Death Valley: Highs & Lows
Death Valley: Highs & Lows Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
18 Desert Feature Cards
(3 Animal paw, 4 Flood droplet, 5 Terrain mountain, 6 Heat sun)
The card diagram on the rules sheet labels these parts of a card:
- Hazard type: the icon at the top left of the card.
- Quantity of this type in the deck: the number beside the hazard icon.
- Points (if in your Journey at the end of the game): the star. Note: For each skull you will lose 1 point. See Scoring section.
- Reminder icon for ongoing abilities.
- Card ability: the ability text along the bottom of the card.
- Interesting facts: the italic text beside the card ability.
Setup
- Shuffle all 18 cards together into a deck and place it face down between both players.
- Flip the top card face up and place it beside the deck. This face-up card and the top card of the deck form the Desert.
- Set aside space for each player's Journey, Scrapbook, and discard pile.
- The player who most recently drank water plays first.
Journeys and Scrapbooks
Each player has two rows of cards face up in front of them. The first row, closer to their opponent, is the ever-changing Journey that describes their trip. The Scrapbook is below the Journey, and contains gathered memories.
Cards are always added as the rightmost card in their row. The rows are arranged like a grid, with the leftmost card in a player's Journey directly above the leftmost card in that player's Scrapbook and so on. Whenever cards are removed from a Journey or Scrapbook, shift cards to the left as needed to close gaps between remaining cards.
Adjacent: When a card's ability mentions adjacent cards, it refers to that card's orthogonal neighbors directly to the left, right, above, and below. Cards are never adjacent to hidden cards or to cards in the Desert.
Hidden: When a card is hidden underneath another, its ability doesn't apply, and it doesn't contribute to busting. It only affects the game if referenced by another card.
Gameplay
Players take turns shaping their Journeys and Scrapbooks until there is only 1 card remaining in the Desert. Each turn, the active player chooses one of the following actions:
Travel: Choose either card in the Desert (the face-up card or the top card of the deck) and add it face up to your Journey.
Rest: Move one card from your Journey to your Scrapbook. You may then hide additional cards from your Journey underneath that card. You may also shuffle any number of remaining Journey cards back into the deck.
Card Abilities
Card abilities can replace the normal actions above, or add effects before or after an action.
To Rest, you must resolve your "Before you Rest" abilities and still have a Journey card to move to your Scrapbook. If your Journey doesn't have enough cards, you must Travel instead.
End of the Turn
Once a player has resolved their action and relevant card abilities, they check if they bust, refresh the Desert, and end their turn.
Busting
If the active player has 3 cards of the same hazard type in their Journey and Scrapbook, that player busts and must clear their Journey as follows:
First, they take the rightmost card of that hazard type in their Journey. Then, they flip that card face down and place it in their discard pile. Lastly, they shuffle all remaining cards from their Journey back into the deck. (A player's Scrapbook is not affected when they bust.)
Example: The active player has 1 drop and 2 sun in their Journey, and 1 paw and 1 sun in their Scrapbook as shown on the rules sheet. Since the 3 sun cards make them bust, they must discard the rightmost sun in their Journey (Stovepipe Wells) and shuffle the other two Journey cards (Desolation Canyon and State Route 190) back into the deck.
Refresh
If the face-up Desert card moved to a Journey, flip the top card of the deck to replace it.
Winning the Game
After a turn ends, if there is only 1 card remaining in the Desert, the game ends. Each player scores the visible cards in their Journey and Scrapbook as follows:
- Each star on a Journey card adds one point (ignore stars in Scrapbooks).
- Each skull on a Journey card or Scrapbook card subtracts one point.
- Each card with a scoring ability can add or subtract points from the score.
The player with the most points wins! If players tie, the player who busted the fewest times wins. If they still tie, players share the victory.
Backseat Driver Variant
If you want to really press your luck and give up a little control, try out this variant. When a player Travels in this variant, they may choose to add the face-up card to their opponent's Journey instead of their own. When checking for busting, check to see if either player busts.
Adding Other Cards
To play with other Death Valley games and expansions, select 3 paw, 4 drop, 5 mountain, and 6 sun cards (either randomly or by choice) and shuffle them together to form the deck. Set the remaining cards aside, and play as normal.
Solo Play (Backseat Driver)
Face off against a tireless robotic explorer that never rests in its pursuit of adventure!
Setup: Follow the base game's setup, except that the AI will not build a Scrapbook. The setup diagram labels the areas AI's Journey, Your Journey, Your Scrapbook, AI's Discard Pile, and Your Discard Pile.
Gameplay: You play first. Take your turns as in the Backseat Driver Variant.
On each of its turns, the AI takes one action based on the face-up card in the Desert:
- Check for Bust: If that card would bust you or the AI if added to your respective Journeys, add it to your Journey.
- No Hazard Match: Otherwise, if that card's hazard type doesn't match any of the AI's cards, add it to the AI's Journey.
- Hazard Match: Otherwise, that card matches the type of one of the AI's cards. Add the top card of the deck to the AI's Journey.
Card Abilities: Ignore abilities (but not hazard types) on the AI's cards during the game.
Scoring: Score your cards as in the base game. The AI scores 1 point for each star or skull in its Journey, and they score points equal to the positive numbers in the scoring abilities of their cards. For example, they always score exactly 2 points for Super Bloom but ignore the -2 on Devil's Golf Course.
Increasing Difficulty: Play with one or both of these modifiers for a harder game.
- The AI scores 1 point per card in each discard pile.
- Unless the AI busted more than you, it wins regardless of score!