Clive/Pentagram2

Pentagram 2

A second-pass at a feedback/synergy-oriented game.

Material

Player mats, with areas in five colours (currently black, purple, blue, orange, yellow) for storing money
Coins
Meeples in player colours
A central tableau with five slots in each of the five colours, labelled 4 3 2 1 0
A deck of 60 cards

The deck contains two "green" positive-feedback cards for each directed pair of colours and one "red" negative-feedback.

Setup

Shuffle the deck
Give each player their meeples and mat
Each player starts with 1 coin on each colour area of their mat

Play, turns

Players take turns clockwise in the normal way.

On the player's turn they do three things:

Place a card (mandatory)

The player draws the top card of the deck and places it in an empty space on the tableau. Drawing and placing is not optional, but they get to choose where the card is placed.

Place a worker (optional)

If the player wishes, and is able, they may then place a worker on the card they just placed. (Not on a card that was already there.)

To do this, they pay the price indicated in that space. (Placing in a 0 space is free.) To pay, they look at the colour of the space where they placed the card and pay the price using coins from their area of the corresponding colour.

The number of coins in an area may never fall to zero; it must always remain at 1 or more. So if, for example, a player had three coins on orange they could place a worker on orange 0,1,2 but not on orange 3,4. (They can, of course, place a card on orange 3 or 4 without placing a worker on it.)

Payout (if necessary)

Working from left (4) to right (0), consider each space in the colour-row where the new card was placed.

If the space and all spaces to its right are occupied, it pays out.

When a space with a positive/green card pays out, each player with a worker on it looks at their fortune of the "from" colour and adds that amount of money to their fortune of the "to" colour. So if, for example, a player has two yellow coin and four black, and a positive yellow-to-black card pays out, they would end up with two yellow coin and six black.

Similarly, a negative/red card pays out negatively: each player subtracts their fortune of the "from' colour from their fortune of the "to" colour. If this would reduce their fortune of the "to" colour below 1, they are left with 1 coin (not 0) and suffer no further penalty.

The colour of the space where the card was placed is unimportant when paying out.

When a worker pays out, it is moved to the space to the right. If it is moved off the 0 space, it returns to its owner.

Then the card is discarded, leaving the space empty.

Inherently, when a higher-numbered space pays out, every lower-numbered space will pay out as well. Process them in order from high to low, gradually moving all the workers towards 0 and then back to their owners.

This means that spaces can "daisy-chain". Say a player places positive orange-to-purple on yellow 1 and puts a worker on it, when there is a positive purple-to-blue on yellow 0. Their orange fortune will be added to their purple then their purple fortune will be added to their blue.

The end of the game

Game-end trigger TBD. Possibilities include:

Someone getting a "4" payout
Running out of money
Someone running out of workers
The deck being exhausted (otherwise, presumably discards get shuffled when the deck runs out)
Having five colours of resource cube instead of money, and ending the game when any colour runs out

The mechanism for choosing the winner is also TBD. Possibilities include:

Total fortune
Area with largest fortune
Area with smallest fortune (eat your heart out, Knizia)