I live in the coal regions of eastern PA in the town of Summit Hill which is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in America. My town is situated on top of a mountain that sits at the southeastern end of the Mammoth Vein of the purest anthracite coal in the world.
After a GDS on energy about two years ago, I have been tossing around the idea of a mining game, wrote a journal article on it and left it incubate then returned to it again last week and revised it. i decided it would be better to work this out in a blog and hence here we are. If you are reading this, I'm open to critiques, ideas and thoughts. I'm calling it Mammoth Vein for now until I find a suitable title.
The game is basic in its goal. Piles of cards represent mines along the mammoth vein. At the start of the game, the owners can bid for the rights to operate one of the mines. On subsequent turns, an owner can release the lease on a mine and bid for a new one. If no one else bids he can begin operating the mine otherwise he has to win the right to mine the next one or return to his existing one.
There are events that provide effects in the game and are triggered by certain mine cards, a few action cards or the emptying of a mine pile.
The basic sequence of the game turn is:
1. Display an event if necessary (Game starts with one active event)
2. Upkeep on mines if needed
3. Bid for mines if necessary (First turn required)
4. Take three actions
Actions are:
Draw an action card
Play an action card
Mine a card
5. Discard to three action cards.
6. Terminate the lease (optional)
Each player has three action cards. Action cards can refine or amend these basic rules (ie lose an action, gain an action, mine more than one card, shuffle mine decks etc)
The mine cards in the mine piles consist of Stone cards, Dirt cards, Cavein Cards and Coal cards. The first two may have icons on them that trigger the change of events that globally affect the game while in effect. The cave in card is rare but if it is uncovered is disastrous because it takes all the cards removed from the mine and reshuffles them along with the mine card back into the mine. Certain action cards and event cards prevent this. The coal cards have a number on them that represent tonnage mined and are the point values for the coal cards.
In addition each mine has an assay card which provides a random modifier for the coal in the mine during a lease. Basically this card provides a value to the coal mined and is kept with the coal cards mined during a lease to provide a penalty or bonus to the point value of the coal cards. This could be a multiplier or an addition or subtraction factor for the pile. When a mine is abandoned or emptied the assay card is placed with the mined coal cards and modifies the whole stack.
The game ends when the event card for Nuclear Power is exposed thus ending the Industrial Revolution and beginning the Nuclear Age. Players add up their mined coal cards scoring modifiers as necessary and winner is the one with the highest score.
SETUP:
Shuffle the mine cards and split them into the twelve piles that will act as the mines. Each pile has at least 8 cards and no more than 20. The number of cards in each pile should vary somewhat.
Shuffle the assay deck and deal one card facedown crossways on top of each mine. This is the modifier to the value of the coal in that mine and is not revealed until the owner leases the mine through a winning bid.
Shuffle the action deck and deal three cards to each player to begin.
Provide each player with a set of bid cards (value 0, 1, 2, 3) and an owner card (the set is color coded)
Remove the nuclear energy card and shuffle the event deck. Deal three cards face down, place the nuclear energy card and then shuffle the remaining cards and place them face down on top
TURN:
1. Turn over the first event card. Whatever effect is on it goes into effect during the upkeep. If no mines are owned yet and the event affects the mine decks, the first turn effect occurs after the bidding phase completes when people assume control of the mines
2. Bid on mines
Mines are available from left to right. On the first turn, one mine is available for bidding for each player. (Two players the first two mines, four players the first four).
Each player places a bid card face down in front of each of the available mines. Once everyone has bid on a mine the values are revealed. The top ranking card wins the lease for the mine and places their ownership card in front of the mine.
If a player wins more than one auction, then he can select which mine to keep and places his ownership card there.
If a player fails to win a mine then they win by default the mine not claimed by the winning owners.
If more than one player fail to win a mine, then they alone bid on the unclaimed mines and resolve as above.
AFter the owners are decided, turn over the assay cards to reveal the modifier for the coal tonnage taken out of the mine. Coal cards will be placed on the assay card during the lease.
3. Perform upkeep for mines (action effect cards and event effect cards)
4. Take three actions
Draw an action card
Play an action card
Mine a mine card
Actions can be taken in any order and may be advantageous to play an action before or after mining.
a) Draw the top card of the action deck and place in your hand.
b) PLay an action card. Action cards may modify the basic rules by allowing multiple actions, mining more than one card at a time, forfeiting actions etc. The text on an action card supersedes these basic rules. Certain action cards labelled as reactions can be played on someone else's turn to counteract a sabotage type action to your mine.
c) Mine a mine card
Turn over the top card of the mine card. If it is a coal card it will have a point value so put it on the assay pile. If it is stone or dirt put that on the discard pile next to the assay pile. Certain actions or events may require discards and/or coal cards to be shuffled into the deck while the lease is owned (such as an explosion or a cave in). A few of the stone or dirt cards have an event symbol on them. At the end of the turn, this will signal to reveal a new event card. It is possible to expose more than one event per turn. IF that happens each event is resolved once and the last one drawn remains in effect.
The last type of card is a cave-in card. This card will cause the entire pile of stone dirt and coal to be reshuffled except for mine cards with events on them and placed back into the mine. If that happens the current assay card remains in effect.
Only when you terminate the lease, do the coal cards removed from the mine score for you and can be taken as the trick for the mine.
5. Discard your hand back to three actions.
6. Terminate the mine contract.
At the end of the round, you can opt to terminate the mine contract. At that time, take the coal cards you removed and the assay card and put them in a pile in front of you. As you accumulate coal cards lay them crossways to keep the scoring modifiers segregated
(I'm flirting with using a scoring track instead to prevent math at the end)
Finally draw a new assay card and without looking at it, lay it crosswise over the abandoned mine.
IF the mine is emptied, the contract automatically ends and you collect all the coal on the assay card. On the next turn, the next event card is revealed.
ON the next turn, unless more than one owner is looking for a new mine, the next mine is automatically awarded to you or you may choose to assume control of a mine abandoned by another owner. You may not immediately take control of your abandoned mine until you have worked a different one.
The game ends when the nuclear energy card is revealed and the person with the highest score is the winner.
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I know I still have some rule kinks to clarify and straighten out but that is the gist of this version of hte design. What do you think?
