First to Find Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Goal of the game
• Preparation
• Play
  • Moving
• Special landscapes
• Play variations
  • Traditional geocache (for beginners in geocaching)
  • Multi-cache (for mid-level geocachers)
  • Mystery geocache (for advanced geocachers)

Components

• 49 landscape tiles
• 6 player pawns
• 2 dice
• 1 cache marker

Goal of the game

Players are geocachers on the board that is a landscape area with a hidden cache. One can choose between 3 types of geocaches (traditional, multi-cache or mystery cache) that determine the level of difficulty of the play. The game can be played alone or in a team. It is important to discover the landscape and choose the proper way to move on as quickly as possible, since the first to find the geocache wins.

Preparation

• All landscape tiles are turned face down, shuffled, and placed into 7x7 pattern to form the game board.
• Four beginning crossroads are placed as the middle tile of each side of the game board.
• Each player chooses a pawn and places it in one of the beginning crossroads (more than one players may start from the same tile).
• Players choose the type of geocache (traditional, multi-cache, or mystery cache) that they will go to search.
• Starting player is selected randomly.

Play

Starting from the starting player in a clockwise direction, each player can during their turn either:

• make one move

and/or

• discover a landscape tile.

Moving

The rules for moving and discovering landscape tiles:

• if the player begins the move from a known (face up) landscape (A) and follows the path to another known landscape (B), s/he can make one further move on the path to the next tile (C). If the second move ends on an unknown (face down) landscape tile, the player will turn it face up into the place, and put his/her pawn on the tile;
• if the player begins the move from a known landscape (A) and moves in the direction with no path to another known landscape (B), s/he can make only one move;
• if the player begins the move from a known landscape (A) and follows the path to an unknown landscape tile (B), s/he will turn it face up into the place, and put his/her pawn on the tile;
• if the player begins the move from a known landscape (A) and moves in the direction with no path to an unknown landscape (B), s/he will place the pawn on the tile without looking at it or turning it face up;
• if the player begins the move from an unknown landscape, instead of moving s/he turns the landscape tile face up into the place.

Rules for placing the landscape tile: one end of the drawn footpath must connect with the path on the tile that the player came from. If the player came from the landscape with no path, s/he can turn the tile into desired direction in the next turn.

Special landscapes

1. Bog: after turning the bog tile, the player will miss the next turn.
2. Lake: after turning the lake tile, the player will move back on the landscape tile that s/he came from, and will miss the next turn.
3. N and E marks: first player who discovers the mark can decide the direction of the compass; the player who discovers the other mark should place the arrows so that they cross the arrows of the previous mark.

Play variations

Traditional geocache (for beginners in geocaching)

The cache is hidden at the given coordinates.

Players will start searching for N and E marks. After finding the first mark (N or E), all players may start searching the cache from an unknown landscape tiles in the row/column pointed by the arrows (A). After turning over such tile player will roll a single die - a roll of 5 or 6 means that the geocache has been found. In other case, the game will continue.

After finding the second mark, another row/column will open for the players (B) for searching. If all the landscape tiles of both rows/columns have been turned over, but the geocache has not been found, the players can start searching at all the rest of the unknown landscape tiles — but in that case, cache is found only by rolling 6.

The player who finds the cache first is the winner. In the case that all the landscape tiles have been turned over without finding the cache, all the players will lose, because the cache has probably been lost.

Multi-cache (for mid-level geocachers)

A cache that involves multiple locations, where the first coordinates provide a clue for finding the next location.

Players will start looking for N and E marks. The player who finds the mark (N or E) gets another additional move that is valid until the finding of the first stage. (If the same player finds both marks, s/he can still use only one additional move.) The additional move can be used before entering the unknown landscape tile. After an unknown landscape tile has been turned over, the additional move can no longer be used.

The first stage of the multi-cache has been hidden into the crossing point of the arrows on the marks (A). The first player who arrives this place will roll two dice and thereby determine the location of the second stage. This is done by counting the value of the first die into one direction, and then the value of the second die into the crossing direction. The resulting position is the location of the new stage, and the marker of the cache will be placed there (B). The player may decide about the order of the dice and directions.

From the second stage on, the first arriver will check (in case of the unknown landscape tile after placing it) if it is already the final cache container. This is done by rolling a die: if the result is lower than the stage number, the cache has been found. E.g the 2-stage cache is found when 1 is rolled at the second stage, the 3-stage cache is found when 1 or 2 is rolled at the third stage. If it was not the final cache location, the player will roll two dice again to determine the location of the next stage.

The player who finds the final cache first is the winner.

Cache marker may not be placed outside the game board or into the lake. If no legal locations are available after rolling two dice, the dice has to be re-rolled.

Mystery geocache (for advanced geocachers)

Involves calculations or puzzles that you will first need to solve to determine the correct coordinates.

The arrows on N and E marks have no importance for the mystery caches, only the marks themselves will be used.

After finding the first mark (N or E), the game will continue as usual. After finding the second mark, all landscape tiles will be removed from the board except the beginning crossroads and tiles that hold player pawns. The tiles will be turned face down and shuffled to create a new game board.

If both marks are holding player pawns, the player who found the second mark will remain on their tile. The player standing on the other mark will choose any beginning crossroad and start their move from there. The mark will be added to the shuffle pack.

The players will now start looking for the face down mark (N or E). The first finder of it will receive a victory point; the game board will be shuffled again on the same rules, and the players will start looking for the face down mark again.

The game is won by the player who first gets 2 victory points — s/he is the one who found the mystery cache.