Gamehelppaxpamir

Overview

In Pax Pamir, each player assumes the role of a nineteenth-century Afghan leader attempting to forge a new state after the collapse of the Durrani Empire. Western histories often call this period “The Great Game” because of the role played by the Europeans who attempted to use Central Asia as a theater for their own rivalries

To win the game, have the most victory points after the final Dominance Check is resolved, or have a lead of at least 4 points after any Dominance Check is resolved.

If players are tied for victory points after the final Dominance Check, the player with the most red stars in their court among the tied players wins. If there is still a tie, the player with the most rupees among the tied players wins. If there is still a tie, whoever can cook the best chopan kebab wins.

Starting Loyalty

During setup, starting with a random player, each player chooses their starting loyalty to any of the three coalitions (Afghan, British and Russian). (See "Loyalty and Influence" below.)

After the last player has chosen their starting loyalty, that player will take the first turn. The game is now ready to play.

Turn

On your turn, you may take 0-2 actions (plus any free bonus actions) then perform Cleanup.

The three action types are: Purchase, Play, and Card Action:

Purchase	Purchasing cards from the market is done via a skip penalty cost, i.e. the first card is free, if you wish to buy card 2, pay 1 rupee to card 1, if you wish to buy card 3, pay 1 rupee to card 1 and 1 rupee to card 2, and so on. If the card you purchased had rupees from before, you gain these rupees. (If when paying a skip cost, one or more spaces to pay the penalty to is empty, place the payment on the card on the opposite row first.) If you purchase an event card, this is resolved then discarded, all other cards purchased go into your hand.
Play	To play a card, check the region it is associated with. If you are the ruler, or there is no ruler, the card is free to play. If another player is the ruler, they may require you to pay them rupees equal to the number of tribes they have in that region in order to play the card. You may offer any number of rupees up to their number of tribes, including 0. The ruler will then accept or reject the offer. If the full cost is paid, it is automatically accepted. (Depending on the game state, players may wish to help each other out by waiving some or all of the bribe.) If the criteria to play is met, you must play the card to either the far left or far right of your current Court row. If the card is a Patriot which doesn't match your Loyalty, you must change loyalty. See "Loyalty and Influence" below. Finally, resolve all Impact Symbols.
Card Action	After a card is in your Court, you can take one of the actions it provides. Some cards just provide a single action. However, if a card shows multiple icons, you must only pick one to use each turn. Some actions are free, only taking an action point, whilst others have additional costs such as rupees. When a card has spies on it, the owner must pay a bribe of rupees to the player with the most spies on the card to use that card's action(s). (i.e. if player 2 has 1 spy on card A, and player 3 has 2 spies on Card A, player 1 has to pay player 3 2 Rupees to use an action.) If there is a tie for most spies, you do not have to pay a bribe.

Impact Symbols

A Camel has you place a road coalition block on a border of the card's region

A Jezail has you place an army coalition block on the card's region

A Weighing Scales gives you 2 Rupees and reminds you that the card is Leveraged (see "Cards")

A Cylinder on Card has you place a Spy Cylinder on a matching region card in any player's court

A Crown has you place a Tribe Cylinder on the card's region

All the Suits have you to change the Favoured Suit

Card Actions

There are 6 main action types cards may provide

Tax	Take Rupees equal to the card's rank from a player who has cards in their court from a region you rule (Economic Stars can counter this). If you can't or don't want to tax another player, you can tax the market.
Gift	Place a cylinder on a gift space at a cost of 2, 4 or 6 Rupees
Build	In regions you rule, place up to three armies or roads or combination of, at a cost of 2 rupees each.
Move	Based on the card's rank, gain that many movement points. A movement point moves either an army or spy. If moving a spy, it can move clockwise or counterclockwise from its current position, along the same player's court and even jumping to the next player's court. To move an army, there must be a loyal road on the border to move it from one region to the adjacent region.
Betray	For 2 Rupees, discard a card from your or an opponent's court where you have a spy planted. After which, you may accept the discarded card as a Prize or let it be discarded (see "Loyalty and Influence"). This may also trigger the Leverage icon for the original owner.
Battle	Pick either a card or a region. Remove tokens at that site equal to the rank of the battle card. Tribes, Spies, Roads, and Armies are all eligible for removal and, if allowed to remove more than one, they can be different. There are a few restrictions to this. You may not remove more than you have Armies or Spies at that site, i.e. a rank 2 battle card with 1 army/spy at the site can still only remove 1 token. Armies and Roads and Tribes of your loyalty are immune to removal (This prevents you weakening your current loyalty before switching loyalties).

