PIRATE S CAVE THE SEARCH FOR GOLD The Cave A Cooperative Variant Playing time: 30-40 minutes. This variant is unofficial. The pictures used in this rules are from the original rulebook by rebel.pl. INTRODUCTION You are a team of speleologists on an exploration of a pirate s cave. It is said that pirates used to hide their treasuries there, most probably in the deepest depths of the cave. Some say they even sunk some chests into the underground seas. Can you reach far enough into the cave? Will you find enough gold to make you and your team rich? COOPERATIVE GAMEPLAY In this cooperative variant of The Cave all players play together to reach their goal. They either win together by finding enough gold or they will lose if one of their team colleges die. RULES This variant of The Cave uses the original rules with the following changes and additions. GAME PREPARATION - Regardless of the numbers of players use the 2-player starting board. - These rules are written for the basic tile set. If you want to use the 12 expansion tiles read Using the expansion tiles at the end of these rules. - The 4 stacks of tiles (I IV) are made of 10 tiles each (40 in total), drawn randomly from the available tiles. GOLD TOKENS = The water exploration tokens now have a second function. A water token showing the water side is a regular water token. A water token showing it s flip side is a gold token, worth 1 gold. Gold tokens in a player s backpack or camp are treated like regular pieces of equipment and occupy 1 slot per token. GOALS - Find as many gold as possible to become rich and wealthy (see: Count your gold)! - Survive! You can only win if all team colleges are alive at the end of the game. LIMITED CONSUMABLES (Inspired by sleepyslo s The Cave rescue variant.) The number of consumables available is limited to the number of consumable tokens that come with the game (53). At the beginning of the game all consumables are piled up and form the consumable supply. Consumables spent during the game are discarded to a second pile called the consumable discard. Once the consumable supply is empty the players cannot add any more to their backpacks or camps. An exception to this is finding consumables when diving (see: Water tiles).
SQUEEZES Follow the original rules. Players don t have to place and collect squeeze exploration tokens. DESCENT TILES Follow the original rules. Place depth markers as usual but the players don t have to collect traverse line and depth reached tokens. UNDERGROUND WONDER TILE Re-themed: CAVE PAINTING. You find some drawings on the walls. Hints from the pirates? Parts of a map? You d better take a picture! Follow the original rules. The photo exploration tokens are collected on a mutual pile and may be used later during the game (see: Discovering new cave tiles). Each player may spend tokens from this pile as long as the other players agree to do so. WATER TILES (Depth 0m 100m) = There s food down there! Strange sorts of fish and underwater plants. Not very tasty but better than nothing. When diving into an underground sea at a depth between 0 and 100 meters, instead of collecting the water exploration token, the diving players removes it from the tile and takes a consumable token instead. This may be taken from the consumable discard. The player may place this token in an empty slot of his backpack or a backpack of another player on the same tile. If a camp is unpacked on this water tile, the token can be placed in an empty slot of this camp. If there s no eligible slot available the food is lost and the token must be discarded. WATER TILES (Depth 125m and deeper) = / I wonder if it s true they sunk some gold into these seas. When diving into an underground sea at a depth at 125 meters or deeper the diving player takes the water exploration token and flips it (like a coin). The face it shows up when it lands determines what he found: - Water face up : The player found food! Refer to WATER TILES (Depth 0m 100m). - Diver face up : Gold! The token now serves as a gold token. The player may place this token in an empty slot of his backpack or a backpack of another player on the same tile. If a camp is unpacked on this water tile, the token can be placed in an empty slot of this camp. The payer may also decide to leave the token on the tile to be picked up later. Picking up a gold token costs 1AP. DEAD END TILES (Depth 150m and deeper) It is said that the pirates used to hide their treasures in the deepest depths of the cave. There are 6 dead end tiles in The Cave (although they might not be all in the tile stacks you re actually playing with). If a dead end tile is discovered place a number of gold tokens on it depending on the depth of the tile. - 150m: 1 gold token - 175m: 2 gold tokens - 200m: 3 gold tokens - Increase the number of gold tokens by 1 for every additional 25m of depth. Gold tokens can be picked up and packed into an empty slot of a player s backpack or, if a camp is unpacked on this dead end tile, in an empty slot of the camp. Picking up a gold token costs 1AP.
