Hipparchus Rulebook

Source: English rules for Hipparchus (2 players, 20 minutes). Designer: Geonil. Artist: Bijou. Rulebook editor: Javier Fernandez.

Hipparchus was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry, but is most famous for his incidental discovery of the precession of the equinoxes. He is considered the greatest ancient astronomical observer and the greatest overall astronomer of antiquity. He was the first whose quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon survive.

In this game, players will become ancient Greek astronomers and present their findings on the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth to each other. You will have to share the study of these celestial bodies with each other in order to gain more authority but also without monopolizing the debate.

Components

30 cards (10 Sun, 10 Moon, 10 Earth)

Setup

Shuffle all the cards and deal 14 cards to each player. When you receive your 14 cards, take them to your hand without rearranging them.

IMPORTANT: You can never rearrange the cards you are holding in your hand.

Leave the remaining 2 cards on the table face down. These cards will not be used.

Gameplay

Choose a random player as the starting player for the first round. In following rounds, the winner of the previous round will be the next starting player.

The starting player (called "lead player") will play a card (called "lead suit") and the other player (called "follower") will play one or more cards of the same suit but in a different value. If the follower does not have any card of the lead suit, he must play cards from any other suit.

IMPORTANT: Cards do not have a value themselves because they have no printed numbers on them. Their value is given by the amount of cards of the same suit that are played.

When playing cards, you must play 1, 2 or 3 adjacent cards of the same suit and you must play all adjacent cards of the same suit.

EXCEPTION: If you have more than 3 adjacent cards, you can play 1, 2 or 3 cards, splitting such group. However, if after playing them, that group shrinks to 3 cards or less, you can't split it again, as mentioned above.

Example: If you want to play Moon cards, these are your two options. You can play 1 or 3 cards.

Example: If you want to play Sun cards, you can play 1 card (third one from the left) or you can play 1, 2 or 3 cards from the group of 5 (splitting that group).

As mentioned above, the follower must play cards of the same suit of the lead suit but in a different value. If that is not possible, the follower must play cards of any other suit in any value (1, 2 or 3).

Example: If the lead player played 1 Earth and this is the follower's hand, the follower will not be able to play Earth and will have to play Moon or Sun instead.

Who wins the trick?

(a) If both players played cards of the same suit, whoever has played the highest value will win the trick.

(b) If players played cards of different suits, compare the amount of cards previously gained in those suits. It doesn't matter how many cards have been played in the current trick. Whoever had gained fewer cards previously will win the trick. If both players had gained the same amount of cards, the follower will win the trick.

After winning the trick, take all the cards in the trick and put them in front of the winner (sort them by suit to make counting easier). The winner will become the next lead player.

Example (a): Left player played 3 Moon cards. Right player played 1 Moon card. Because they belong to the same suit, left player wins the trick. Take all cards in the trick (in this case, the 4 Moon cards) and put them in front of the left player.

Example (b): Left player played 2 Moon cards (and had already gained 4 Moon cards). Right player played 1 Earth card (and had already gained 3 Earth cards). Right player wins the trick because the amount of previously gained cards is lower.

End of the round

If a player runs out of cards, the trick will finish.

If the follower can't play any cards according to the rules, the trick will finish immediately.

The winner of the previous round will be the lead player of the next round.

Scoring

At the end of the round, all gained cards will be compared by suit. The player who won more cards of each suit will gain as many points as the amount of cards of that suit that the opponent has gained. If the amount of cards gained is the same as the opponent's or if the opponent has not gained any cards, it will be 0 points.

Finally, add up the score for each of the 3 suits and the player with the highest total score will win the round. If the total score is the same, the winner will be the last follower of the last trick.

Example: Right player won more Sun cards than the left player. Therefore, he gains 2 points. Left player won more Earth cards than the right player. Therefore, he gains 4 points. Right player won more Moon cards than the left player. Therefore, he gains 1 point. Right player's total score: 3. Left player's total score: 4. Left player wins the round.

Winner

The game will end after a maximum of 3 rounds. The winner will be the first player to win 2 out of the 3 rounds.