Sandcastles

2-6 players

Components

• 100 cards
• One 5-minute timer

Introduction

In Sandcastles, you play a family at the beach, each rushing to build your castle before the tide comes in.

The Cards

The cards contain different pieces of sandcastles. They may contain walls, parts of towers, or other components to the sandcastle. The walls enter and leave the card through the card edges. The tower sections are one quarter of a round tower located at the corner of the cards (except for the bridge cards, which have a half-tower at either end). There are three special cards (Feather, Shell, Bridge) which are worth bonus points if their conditions are met.

Setup

Deal five cards to every player. Divide the rest of the cards into five piles and place them face down in the center of the table.

Game Play

A round of play consists of five parts.

Initial Construction Phase

Every player takes her five cards and starts work on her sandcastle. Cards may be played in any orientation subject to the following rules:

• Any card played must have at least part of one edge touching part of the edge of another card.
• Any castle parts (towers or walls) must connect properly across wall edges. You cannot play a card in a way that makes a wall or tower truncate against another card edge. Blank edges may touch other blank edges.
• You may not play a card in a position where it rests on top of part of another card (except Feather and Shell).
• You may have separate parts of your castle unconnected by towers or walls as long as your cards are all touching each other in one set.

Once everyone is ready, proceed to the next phase.

Rising Tide Phase

Now the tide is starting to come in, so you have to finish your castle quickly. Activate the timer, then flip the five piles of cards over – the whole pile, not just the top card. During this phase, it’s a free-for-all – everybody plays at the same time. The way it works is like this:

• You may take a card from the top of one of the five piles at any time.
• You must add this card to your castle in a legal play.
• If you can’t add the card or choose not to, you may discard it face down in front of you.
• Once you discard a card, it can never be used.
• You may not take more than one card from the central piles at a time. If you take one of these cards, you must play it or discard it before taking another one.
• You may rearrange your sandcastle’s cards as long as they all end up played legally or discarded. You cannot take any new cards until your whole castle is connected legally.

When the timer runs out, high tide has arrived, and it’s time to score the castles.

First Scoring Phase

Castles score as follows:

Towers: Every completed tower is worth two points.

Courtyards: Any enclosed area (completely surrounded by walls and towers) is worth five points.

Special Cards: The Bridge, Feather, and Shell cards have bonuses that are scored if their conditions are met.

Penalties are assessed as follows:

Illegal Play Penalty: If your castle contains illegally placed cards, you lose three points for every card that is illegal. Illegal cards must be removed from the castle before the rest of the castle is scored.

Discard Penalty: Every card a player discards costs one point. If your castle is split into multiple parts (from rearranging, or after an illegal card is removed), you must chose one part of the castle to score, and the rest of the cards count as discards.

Bonus points are awarded for these specific goals:

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: The castle that includes the most cards is awarded three points.

Get Off My Lawn: The biggest enclosed area in a castle (the area whose boundary is composed of the most cards) is worth an additional three points.

Chinese Emperor: The longest unbroken wall (consisting of the most cards connected by the same wall without being interrupted by a space or tower) is worth three points.

Bullying Phase

If your opponents have built a better castle than you did, now’s your chance to get even. For every player who scored more points than you, you may smash one piece (i.e. remove one card) from their castle.

Second Scoring Phase

After the smashing, everyone gets to score what’s left of their castles again as in the First Scoring Phase, except that the Discard and Illegal Play penalties are not applied a second time. The Bonuses are scored again.

Yard Sale

Game object:

• Each member of your family is trying to raise the most money from their yard sale.

Types of cards:

• Items
• Every good yard sale has to have good items. Each item has a price tag, a subject, and a unique rule. (figure 1 card A-C)
• Shoppers
• Can’t sell items without customers! Each shopper has a cash on hand total, a favorite/dislike subject, maximum purchases, and a shopping time (1 shaded section = 1 round). (figure 1, card D-F)
• Sales Pitches
• Sales pitches change the opinion of the shoppers. It can add positive opinions to your own items, or you can even sabotage the opinion of other player’s items, but be careful as often times cards do this through changing prices! (figure 1, card G-H)
• Cash
• This is the cash paid for items by shoppers. They are broken down into 1, 5, 10, and 20s. (figure 1, card I)

Game Setup:

• Each player is dealt 5 sales pitches face down and put into their hand, 5 items face up in front of them, and then 5 shoppers face up to the center of the table. (figure 2)

Turns:

1. There are 4 hours for the game. Since each turn is a 15-minute increment, there are 16 turns to the game. Keep this in mind.
2. Starting with the player who gained the most money the previous round (or who has the most real money on them if this is the first round) starts.
3. The active player my play one pitch and assign one item to a shopper then passes the turn.
4. Play continues in this fashion until all players have passed or 15 minutes has passed in real time. At this time each shopper will purchase the item with the highest positive opinion rating and the next highest positive opinion rating that fits into the shopper’s budget. Each player collects money based off any altering of the price of any item they sold. (figure 2)
5. After this, remove any shopper whose shopping time is up and then deal out new shoppers up to 5 active shoppers.
6. Deal out 5 sales pitches to each player. They can keep pitches not used in the previous rounds.
7. Deal items to each player so they have 5 items again. If a player successfully sold all 5 items in the previous round that player receives 2 extra items this round.
8. After 16 rounds, the yard sale is over and the winner is determined based on how much cash they raised.

Opinions:

1. Opinions are calculated in positives and negatives and are affected by preference (favorite/dislikes) and by sales pitches.
2. A shopper will choose items that are in the subject they favor above subjects they dislike if no sales pitch is used to alter their opinion. Favorites give +1 and dislikes give –1 to opinion.
3. Sales pitches can affect the opinion of any item/shopper. The targets of any given sales pitch is defined on the card.

Multiple items to one shopper:

1. If multiple items are trying to be sold to one shopper at the end of a round opinion is key. Every shopper will buy a certain number of items up to a maximum cash limit. The highest rated opinion item is sold then the next highest opinion that fits the maximum price will be sold and it will trickle down until the maximum sales is met or no other positive opinion items can fit under the maximum cash.
2. Cases of ties in opinion are given to the item that is favored by the shopper. If both items are of the favored subject or both are not then the cheaper item is sold. If both can be sold, then both will be sold.

Figure 1

Figure 2