Quantum (1984) Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Rules for Quantum
  • Setup
  • Turns
  • Special Moves
  • Goal

Rules for Quantum

The simple Quantum rules let you tame that immensity and map your road through it.

Setup

You pick your colors or color groups from among the 48 quanters on the gameshaker. In three-player games, you remove one color, or else one of you plays two colors as two separate groups, their turns separated by those of the other two players.

Shake the board until all quanters stand blank side up. If you don't like their pattern, you can ask for up to three reshakes; your opponents either agree or switch colors with you.

The first turn is yours if you have fewer quanters in the center than any other player, or in case of a tie there, in the next ring(s) of cups around it.

Turns

At each of your turns, you move one of your quanters. You display captured opponents off the board, face up.

To move a blank, you can turn it over in its cup, or you can make it jump first over any adjacent opponent quanter with a free cup directly behind to land in, or to touch down in if you continue the jump. You capture each opponent as you jump over it, and at the end of the jump you turn your quanter face up.

The overturned blank is either one of 28 steppers that can step into any adjacent cup not occupied by a group mate, or else one of 20 stars that can do this step or continue it as a stride through any free cups in its direction. If your stepper or star arrives in an opponent's cup, it captures the quanter there.

Special Moves

Two special Quantum moves add balance and sudden reversals:

1. If you are the first to turn over your last blank, you can convert it into the energy of an explosion-like disaster: place that quanter into any vacant cup except the center four, capture all adjacent quanters, and then remove it, too, from the board. If you let this "first last" blank get captured instead, that game has no disaster.

2. If you reverse a quanter in a corner cup, you "transform" it: you switch it with one of your captured quanters of the opposite type, if available: a Stepper turns into a Star, and a Star into a Stepper. If the captures contain no match, your transforming quanter keeps its own sign. In either case, you place your transformed piece into any free cup, except the center four and the corners.

Goal

Your goal is to seize the center: occupy all four center cups if you can, or else assemble all your remaining quanters there, without an opponent in the center.

Expect about 20 to 30 minutes of play.