What started as a casual comment has suddenly developed into a variant all its own. After enjoying
maulei's Fruit Trader variant, I mentioned it might be appropriate to have apples in the
Forest. So, tagging along on
Scott and
Novelty's ride, I present the first rough pass of An Apple A Day.
Six forest tiles will have an apple icon on them, these are apple orchards. Draw and play one of those tiles and you receive an apple trade counter. If you place the tile adjacent to another apple orchard you get
two trade counters. A third adjacent orchard awards three counters, etc. Note that the forests on these tiles do not have to connect and no completing of a feature is required.
The apple trade counters themselves are randomly drawn from a hidden stockpile. Some of the apples have unique traits that bring bonus rules into play. If you draw one of these apples, you may immediately place it under any follower currently on the board. You may chose to store the apple, where it is treated like any other trade counter. However, any player with an special apple trade counter may choose to play
it instead of moving the wood.
As described below, some apples will have immediate effects, others occur when the meeple is scored or otherwise moved. In all cases, once an apple counter is used (the meeple is moved off of it) it is discarded from the game.
- Poison Apple: this meeple drops into a deep coma, a slumber that borders on death. A poisoned meeple is not counted when determining majority for scoring. However, a traveling meeple or wagon can rescue the sleeping meeple.
- An Apple A Day: the vital and healthy meeple on this apple counts +1 more than normal
- Green Apples: place under a lumberjack. Lured by the smell of fresh apple pie, the controlling player immediately receives the Warden (or whatever the Forest-King equivalent is). As long as the lumberjack is on the Green Apples, the player keeps the Warden and benefits thereof.
- Jean des Appleseed: when this meeple moves for any reason, whether to another tile or off the board, trade the apple counter in for any two other trade counters from the resource pool
- Forbidden Fruit: place under a meeple. On his next turn, the meeple's player draws
two tiles. He selects one to play normally and the other is discarded from play, it's identity unrevelaed to the other players. Before any scoring happens, the meeple with the forbidden fruit is banished from the board and returned to the player's pool.
- Target Practice: this meeple has been practicing with his bow and can defend himself quite well, thank you. The dragon will not eat the meeple, he is immune to capture by towers. Basically, he can never be forcibly removed from the board.
- Red Apple: a crisp, delicous apple with no special traits. Treat as a standard trade counter, interchangable with the pineapple fruit counters from
Fruit Trader. (Half of the apple counters will be standard red apples.)
End scoring: any unused apples (both red and special apples) are combined with pineapples to total fruit trade counters. The player with the most fruit counters earns 10 points. Apples on the board are not included in this total.