Captain Park's Imaginary Polar Expedition
Captain Park's Imaginary Polar Expedition Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
What You Get
This game includes four Board Sections, 90 Cards, and this rule book. The board sections include one scoring board and three map boards, which assemble rather simply into a map of "London."
What You Need
You will need a Pawn and several matching Counters for every player, plus two more Master Pawns: one to represent Captain Park, and one to mark the "Fad." You will also need a way to keep score, such as making knots in rope.
How to Begin
Setting Up
Three of the board segments form a map of London. The fourth section is separate, and is used for tracking the exploits of the players. This scoring board can go anywhere near the other three.
Start each player's Pawn in the Gentlemen's Club. Put Captain Park in the News Stand labeled with a "1."
Shuffle the deck and deal a hand of 5 cards to each player. Put the remainder of the deck where everyone can reach it.
Determine randomly who will go first. Play will proceed to the left.
"Month" Counters
Staying out of the public eye is important if you're going to claim you've been halfway around the world. You will track how long you have been gone with a pile of Month Counters on the table in front of you.
At the beginning of your turn, you will always add one Month Counter to this pile, representing another month during which you have stayed out of sight. Keep your counters in plain sight so that everyone knows how long you've been missing. If your pile contains 7 counters, it means you've been missing for 7 months.
This is important because in order to claim you've been on an adventure, you must have been missing for a number of months. (For purposes of game balance, this number changes with the number of players.) If Captain Park ever sees you in town, or if you ever turn up at the Gentlemen's Club, you will lose all the months you've accumulated.
On Every Turn
First, add one Month Counter to your pile. Then, you may take one step in any direction, or you may stay where you are.
"One Step" means moving from house to house along any black path. For example, from the Marketplace you can move to News Stand (1), Gift Shop (8), or the Hotel.
What happens next depends on the space you move into. If you stay put, you can not do anything else. This means, for example, that if you sit on a Café you won't draw another card. If you stand still in an Antique Shop, you can't play an Artifact. Because of this rule, you will usually only stand still when you are hiding from Captain Park.
Hotels
The Hotel does nothing special, but it is safe from the wandering Captain Park. The Hotel is a good place to sit if you already have enough stuff to score a good adventure, and you don't want to risk being visited by Captain Park.
Cafés
The Cafés are a good place to hide from the snobs at the Gentlemen's Club. They wouldn't be caught dead in a French Café. Instead, you tend to meet real adventurers and interesting foreigners at the Cafés, who tell you about great stuff you can find elsewhere in London.
When you visit a Café, you draw one card from the deck into your hand. Cards in your hand represent the knowledge of things, like knowing about a particular Artifact you could go and acquire.
There is no limit to the number of cards you can hold in your hand. If the deck empties, recycle the discards. If there are no discards to reuse, then players can't draw cards for the moment.
Antique Shop, Gymnasium, Gift Shop, News Stand, and Hall of Records
At all these locations you may play one card of a specific type from your hand into your "Inventory."
Your Inventory is a collection of face-up cards on the table in front of you. These cards represent actual things that you can use to prove you've been on an adventure.
Antique Shops let you play Artifacts, Gift Shops let you play Photographs, News Stands are for Facts, the Gymnasium is for Anecdotes, and the Hall of Records lets you play Heroes.
When you play a card, you must immediately move Captain Park. He has a sixth sense about being imitated and it kicks in whenever a card is played. After he moves, you may take another move yourself.
Captain Park always moves before you do. Details are as follows:
Moving Captain Park: Park follows the numbers around the board, moving once after any card is played into an Inventory. He jumps from number to number, and does not visit the intervening spaces. From space 14 he jumps back to space 1.
If Captain Park lands on you, he will clear your accumulated Month counters by reporting your presence to the boys at the Gentlemen's Club. Sometimes this won't bother you, but usually it's worth avoiding. Unfortunately, you can never be completely certain of dodging Captain Park unless you are hiding in the Hotel or at the Marketplace.
Note: You will also lose your Month Counters if you walk into the same space with Captain Park, so it's best to avoid him altogether. (If you start on the space with Captain Park but walk away, you do get a counter for the month.) There's no penalty for sharing a space with other players.
Moving Yourself: After moving Captain Park, you may take another step yourself. This step can be in any direction, and you can do whatever is appropriate for the space where you land. You might play another card in the new space, which would move Captain Park again and let you move again. You can take several steps in a row in this manner if you like.
Note: Moving around like this doesn't earn you more Month Counters. All these moves are considered to happen in the same month. Also, it's usually safest to end up in the Hotel or the Marketplace in order to stay out of Captain Park's path.