DISCOVERING NEW CAVE TILES Other than in the original rules players must first decide on which exit they re going to place the newly drawn tile. Then the active player draws a tile and shows it to all players. The players may then decide to place the tile following the original rules or spend one or more of their collected photo exploration tokens. Hmmm, that reminds me of those drawings we saw some hours ago. Didn t we take a picture? If players decide to spend photo exploration tokens they may discard any number of their collected photo exploration tokens, but no more than there are tiles left on the tile stack the active player just drew the tile from (this can be zero). The player then draws a number of tiles from this stack equal to the number of tokens spent and adds them to the initial tile he drew. The players may now freely decide which of these tiles they want to place in the announced location following the original rules. If there is at least one tile that fits they must place a tile. Only if none of them fit they may (and must) discard one of them and place a bolder choke tile as per original rules. After placing a tile the other tiles are shuffled back into the stack where they came from. PACKING EQUIPMENT AT THE HOME BASE - Gold tokens from the player s backpacks or camps may be unpacked and placed on the starting board when packing equipment at the home base. They are now safe and belong to all players! Once placed in the home base they may not be picked up again. - Other than in the original rules cameras and rafts may be left at the home base and are still available to be packed later in the game. EXCHANGE OF EQUIPMENT Players may give, take and exchange equipment to, from and with players on the same tile. This is a free action and does not cost AP. Both players must agree on the piece of equipment and in which direction it is handed over. Camps still packed in a backpack cannot be exchanged. Players need free slots in their backpack for equipment they receive. Exchanging equipment with another player happens simultaniously. So even if two players have no free slots they may still exchange equipment on a 1:1 basis. The equipment given away creates a free slot for the one taken. Players may also transfer equipment from and to any unpacked camp on the tile they are standing on. Camps packed in backpacks cannot be accessed as per original rules. CAMPS Every camp can be picked up by every player as long as the original owner of the camp agrees. Players can pickup and carry up to 4 camps. Each camp takes up 2 slots in their backpack. Carrying multiple camps does not increase the number of additional equipment slots above 4. More equipment would be too heavy for the player to carry. The AP costs for packing and un-packing camps is per camp. So if you want to unpack 2 camps you ll need to spend 4AP. CRAWLING If a player does not have any consumable tokens in his backpack at the start of his turn, he must spend 5 AP to move one tile, doing nothing else, until he reaches the home base or an unpacked camp with consumables. Crawling players may also receive consumables from other players on the same tile. Crawling is a very slow process and delays your mission. At the start of each turn a player crawls he must discard 2 consumable tokens from the consumable supply. They are rotting. If there are not enough consumables in the consumable supply to be discarded the player dies. The game ends and all players lose the game collectively.
END OF THE GAME The game ends if a player has to take consumables from the consumables supply but there are not enough left to take. All players lose the game collectively. The crawling player dies and after several years of rotting he will become a lone and forgotten skeleton deep inside The Cave. Maybe one day another team of speleologists will come by, take some pictures and get a lot of money for it. Otherwise the game ends when all players are at the home base and collectively decide to no longer explore. This will usually be: - When there are no tiles left in the tile stacks and you took all your chances to get to the gold. - When there are no consumables left and all players made it back to the home base. - When there are not enough consumables left for another useful exploration. COUNT YOUR GOLD If the game ended by a player dying you don t have to count your gold. All players lost the game. Otherwise count the number of gold tokens you brought back to the base camp. Each token is worth 1 gold. 4 or more gold: You made it! You re all rich and will never have to work again. For each additional gold you found above 4 you can afford another luxury good to enrich your lifes. This may be a mansion, a yacht, sports cars, whatever you dream about. 3 gold: The players are rich enough to buy themselves nice residences and live a carefree life for a couple years. Anyway their money will be used up in a short decade, so they ll still have to plan their financial futures. 2 gold: Your team has enough money to take a year off. You spend this money to found a publishing company for games and spend your time designing board games about cave explorations and mountain climbing. 1 gold: The gold you found is just enough to cover the expenses for your exploration. Apart from an exciting adventure you gained nothing. You d better try again. 0 gold: The expedition used up all your money. And you found nothing. Nothing to cover your expenses. You all end up as poor men in the streets, begging for food. If you prefer a win-or-lose condition treat a result of 4 or more gold collected as a win. USING THE EXPANSION TILES It is recommended to play the first few games without the expansion tiles. The use of these tiles makes the game much more unpredictable, sometimes frustrating, sometimes rewarding. If you want to use the expansion tiles shuffle them into the matching stacks of the basic tiles before drawing the 40 tiles you re going to play with. Playing with the expansion will change the depths where you start to find gold: 1. Players won t find any gold diving through water tiles at depths from 0m to 125m. Start flipping the token at 150m and deeper. 2. The number of gold tokens placed on dead end tiles depends on the following depths: - 0 to 150m: 0 gold tokens - 175m and 200m: 1 gold token - 225m and 250m: 2 gold tokens - 275m and 300m: 3 gold tokens - Increase the number of gold tokens by 1 for every additional 50m of depth. This variant by Lines J. Hutter, 2013 Thanks to Adam Kaluza for a great and inspiring game. Thanks to noticeus for creative brainstorming.
PIRATE S CAVE THE SEARCH FOR GOLD RESULTS Number of Players Gold collected Underwater Gold (+Depth) Potential Underwater Gold Dead End Gold (+Depth) Consumables left Tiles left Base Set or Expansion