Mountainhome

Welcome, bearded traveller!

Let me tell you the tale of the weary wandering dwarves, roaming the land to find the perfect place to put their roots down. Are you the dwarven leader to unite them all? Leave your pickaxe by the chest, sit down by the crackling fire and get a mug of our own foamy ale. Revel at the treasures we have amassed.

We want you here in our community, a place we one day strive to call the Mountainhome.

Setting up the game

Setting up the game requires setting up a deck for every player and a common exploration deck and the Mountain Goat Co. building office.

In order to set up the construction office for X players,

• Collect all of the unique project cards and place it on the table.
• Collect X copies of each advanced building card, shuffle and place them on top of the projects pile.
• Collect X copies of each basic building card, shuffle and place them on top of the advanced buildings pile.

Then place top 3 cards of the resulting pile face up next to it. The construciton office is ready.

Then, each player draws their starting deck and shuffles it. The deck contains

• one of eight legendary dwarfs of their choice;
• nine resource cards: I, II, III of shinies, booze and rocks;
• Clan Hall Unique building blueprint;
• one dwarf labourer card,

Total starting deck should contain 12 cards. Players shuffle the deck and place it face down on the table - this is their draw pile.

Exploration deck consists of resources, events, building blueprints and dwarves:

• collect a copy of II, III and IV of shinies, booze and rocks for every player in the game;
• pick 2X + 2 random dwarves, where X is the amount of players. For example, for a 3 player game there should be 8 dwarves picked at random;
• pick 4X random events and 2X random recurring events, where X is the amount of players;
• all of the unique random building blueprints.

Shuffle the exploration deck and place it in the middle of the table. Each player draws 6 cards from their draw pile.

The game is ready to begin.

Turn order

Players play in turns, starting from the player agreed upon and going clockwise. Player turn consists of several steps:

• Action step
• Exploration step
• Prepare for next turn

Action step

During a player’s action step they get to do any amount of the following actions:

• play their dwarf’s special effects to interact with any of the decks, other players or gain additional resources or play their dwarf to commit them to a construction job if they can pay the resource cost
• play any event cards from their hand, paying any cost with the resources at hand
• place blueprints into their town for later construction
• use their buildings to acquire additional resources to pay for construction or event cards or purchasing
• purchase a building blueprint from the Mountain Goat Building Co. (once per turn)

Once the players have exhausted their potential actions or don’t wish to play more of them, they move onto the exploration phase.

Out of turn effects

Some effects could be played out of turn order. Anything involving exhausting a card for resource gain can be played out of turn or during bids (but before the cards have been revealed) to be added to the bid value.

Exploration step

During the exploration phase players draw and resolve the top card of the exploration deck: If it is a resource, building blueprint or an event card, they put it into their discard pile. They get to draw it later to play it.

• if it is an immediate or a recurring event, they read it out loud and the table get to resolve it. Immediate events get shuffled back into the exploration pile at the end;
• if it is a dwarf, they reveal it and all players begin to bid shinies and booze for that dwarf. Winner of the bid gets to add the dwarf to their deck;
• if it is any other card, they add it to their deck.

Prepare for next turn

Player discards their hand and turns up-right all of their exhausted buildings, then they draw their new hand. The player draws a new set of 6 cards from their draw pile. If there are not enough cards in the draw pile, players draw however many cards are left in it, shuffle their discard pile and place it in place of a draw pile, then draw the remaining cards. This ensures that players are constantly cycling through their decks as they play.

This cycling of the deck happens at any time players would need to draw a card and there are not enough cards in the draw pile. This includes dwarf effects, bonus draw from bidding and all other situations where players draw cards.

After the final step, the next player gets to do their turn. If for some reason players had to discard more cards from their hand, they don’t draw new cards until the end of their next turn.

Winning the game

The game is concluded after more than half of the dwarves have been found and added to players’ decks. All the victory points (VPs) are tallied up and the player who has the most VPs is declared the winner. If there is a tie in the amount of VPs, the game continues until one of the players gets ahead of another by obtaining victory points through any means (constructing a building granting VPs or getting another dwarf into their deck).

Mechanics and keywords

Following is the explanation of common keywords and gameplay mechanics mentioned in the rulebook and on the cards.

Bidding

Whenever a dwarf has been revealed or any event card has players bid for something, the bidding game is played. The game is executed in following steps:

• every player draws 2 extra cards to whatever amount they currently have, ignoring their hand size limit;
• players commit any amount of cards onto the table face down in secret. This could be any card, including non-resource or dwarf cards. Players can choose to not lay out any cards onto the table or take back their bid at any time before the cards have been revealed;
• when the players have laid out their cards, they declare that they are ready to reveal;
• after this point it is not possible to go back. The cards must stay on the table and players reveal them one by one, resolving any potential effects written on them.
• the player with the most designated value in all their committed cards wins the bid and all other players lose the bid. In some situations the game asks to pick the worst loser - that means picking the player who bid the least value;
• after the bidding is over, every player must trash exactly one of the cards they committed. It is not possible to trash dwarves this way;
• if bidding was initiated as a result of an event card, continue resolving the event after the bidding is done.

Tie Breakers

When a bid would result in a tie, the winner of the bid is the player who had trashed the most valuable card for a given situation. In a rare event that people trash the same value of the card, they get to trash an additional card. The process happens until the tie is resolved. Certain buildings and events can also automatically resolve ties, such as in the event where a player owns a special building or an event that would do so.

Construction

In order to construct a building in their town, a player has to play a blueprint from their hand. The blueprint is placed on a table in an exhausted state. Unfinished buildings do not turn upright during the owner’s ready-up step. Commit a dwarf to a construction job and pay the step’s construction cost. When the last step of construction is completed, the building is turned up-right right away and can now be used to trigger its abilities during the player’s turn.

Adding, discarding and trashing cards

Unless explicitly stated on the card, whenever players are required to get new cards through events, exploration or buying, cards are added into their discard pile so that they can only enter play upon a reshuffle of the discard pile.

Discarding refers to placing a card into the discard pile. This will allow it to be used again after a cycle of draws and reshuffles.

Trashing refers to placing a card into a common trash area outside of play - this results in a card being out of the game. Cards can only be interacted in there through special events and other mechanics.

Mountain Goat Building Co.

At any point during their turn, a player can purchase one basic building blueprint from the Mountain Goats Building Co. shop. For this, a player has to pay a total of 3 shinies and place the blueprint into their discard pile. Then they draw the top card off the blueprint deck and put it in place of the purchased card.

Credits

The game is prroudly presented to you by the members of teams Irrelephant & Devoted Pineapple.

Eugene 'marengo_hue' Rebedailo Game design, Layout

Karina 'Hel' Sterzel Creative Writing, Playtesting

Ørjan 'Jasker' Polden Artwork, Layout, Playtesting

Paulina 'DeCannelle' Ćwikowska Playtesting