For 2 to 12 players.
The game consists of 26 board tiles and 12 opportunity cards, 1 six sided die, and objects to be used as playing pieces (green plastic army men preferred).
The board tiles are:
1 Start tile
1 Helicopter (or Choppah!) tile
14 blank tiles
2 tunnel entrance tiles (move through the tunnel to the other side)
4 lose a turn tiles (tangled in vines, stuck in mud, broke through bridge, and lost my way)
2 advance 1 space tiles
2 retreat 1 space tiles
The opportunity cards are:
3 Cover fire cards (Advance another player 2 spaces)
3 Decoy cards (Advance yourself 3 spaces)
3 Rest up cards (Play this card, do nothing this turn but get to move 5 spaces your next turn without a die roll)
3 Frag cards (Cause another player to lose a turn)
Board tiles are placed in a pile, face up. Opportunity cards are placed in a pile, face down. The Start tile is placed on the table, each player puts their playing piece on the Start tile.
To begin play, each player rolls the die to determine play order, highest first, roll again to break ties. The Start tile is then placed on the table. Each player in turn then takes a board tile from the pile and places it so that it connects to the previously laid down tile. The path can turn left or right, but the path cannot intersect with itself, the Helicopter tile must be played last, forming a path of exactly 26 tiles or 25 moves to the end. A retreat 1 space tile cannot be placed immediately after an advance 1 space tile. When the helicopter tile is played, the next player in turn begins the movement phase (the first moving player may not be the player who had the highest roll). Each player draws an opportunity card before their first movement turn but cannot play it that round, they must roll the die to leave the Start Tile.
When the die is rolled, a value of 1 thru 5 indicates that the player moves that many spaces toward the Choppah! A roll of six indicated that you think you've been spotted by your pursuers and must hide this round. If the player lands on a non-blank board tile at the end of their movement, they must do what it says.
After the first movement turn, a player can choose to use their opportunity card instead of rolling the die. A used card is returned to the pile, the player does not draw another card. Players moved by another player's Cover Fire card must do what is said on the tile on which they land.
The winner is the first player to "Get to da choppah!"
Comments (3)
Jason Pace said
at 11:09 pm on Jul 1, 2009
It needs a little refinement, but we tore up a couple of pieces of paper and played five quick games of it and it made us laugh a lot.
mike.reddy@... said
at 9:37 am on Jul 2, 2009
You might want another caveat to tile placement to say that tiles cannot be put adjacent to others. For example if I turned left then left I would have a tile next to one laid two turns ago. So, if I lay left then only straight or right would be available, lay right would only allow left or straight, etc. Otherwise, what would stop me taking a shortcut? Do players only get one opportunity card? I'm assuming so.
Jason Pace said
at 11:05 am on Jul 2, 2009
I need to clear that up. My "the path cannot intersect with itself" was meant to cover that. To be honest, I probably should just state that the path stay straight since curving the path has no effect on game play apart of looking different. And yes, a player gets 1 opportunity card and then no more. The most fun in the game, according to the people who played with me, was using the Cover Fire card to force another player into a special tile, like the tunnel or losing a turn, even though using the card instead of rolling often meant they were still behind the player they used it against and even moved them ahead two spaces. The result is that using a card appears to be a good idea to the players, and they do use them, but oddly they have less effect on the game than lucky die rolling. Most often, using cards resulted in "mutually assured destruction" where the user and the target both stalled while another player shot ahead.
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