Gamehelptictactrek

Overview

A two-player tile-laying game of about ten minutes. You are assigned ✖ or ⭕, and each turn a terrain tile is drawn from the bag for you and placed with your symbol face up, matching the terrain it is laid against.

Three of your symbol in a row earns you a campfire, and each campfire scores 1 point per empty space around it at the end of the game. The game lasts 24 turns, 12 each. Most points wins.

Components

• 26 Terrain tiles, double-sided — ✖ on one face, ⭕ on the other, same terrain on both.
• 12 Campfires, 6 per player. The ✖ campfires stand on logs, the ⭕ campfires on a stone disc.

Terrain	Count	Colour
Mountain	6	lavender
Desert	6	orange
Grassland	6	bright green
Forest	6	dark green
Lake	2	teal — wild, matches every terrain

Setup

All 26 tiles go into the bag, each player is assigned a symbol and takes their 6 campfires, and two tiles are drawn and placed side by side — one ✖ face up, one ⭕ face up. The opening pair does not have to match terrain, and both tiles are ordinary tiles that can form part of a row.

24 tiles remain in the bag: 12 turns each.

Taking a Turn

1. A tile is drawn for you

It appears above the board showing your symbol. There is no choice of tile, and both players can see it.

2. Place the tile

Legal spaces are highlighted — click one. The tile must go in an empty space orthogonally adjacent to a placed tile (corners do not count), and the placement is legal if any one of these holds:

Condition	Detail
Terrain match	It touches a placed tile of the same terrain.
Lake on the board	It touches a placed Lake, which matches everything.
Lake in hand	The drawn tile is a Lake, so it may go anywhere along the edge.
First of its terrain	That terrain is not on the tableau yet, so the tile may go anywhere along the edge.

If none of those yields a space — every matching tile is boxed in — the tile may be placed anywhere along the edge. A tile is never discarded and a turn is never skipped.

The tableau has no board and no size limit; it grows in any direction.

3. Make 3-in-a-row

If the placed tile completes a line of exactly three consecutive tiles — horizontal, vertical or diagonal — all showing your symbol and none carrying a campfire, you place a campfire on the tile you just played.

• Completing two lines at once still earns only one campfire.
• A tile carrying a campfire is spent: its symbol cannot be used in any later 3-in-a-row.
• Lines may overlap, as long as no tile in the new line of three carries a campfire.

If you complete a row with all six campfires already out, you may instead move one of them onto the tile you just played — click a highlighted campfire, or press "Leave campfires where they are". A vacated tile becomes usable in later rows again.

Scoring

Each campfire scores 1 point per empty space among the 8 spaces around its tile, orthogonal and diagonal — 0 to 7 points. Empty spaces are counted for every campfire beside them, so a gap shared by two of your campfires scores twice. Campfires still in your supply score nothing.

Scores update live as tiles are placed, and every campfire shows its value on the board once the game ends.

The game ends the moment the last tile is placed. Tiebreakers: most points, then most campfires placed, then the player who took the final turn loses.

Example

. is empty, X and O are tiles, and [X] and [O] are tiles carrying a campfire:

 .   .   .   .   .
 .  [X]  .  [X]  .
 X   X   O   X   X
 .   X  [O]  X   .
 .   .   O   .   .

• Each ✖ campfire has five empty spaces around it — three above, one either side — for 5 points each, 10 in total. The two empty spaces between and above them are counted by both.
• The ⭕ campfire is surrounded by tiles on six sides, leaving only the two spaces below it: 2 points.

✖ leads 10 to 2: where a campfire is lit matters as much as how many you place.