Introduction[]
Crafty Explorers is a deck building game where you have to explore new territory on the map/board in order to get the cards you need to construct houses and populate them with craftsmen.
The goal is to create sets of cards, representing houses and craftsmen, to score points.
Setup:[]
Place 1 wood tile for each player face up in the middle of the table. For all other symbols you need tiles equal to the number of players, plus one (so 4 of each tile fora 3-player game). Shuffle the tiles and place them face down to build a board with the wood tiles on one end. Place one harvester (cube) from each player on the wood tiles.
Sort the cards according to their symbol. Take out the three cards with the number 1, shuffle the remaining, and place each stack face up with the 1-cards on top.
Give each player 5 cubes of their chosen colour.
Play:[]
On your turn, you can perform two actions. You chose which actions to perform, and in which order, from the following options:
1: Explore
Turn over one face down tile. Then take the top card from the stack with the matching symbol. Limitation: You can only explore a tile adjacent to a tile that has a harvester on it.
2: Place harvester
Place one of your cubes on any face up tile not already occupied.
3: Harvest
Choose one of your harvesters on the board. Take the top card from the deck matching the symbol on which the harvester is placed. Limitation: One single harvester can not harvest twice in the same turn.
4: Build
Play up to two cards from your hand to construct or improve one building. The buildings are sets of cards that score points at the end of the game, and they consist of two sections:
The House: A house is first constructed using two cards of building material. The building materials are wood and stone, and they can be used in any combination. A House can later be improved by adding a water supply, consisting of one or more water cards.
The Craftsman: The House can be inhabited by one type of Craftsman, illustrated by the different symbols. They are the Wheelwright (wheel), the Smith (crossed hammers) and the Fletcher (arrow). Any number of cards of one single type can be added to a House, as long as the total value of the Craftsman cards does not exceed the total value of the House cards (including water) You start building by placing the two wood/stone cards on the table. They can overlap, but you need to see the numbers on each card. The water cards are later added below, and may overlap as well. The craftsman cards are added above the house cards, and multiple cards can overlap in the opposite direction, so the House and the Craftsman are separate but connected.
Building limitations: Two cards of any kind placed next to each other in one building can not have a difference in value of more than 2. So next to a 2-card you can only place a card valued 1, 2, 3 or 4.
Winner:[]
The game ends after 4 stacks of cards are empty. The current player completes her turn, and then each player, including the current, get one final turn.
Scoring:[]
Each building is worth the sum of all cards used.
An extra 5 points is awarded to the greatest craftsman of each type, determined by the number of craftsman cards in any one building (not the value). If multiple players are tied, they get 2 points each.
For each card in your buildings of your own colour, or black, you get 1 extra point.
The winner is the player with the highest total points.