In the rare case of two neighboring territories
containing 7 or more huts each, a player may move the smaller group
to the larger one. If both territories contain the same number of huts,
the player may choose which group to move.

In this area, a
player can move
the group 1 huts
to only two possi­ble territories, as
the other neigh­boring territories
are empty. A
player may not
move the group 2
huts as they
number 7 and
cannot be moved.

Note. Two territories separated by a river are adjacent; two territories
separated by a lake are not adjacent.

3. Villages

When a player moves huts such that a territory with huts (or a single
hut) is completely surrounded by empty territories or the edge of the
board, a village is founded in that territory. When a village is founded,
the player who made the move takes the next village chip from the
epoch chart (the chips are first taken from the first epoch, and then
the second, and so on) and places it before him on the table (at the
end of the game he will score one point per chip). The player then
calculates the value of the village and the scoring discs are moved
accordingly on the scoring track.

The huts in area
1 become a
founded village
when the huts in
area 2 are
moved, either to
area 1 or to area

3. The huts in
area 2 may not
be moved to area

, as that terri-

tory is empty.

4. Strife

The different clans (represented by the different colored huts) general­ly get along peacefully. However, when all five colors are present
when a village is founded, there is strife. In this case, when the vil­lage is founded (but not before), all single huts of a color are elimi­nated.

Preparation

• Distribute the 60 huts on the board, one per territory, as follows:
form 12 groups of 5 huts (each hut a different color), place each of
these groups in one of the regions; then place the 5 huts randomly, 1
each in the 5 territories of that region. This procedure ensures an
adequate dispersion of the five colors throughout the board.

• Shuffle the 5 colored clan cards and deal one face down to each

player. Don’t let other players see what color you received. Return
the unused card (or cards, if fewer than 4 are playing), face down to
the box.

• Place the 12 village chips face up on the spaces of the epoch chart.

• Place the 5 small scoring discs behind the starting line of the scor­ing track.

2

2

1

1

2

3

In the 3rd epoch, the steppe is
the favored type of territory.
Therefore, the clans involved
earn 3 bonus points.

In the 2nd epoch, the grassland
is the unfavored type of territo­ry. The village’s value is 0!

+1

+3