Also, although staying in the same place doesn't let you use the space, moving back to the same space does. In other words, if you are on a Café and sit still, you don't draw a card. But if you move to an adjoining space, play a card, and return to the Café, you can draw a card.
The Marketplace
When you visit the Marketplace, you may discard as many cards as you wish from your hand (not from your Inventory!) and draw replacement cards from the deck. The cards you discard go into a discard pile beside the deck, and the cards you draw go into your hand.
The Gentlemen's Club
This is where you score your adventures. You will usually only return to the Gentlemen's Club when you wish to score, although early in your career you might find it advantageous to hang around the club just to draw cards.
In the Gentlemen's Club, you can score an adventure if you qualify to do so. Even if you don't score an Adventure, you will lose all your Month Counters if you end your turn in the Club. Obviously, this is because everyone at the Club has seen you.
Whenever you visit the Gentlemen's Club, you also draw one card. This makes the Club-Café circuit one of the best places to fill your hand, assuming you don't mind being seen.
Note: If you start a turn in the Gentlemen's Club but end up somewhere else, such as on the first turn of the game, you do earn a Month Counter for that turn.
Scoring your Expedition
Qualifying
To legally score an adventure, you must have at least one card in your Inventory that is worth points for that destination. You must also have been gone for a minimum amount of time, in months, as described in the table on the scoring board. For example, to score an adventure in a 4-player game, you must have been gone for at least 6 months.
Scoring
The scoring board has five circles, each labeled with a different destination and three bonus dots. As you score each adventure, you will place a counter on the scoring board.
First, declare where you have been, and mark the appropriate circle in the Gentlemen's Club with your counter. If you are the first player to that destination, cover the bonus dot with the highest value. The next adventurer will take the next highest bonus, and so on. If three people have already been to this location, place your counter elsewhere in the circle.
You may travel to each destination only once, until you have been to all five. After that point, you can visit each location exactly once again, and so on. It's likely that the game will never go on that long.
Here is the scoring breakdown:
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Basic Score: Most items in your Inventory will be worth a certain number of points towards your basic score. If any card is worthless, you must discard it right away. The total of these point values is your Basic Score.
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Diversity Bonus: For each type of card in your Inventory, you score 5 points. For example, if you have a Hero, an Artifact, and two Photographs, that's three card types for a Diversity Bonus of 15 points. The smallest possible Diversity Bonus is 5 points, because without at least one card you couldn't qualify.
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Endurance Bonus: You earn 3 points for every additional month you were away beyond the minimum. Take away the required Month Counters, and multiply the number of remaining counters by 3 points.
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Fad Bonus: If your destination is the current Fad (described below), then that destination is worth 10 extra points.
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Novelty Bonus: It's great to be the first. The value of being first varies with the destination, as marked on the scoring board. Add the points marked on the dot you have covered. For example, the second player to visit Africa will earn a Novelty Bonus of 7 points.
Record your total score and then discard your Inventory. Discards go next to the deck, and when the deck empties you shuffle the discards and replace it.
The last thing you will do upon scoring an adventure is to determine a Fad for the next one, as follows:
Fads
Particular adventures will always be in fashion for no good reason. There is no Fad at the beginning of the game, but once someone scores their first adventure, there will always be a Fad.
To determine which destination is the new Fad, roll the top card of the deck into the discard pile after anyone scores an adventure. Look for the destination that's worth the most points on that card, and place the Fad Pawn on that location on the scoring board.
If the next adventurer happens to come back from that destination, he will score a Fad bonus of 10 points.
Ending the Game
The game ends when one player reaches the target score appropriate for the number of players, as shown on the scoring board. For example, in a 4-player game, the winner is the first player to have 175 points.
The winner is declared the finest adventurer in the land and must wear the ceremonial fig and feather headdress and an unconvincing false moustache.
Strategy
This game has different rewards for racing and taking your time. Your hand and the other players' actions will tell you which option is best.
It's possible to win with just one adventure, especially in a low-point game, but scoring more small adventures will get you more points for the same cards, especially if you hit fads and Novelty Bonuses.
You should usually take your moves so as to be the least likely to be hit by Captain Park. You should also look for opportunities to move Captain Park into the other players, especially when they are getting ready to score.
If you're about to score, try to figure out the furthest that the Captain could move, given the cards in players' hands, and choose your entrance to the Club carefully.
If you can, save enough cards to race from Café 3 or 10 into the Club. You'll be glad you did. Especially if no one slaps you with Captain Park while you're waiting.