Gamehelpcarnac

CARNAC – Rules Summary

Overview

In the region of Carnac, thousands of megaliths stand in mysterious formations. In this game, players build new fields of stones by erecting and tilting "Megaliths" to form "Dolmens".

Goal

The player who creates the most Dolmens by the end of the game wins. A Dolmen is a group of at least three symbols of the same color showing upward, connected orthogonally (not diagonally).

Setup

Choose a board (recommended: medium, 7x10, with 28 Menhirs, for first games).

Place all Menhirs in a common supply.

Each player chooses a color.

The oldest player starts.

Turn Overview

On your turn, you react to your opponent’s last move.

On each turn you face one of three possible situations:

(i) Tilt and place

You tilt your opponent’s last-placed upright Menhir, making it lie flat on two adjacent empty squares. The original square becomes empty again.

Then you place a new Menhir upright on any empty square (with either color facing up).

(ii) You could tilt a Menhir but you decide not to tilt it.

If you choose not to tilt, your opponent immediately places a new upright Menhir on any empty square, and your choice repeats.

(iii) You have no way of tilting the Menhir your opponent just placed.

In this case, the last placed Menhir remains standing and it's your turn placing a Menhir upright.

Placement & Tilting Rules

Placing:

Menhirs must always be placed upright, standing on one of their short square sides.

Either color may face upward.

Once placed, Menhirs can only be tilted, never moved or removed.

Tilting:

A Menhir is tilted onto two adjacent empty squares (not diagonally).

It may not extend beyond the board.

Once tilted, it remains lying and cannot be moved again.

The square it stood on becomes empty.

End of the Game

The game ends when:

All Menhirs have been placed, or

No more empty squares remain.

Then count all Dolmens:

Each distinct Dolmen of a color counts 1 point.

The player with the most Dolmens wins.

In a tie, the player with the largest Dolmen wins.

Further ties are decided by the next largest Dolmen.

Carnac on BGA

After placing a Menhir, you have the option to rotate it in a couple of ways.

If you click on its upper side, you turn it upside down and the upper face changes color.

If you click on one of its four lateral sides, you rotate it 90 degrees around the vertical axis.

To avoid having to count symbols on the board, the scoring system in Carnac on BGA works as follows:

Each Dolmen is worth 100 points. Each symbol in your largest Dolmen is worth 1 point.

For instance, if I have two Dolmens, one with 3 symbols and one with 9 symbols, my score is shown as 209.

Board options

On BGA there are several Carnac boards available.

The three official ones (Small, Medium, Large) are played with the usual 28 Menhirs and each Dolmen must have at least 3 symbols.

It's possible to play also on four additional boards, whose names come from some of the most famous Carnac "alignments":

- Kermario: very elongated, narrow and with a lot of stones (56)
- Kerlescan: medium size, but you need 5 symbols (not the usual 3) to form a Dolmen
- le Ménec: large in every possible way
- Petit Menec: with just 14 stones on a small square. Very fast

Preferences

By default, the move with which you tilt a Megalith is authomatically accepted. You can decide to be asked for confirmation after tilting by setting "No" to the "Autoconfirm tilting moves" option.