Miś Wojtek
Miś Wojtek Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Game Components
- 1 game board depicting the map of Europe and the route of the Polish II Corps army
- 104 bear cards
- 96 cards of fun, food, emblems and flags
- 8 portraits of historical persons
- 6 city cards
- 55 travel cards
- 49 cards, 7 each in 7 different colors with a bear traveling by truck
- 6 rainbow cards with a bear walking
- 5 wooden bear pawns in five different colors (silver, white, dark brown, light brown and black)
- This booklet with game rules and historical info.
Some components (city cards, board) are double-sided, with English on one side and Polish on the other side.
Game Preparation
- Gather some berries for the bears. Help yourself too.
- Place the board on the table where all players can reach it easily.
- Put the 6 city cards on their place on the board.
- Shuffle the deck of bear cards. Draw 7 cards and put them face up on the 7 colored spaces on the board.
- Stack the other bear cards as a face down deck on the indicated space.
- Shuffle the deck of travel cards and deal 5 to each player. Stack the other travel cards face down on the indicated space next to the Poland space.
- Wake up the bears. Each player takes a bear pawn in their favorite color and puts it on the Poland space. The remaining bear pawns go back to the box to sleep.
- Whoever last hugged a bear is the starting player.
Goal of the Game
The goal is to travel from camps in the USSR to Edinburgh, Scotland and collect a set of 6 different bear cards of one type.
There are four types of bear cards in the game:
- food,
- fun,
- emblems,
- flags.
Each type consists of 6 different cards, and each card appears 4 times for each type. Among the bear cards, there are 8 cards with people, who help you fill in gaps in your card collection.
Sequence of Play
Players take turns in clockwise order. (The starting player goes first, then the player on their left, and so on.) On their turn, a player:
- Travels
- Takes a bear card
- Refills their travel card hand
To refill their travel card hand, a player takes travel cards from the deck until they have 5 in their hand, which ends their turn.
or
Does not travel, and exchanges any number of travel cards from their hand with others.
Note! In this case the player does not take a bear card!
To exchange cards, a player chooses any travel cards from their hand and discards them. Next, they take travel cards from the deck until they have 5 in their hand, which ends their turn.
Now the next player (on the left) starts their turn.
Deportations
During the first round, players' pawns are deported from Poland to the USSR. Each player draws 1 travel card from the stack and moves their pawn to the deportation site in the USSR with the color shown on the card.
Example: Thaddeus draws a light green card with a bear traveling by truck. So, he moves his pawn from Poland to Uzbekistan.
If a player draws a rainbow card with a walking bear, then they choose their destination. A deportation site can have more than one pawn.
From deportation sites pawns move toward Buzuluk and beyond, as white arrows indicate.
How to Travel
To move their pawn, a player can:
a) Play 1 card with a bear traveling by truck and move their pawn to the next (closest) empty space in the color of the card played,
b) play 1 card with a walking bear and move their pawn to the next (closest) empty space in the chosen color, but not passing another pawn,
c) choose a bear card on the board, discard it, and replace it with the top one from the stack, and then play 3 travel cards (any combination of walking cards and same-color truck cards) to move their pawn to the next (closest) empty space in the chosen color (using the rules for bears traveling by truck).
Example a): Thaddeus moves his pawn to the first empty blue space. The first blue space in front of Thaddeus's pawn is occupied. So, he moves to the next blue space, where there is no other pawn.
Example b): Thaddeus can move his pawn to any next empty space in the chosen color in front of his pawn. He can choose yellow, light green or blue space. He can not go to the violet space because it is occupied, and he can not go to any space beyond because a walking pawn can not jump past another pawn. Thaddeus decides to move his pawn to the light green space.
Example c): Thaddeus chooses and discards 1 bear card from the board (1) and replaces it with the top one drawn from the stack (2). Then he plays three travel cards in the same color, chooses another color of his choice (in this case it is blue — "!") and moves his pawn ahead to the next empty space of chosen color (here: blue one). [Transcriber's note: the "!" in this caption is printed as-is in the source; the booklet does not explain it further.]
Note! The 3 cards can be any combination of walking and truck cards, but all truck cards played must have the same color.
Put the used cards onto the discard pile on the board.
Note! Only 1 pawn can be in a space.
You can not go backwards—always go forward toward Edinburgh, following the arrows on the board.
