Spice Traitors
TBD
| Designer(s): Sam | Match Type: MM (for 9 players) |
| Featured in: Genius One | |
Spice Traitors
Summary 🧂
In "Spice Traitors," merchant guilds will compete to control the trader that earns the most money, while minimizing tolls and avoiding the sabotage of other diabolical "traitors" who will do anything to dispatch the competition.
This game can last anywhere from 2 to 5 rounds.
Set-Up ("Round 0") 🌍
Round 0 is a "Set-Up" Round. In this round, you will...
✅ Pick which cities you'd like each of your three "traders" to start in. This information will be publicly known. You can start multiple traders in the same city.
✅ Bid gold for what round you'd like to be "traitor", if any
There are three rounds where you can be bid to be traitor.
You are allowed to bid any whole number amount of gold on one of three rounds (Round 1, Round 2, or Round 3) or none. You can’t bid to be traitor on more than one of these rounds.
If you win a bid, you will be the "traitor" for that round, and the amount bid will be deducted from the initial earnings of all three of your traders.
If you lose a bid, there is no penalty - the amount you bid will be refunded.
If there's a tie for highest bid, then the highest unique number bid will win instead.
If there are no valid bids for a round, no one will be traitor for that round.
You may bid 0. You may also refuse to bid.
The traitor lineup will be announced at the end of Round 0 (who will be traitor for Rounds 1, 2, and 3).
However, players will not learn how much each traitor bid until the end of the game.
Then we will move on to Rounds 1, 2, and 3.
Traveling (Rounds 1-3/Summer, Winter Fall) ⛵
Each player placed three traders during set-up. In a given round, you may move any number of your traders from their current city to another connected city. (You may choose to move three, two, one or none)
When a trader travels a given route, they "pay a toll" and lose the amount of gold listed on the route. If that trader personally visited that city for the first time on their route,
they will earn 100 gold.
Special Rules 🤔
Route Discount Rule
If an even number of traders take the same path, they will receive a 50% discount - all traders on the route pay only half the toll. These traders can belong to the same players, or different players. All traders who take a path are counted, regardless of travel direction.
Garnet Bonuses
Some routes are labelled with +1 garnet. When one of your traders passes a garnet marker you immediately gain 1 garnet; each trader can gain at most 1 garnet in this way..
Final Round (Spring) 🌼
Round 4 is special.
In Round 4, you may attempt to move each trader to up to two connected cities instead of just one., paying tolls for each route they travel and earning money for the cities they visit. When processing, each trader will simultaneously travel to their first city, then simultaneously move to the second one, receiving discounts if there are an even number of traders during a certain simultaneous movement.
During this round you may bid any amount of gold and submit a plan of three routes to cut, that follow Traitor Rules (see Traitor section)...
If you bid the highest unique amount, you will act as this round's "traitor" and cut the routes you listed, receiving the Traitor bonuses if players traversed your routes.
The player who was traitor during the final round will be publicly announced.
Traitors 🕵️
Traitors are vile saboteurs who thwart competitors by shutting various trade routes down. The traitors for Rounds 1, 2, and 3 will be made public at the start of the game.
Each round's "traitor" will remove up to three routes from the board. If any trader attempted to move along one of those three routes... the trader "dies" and is removed from the game. For every "trader" who dies on a cut route during that round, that round's "traitor" will receive a 5 gold "bonus."
Traitors have two restrictions when making cuts.
+They cannot make cuts to the board such that it becomes impossible to visit every other city when starting in a certain city (e.g, a route of some length must still exist that connects all cities on the board together).
+They cannot cut multiple routes that connect to the same city
Other than that, they are free to make cuts as the wish, including cuts that kill their own traders.
Game End ✅
The game ends if either of the following conditions are fulfilled...
+All three of a player's traders are dead.
+Four rounds pass.
When the game ends, the scoring will take place as follows...
If you earned bonus(s) for being traitor for a given round, the amount of gold you earned will be added to all your (living) traders.
Then, if you won bid(s) for being traitor for a given round, the amount of gold you bid will be deducted from all of your (living) traders.
Dead traders are automatically given a score/gold count of 0. Any traders with negative scores/gold will also be bumped up to 0 gold.
The winning player is the one who has the single trader that earned the most gold. They will receive 2 TOLS (one for themselves, and one to distribute to another player).
The losing player (EC) will be the player whose highest-earning trader earned the least amount of gold.
Garnets
When bidding to become traitor, you may bid garnets in place of gold, with 1 garnet being valued at 3 gold during the auction.
(The garnet will be returned to you if your bid does not win).
If the game lasts all four rounds, the prize pool will increase by $10.
Map used for MM below:
Note: All trader locations, and who those traders belong to will be public each round. I will also keep track of all trader gold.
@Player clarification - you send a bid to be traitor for only 1 of the 3 rounds at most
Bonuses and penalties and added and subtracted to each individual traitor’s total. So, if you bid 100 to be traitor, all your traders will lose 100 gold at the end of the game.
@Player the city you start in counts a visit - the trader gets 100 gold
@Player If a garnet route is cut the same round your trader travels on it, you don't get the garnet. 