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Gamehelpmapmaker

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For tips on how to play mapmaker, see Tips_mapmaker

Theme

  • You are a mapmaker, which means you make maps... and determine who wins elections.

Setup

  • Each player chooses a party: Red Elephants, Blue Donkeys, Yellow Porcupines, or Green Leaves.
  • Voter tokens of the participating parties, along with the neutral token, are randomly distributed across the board.
    • Each party has tokens numbered 2 through 9 twice, plus a single 1 and a single 10.
  • With two players, only the central 37 counties are in play.
  • With three players, there are 55 counties, and with four, all 73 counties are played.
  • Note: this random setup does not give any player a noticeable advantage.

Goal

  • At the end of the game, the entire board will be sectioned off into districts.
  • Whoever has the most districts wins.

Game play

  • Players take turns placing district borders:
    • The first player starts by placing only one district border.
    • The second player places two. The next places three.
    • Then players continue in order, each placing four district borders per turn.
  • You can place district borders near one another or scattered across the board.
  • You cannot place them on edges of the board.
  • When the entire board is split into districts, the game ends.

Districts

  • A district is a fully closed-off group of counties satisfying the following properties:
    • There are at least 4 counties.
    • There is no way to split the counties into smaller districts.
  • All counties must become part of a district.
  • You can never surround fewer than four counties.
  • Note: it is possible to form districts of greater than 8 counties.
    • This will happen if the group cannot be split into separate districts of at least four counties each.
    • e.g. a Y-shaped district may not be split-able.
  • When a district is formed, the player with the most votes wins the district.
  • The winner places one of their district markers inside the district.
  • The winner of the district does not need to be the player who closes it off.
    • However, if there is a tie for most votes, whoever closed off the district gets to choose the winner among the tied players.

The winner

  • Whoever has the most districts at the end of the game wins.
  • If there is a tie, whoever (among tied players) controls the most swing counties wins.
  • A swing county is a county valued 0 or 1 (coloured purple).