Cleanup

Check you aren't over Hand or Court Limit (see below)

If there are any Event cards in the left-most spot in the Market, discard them and resolve their "when discarded" event for all Players

If there were any rupees on these cards, they stay lingering in the empty spaces

Move all Market cards to the left, which allows cards to scoop up rupees in empty spaces, even if they already had rupees of their own

Draw new Market cards into the now-empty rightmost spots in the Market

If one of the new cards was a Dominance, check to see if it's the only Dominance.

If there is another Dominance, complete a single Dominance Check immediately, discard all Dominance cards, and move remaining cards to the left and draw new cards to fill the spaces

Dominance Check

To be successful, a single coalition must have the most blocks in play and four more than any other coalition.

If unsuccessful, the player with the most cylinders in play scores 3 points and the player with second most scores 1 point.

If successful, players in the winning coalition each score points based on how much influence they have. The player with the most scores 5, then 3, then 1. After which, remove all coalition blocks.

The fourth and final dominance check awards double points for every player involved.

In the case of a tie, tied players add up the victory points for the tied places and then divide that number by the number of tied players (rounding down). For example, in a dominance check where there is a winning coalition, if two players both have the second most amount of loyalty, they would each get 2 points (3 + 1 divided by 2).

Court & Hand Limits

During your turn, your court can contain any number of cards

However, at end of turn, your court can only have 3 + purple stars quantity of cards, any excess must be discarded

Likewise, your hand can contain any number of cards during the turn

However, at end of turn, your hand can only have 2 + blue stars quantity of cards, any excess must be discarded

Stars

★ Economic Stars limit taxation (you cannot be taxed to fewer coins than your number of economic stars)

★ Military Stars provide a tie-breaker for end game

★ Political Stars increase size of Court

★ Intelligence Stars increase size of Hand

Loyalty and Influence

Each player is always loyal to one of the three coalitions: British, Russian or Afghan. This affects which cards you may want to play into your court. Consider carefully if and when you want to change loyalty, to take advantage of the game state and earn the most victory points.

Your loyalty is important in gaining victory points from Dominance Checks. If you are loyal to the Dominant Coalition when a Dominance Check is resolved, you are eligible to score victory points depending on your amount of influence compared to other players of the same loyalty. (You'll want to be loyal to the right coalition at the right time, which may require changing loyalties during the game.)

You change loyalty whenever you play a Patriot, or gain a prize, of a different loyalty. The loyalty of a Patriot is determined by the colour and symbol on the banner containing the card's name, or at the bottom of the card when gaining it as a prize. You may reject a prize in order to maintain your current loyalty. When you change loyalty, you lose all patriots, gifts, and prizes you currently have, before gaining the new patriot or prize which caused you to change.

Your influence to your coalition is calculated as 1, plus the number of patriots, prizes, and gifts you have. If you have the most influence in the Dominant Coalition when a Dominance Check is resolved, you will score the most points. (See "Dominance Check" above.)

Ruling a Region

To rule a region, you must have at least one tribe there and more ruling pieces (tribes + armies of your coalition) than any other player

Once a ruler, you have the following bonuses

• You may take the Build action in that region

• You may Tax players with cards from that region

• You can Extract Bribes from players who want to play cards from that region

Overthrow Rule

If you lose your last tribe in a region, all Political cards you own from that region must be immediately discarded

Likewise, if you lose your last Political card from a region, you must immediately remove all of your tribes from that region

Cards

Cards may have multiple actions on them, but only one of these actions may be taken per turn

If you need to discard a card with a spy, this is returned to its owner

If you need to discard a card with the Leveraged icon, either two rupees or 1 card per rupee owed must be discarded too

If you lose the last tribe in a region, all Political cards associated with that region are also discarded

If you lose the last Political card associated with a region, all tribes in that region are also discarded

Suits

There are four suits in the game, and one suit is always shown as favoured, starting with Political but this will change throughout the game

Economic (gold)	Protect against taxation, manipulate rupees and piece movement
Military (red)	Manage armies and form coalitions
Political (purple)	Consolidate power and determine card playability
Intelligence (blue)	Manage diplomacy and compromise enemies

Actions on a card of the currently Favoured suit may be used as free actions, while still following the one action from each card per turn rule.

When Military is Favoured, purchasing cost of cards is doubled

Game End

After a Dominance Check, if a player is at least 4 points ahead of everyone else, that player immediately wins

After the fourth Dominance Check card is resolved, the player with the most points wins. For the last Dominance Check, all points are doubled.

If there's a tie, the tie-breakers are: first, most Military stars, second most rupees, third cook a Chopan Kebab and the players vote on who cooked the best meal