How to Take Bear Cards
After moving (1), a player takes 1 bear card from the board, from the box with the same color as the color of the space to which their pawn moved (2). Then the player refills that box with a new card drawn from the top of the bear stack (3).
Example: Thaddeus moved his pawn to a blue space. So Thaddeus now takes the bear card from the blue box. Then he draws a new card from the stack and puts it face up onto the blue box.
Note! This rule is applied in the deportations phase too!
When the bear stack becomes empty, shuffle the discarded bear cards to make a new stack.
Cities
The FIRST player to reach a city (1) takes the city card for that city (2), as well as 1 bear card as usual (from the box with the same color as the city's space) (3). Then the player discards all the remaining bear cards from the board (4) and deal out 7 new ones (5).
Example: Thaddeus's bear is the first to reach Bologna. Thaddeus takes the "Bologna" card and puts it in front of him. Then he takes the bear card from the blue box (because Bologna is blue). Then he discards the remaining bear cards from the board and puts 7 new cards from the stack into the 7 boxes.
Edinburgh
You can reach the "Edinburgh" space by playing a travel card of any color.
The first player to reach Edinburgh takes its city card as usual.
If a player arrives in Edinburgh by truck, then they take the bear card from the box with the color of the truck card which they played.
If a player arrives in Edinburgh by walking or by 3 cards of the same color, then they take a bear card from any box they like.
Afterwards a player discards all the remaining bear cards from the board and deals out 7 new ones, as in case of every other city.
After reaching Edinburgh, that player takes no more turns.
After the first player reaches Edinburgh, each other player will have only one more turn. (See: End of Game.)
Note! The Edinburgh space is special: any number of pawns can be in Edinburgh.
End of Game
At the moment when:
- The first pawn reaches Edinburgh, or
- any player has a complete set of bear cards (6 different cards of the same type),
the last round of the game begins!
This means that each remaining player (other then the one who triggered the last round) takes one more turn, as usual.
Who Won?
After ending the last round, players score their bear cards.
Players sort their cards into sets. Each set must have the same type of cards, with no repeated cards. The largest possible set is a complete set of 6 different cards in one color.
[Transcriber's note: the booklet prints "in one color" here, while the Goal of the Game section and the caption below describe a complete set of one type; both are transcribed as printed.]
The player with the largest set wins.
Sophie has a complete set of 6 bear cards showing Wojtek's favorite foods. If no one else has a set of 6 cards, then Sophie wins the game.
In case of a tie, the tying players each put aside their largest set (1), and then compare their second largest sets to see which is largest (2). If there is still a tie, then the tying players compare their third largest sets, and so on. (If a tying player has no remaining sets, then they cannot win a tie.)
Mary has a complete set of food cards. Thaddeus has a complete set of flag cards. So Mary and Thaddeus must compare their second largest sets to break the tie. Mary's second largest set is 3 fun cards, while Thaddeus has 2 emblem cards. Mary wins, because she has 6 and 3. Thaddeus finishes the game in second place, because he has 6 and 2.
Note! Duplicate (identical) bear cards of a given type cannot be in the same set: each duplicate card will be in a separate set of that type.
Jack has 5 food cards and two extra cards: corned beef as well as fruits and honey. So, he has one set of 5 food cards, and an additional set of 2 food cards.
Additional Rules
A Tip for Beginners
Sometimes you are collecting one type of bear card, but on your turn there is no move which would let you take a card of that type. In that case, you should start collecting another type of bear card!
Playing with Younger Children
Playing with younger children you can simplify the game by giving up some rules:
- You can opt out of discarding a bear card on the board after playing 3 travel cards (any combination of walking cards and same-color truck cards).
- You can opt out of discarding all the bear cards on the board after taking a city card.
Using City and Person Cards as Missing Bear Cards
2 city cards, 2 person cards, or one card of each type can be used as a missing bear card in a set. Players can replace as many bear cards as they wish with pairs of city and/or person cards.
Thaddeus has 5 flag cards. He is missing the flag of Scotland. But he also has 1 city card and 2 person cards. Thaddeus can use one of his person cards (2) and his city card (3) to represent the missing flag of Scotland (4). Alternatively, he could use his 2 person cards to do this (with the same effect) (1 + 2).
After using pairs of city and person cards in this way, if a player has one left over, then it is discarded with no effect.
Thaddeus has 1 person card left (1) — this card has no effect on Thaddeus's final result.