Rulebook
In-depth instructions for gameplay
Overview
Strategically stack tiles to conquer islands and their biomes in this board expanding, resource control game for 2-5 players. Tactically unleash volcanoes to disrupt your opponents and unlock powers, causing molten lava to cascade downhill, destroying everything in its path. When the lava reaches the ocean, rich volcanic soils emerge inviting new opportunities for expansion across these evershifting lands.
Quickstart
Get up and playing in 5 mins
Ready…
This guide gets you up and running in a two player game - instructing you how to make your first few turns, they aren’t necessarily the best moves to take, but cover a wide range of options. It ignores a few things like the volcanic powers and sacrifices - you can skip them for the first playthrough or add them later for a more indepth experience.
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DIY
How to make your own set to play at home
I’d love for you to give this game a go. Here’s how I made it in Australia and how much it’d set you back to create your own:
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Overall Theoretical Thoughts on Strategy:
Aggressive Disruption: Focus on volcanoes (especially with Lateral Eruption or Magma Bomb if it proves effective), Pack Critters, and Cooperative Critters (against non-cooperative opponents) to actively remove opponents and seize territory.
Expansionist Engine: Prioritize Bountiful Resources, Crafty Critters, and Flying Critters. Aim to create and utilize volcanic soil for rapid expansion and control multiple biome types for resource generation. Island summoning would also fit here.
Pay Sacrifice to the Bonus Boss: Exalted Sacrifices, Frugal Ritual, and churn out sacrifices for points. Target a few key areas to gain the tallest biome and largest biome bonuses.
Defensive/Economic Build: Herding Critters for bonus resources/points, Lava Diversion, and Volcanic Migration to protect assets, while steadily building a wide and connected board presence for biome edge scoring.
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Volcanic power icons
Adding in reminders as to when everything can activate
The latest has been trying to improve the player prompt cards so they know when they can do things.
Also in this blog post I discuss new powers, connection points lock in play style, and refining symbiosis - the chase the leader play style.
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Strategy
General and advanced tactics
General tips
- Aim to target tiles with multiple players on them
- Connect opponents together and knock them off
- Set off a volcano
- Maximising the same colour early on will help set off an early volcano
- Look to split up well connected biomes
- Look to take over the tallest stack (particularly in end game)
January and the tidbits
Digging into the parts where I'd got stuck
Finally got around to updating the colours across the rulebook so it reads better for colourblind and in black and white. Very annoyed at myself for not doing that in the first place. It took much much longer than expected (even with the select similar and colour adjust in Illustrator).
New volcanic power idea: Amphibian critters - can move off land tiles into the sea in evacuations or move
Continue reading...The Smog Clears
No more smog, colour accessibilty & craftier critters
Based on feedback from the Melbourne Incubator play session, the smog mechanic has been removed. This means that Volcanoes activate straight away, and result in instant feedback of getting to claim the empty tile.
Continue reading...To do
A public to do list to keep myself accountable
Rules & playtesting
(I have realised all of these points are incredibly hard to check off as they never feel complete)
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Visual examples for all the rules
- Make agile critters clearer
- Erosion visual example
- Landslide visual example
- Lava diversion 2 across for large screens resize
- Rift visual example
- Supervolcanic eruption now that smog doesn’t exist??
- Symbiosis play type visual example
- Fix the activating a volcano instructions!
- Volcanic power icons
- Volcanic power cards
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‘Finish’ the rules
- Consider wipe-out scarce resource rules/trapped critters
- 4-5 player potential left and right engagement system
- Deep test the powers
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Attend Melbourne Incubator at least 3 times
- November
- January
- February
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Playtest examples and results page/s (.csv it?)