Casablanca

Published by Amigo Spiel.
Copyright 1995, Amigo Spiel.
Translation by Emanuel Soeding (esoeding@geomar.de).

A game for 2-8 players, ages 10-110

Contents

Description

Every player has $10,000 to bribe Agents. Each player can move each of the eight agents. The agents try to carry the black suitcase into their homebase. The player who put the highest bribe on the agent, who does that, is the winner.

Setup

Put the suitcase onto the space labled ≥Basar in the center of the gameboard. Put the agents into their homebases in the corners of the board as specified on the bribe-sheet (Ricks Cafe - green, purple; Hotel - blue, white; Airport - red, brown; Police - yellow, white). Attention: in every game all the eight agents take part, regardless of the number of participating players. Each player will need a pencil. Each player gets a secret file and a bribe-sheet.

The Game

The most butiful player starts. The following players take their turn in clockwise order. When a player takes his turn, (s)he can choose between the following three actions:

  1. Move
  2. Bribe
  3. Eliminate

Attention: The agents don't belong to any one player. Each player can move, bribe or eliminate each agent still on the board.

1. Move

A player can only move one agent during his turn. Agents are moved from one space (white building) to an adjectant space along the streets. Any number of agents may share the same space.

2. Bribe

Instead of moving an agent, a palyer can choose to bribe one or more agents. Bribing is done, by marking the bribed amount on the bribe-sheet in the ≥Kapitalplan section, and adding it to the amount of the box of any one agent on the bribe-sheet (see illustration in the german rules). The total amount of money a player has for bribing during the whole game is 10.000$. It is not allowed to transfer money from an allready bribed agent to another one or back into the total. Once an amount is assigned to an agent, a player can only raise the bid. (S)he can never lower it. You can not divide up a single amountbetween several agents, allthough you may assign several amounts to one or more agents during your bribing action.

3. Eliminate

If two agents meet on a space, one of them can try to eliminate the other. Eliminating is done, by declaring it, for example saying: ≥Purple will now eliminate white. Does anybody want to protest? . If nobody wants to oppose against the elimination, the declared agent is removed from the game. It will not return this game. Every money bid on him is lost. The eliminating player deducts 1.000$ from the eliminating agents account.

Attention: You can only eliminate an agent with another agent, if you allready bribed the eliminating one with at least 1.000$.

(Translators note 1: The rules are not clear about, whether an agent has to have been on the space where he wants to eliminate another agent before moving (which means that you eliminate instead of moving) or if a player could move an agent normally and then eliminate an agent on the space he moved to. However, the rules of an precessor of ≥Casablanca named ≥Agent by Pelikan are quite clear in this point. They say that this is possible, so you can move an agent to an adjectant space and try to eliminate an agent that is currently there. We allways played it that way too.

Translators note 2: Allthough the rules are not clear about it, the older rules say, that you can not try to eliminate an agent which is in his homebase.)

Protest

If a player wants to move or eliminate an agent, each of the opposing players may protest in clockwise order. Protesting means: the player tries to prevent the agent to move or eliminate. The player, who put the highest bribe on the specific agent decides what happens. To determine, who put the higher bribe on an agent, the players use a bidding procedure.

Bidding Procedure

During the bidding procedure, the players stepwise reveal their bribes on a specific agent. The player who protested against an action calls out any part of the amount he bribed the agent with, but must call at least 100$. The player who wanted to perform an action with an agent either holds the bid, which means that he says that he bid at least the same amount on the agent as his opponent, or he passes. This continues until one of the players doesn t want to bid further and passes or doesn t raise the bid.

Example:

        Player A        Player B
I bid   100$            I hold
        200$            I hold
        500$            I pass

(Translators note: Unlike money paid for eiminations, bribes revealed during the bidding procedures are not lost. The revealed money is still part of the valid total bribe of a player on a specific agent.)

Successful Protest

Player A won the bidding and Player B has to make a different move. He may not choose to place a bid during this turn. Other players may not protest against a successfull protest. Of course everybody may protest against the new move announced by the moving player. Note: When the players become more familiar with the game, they first announce their actions and wait for protests. Then they resolve them and at last perform their moves.

Unsuccessful Protest

If player B had won in the above example, the protest would have been unsuccessful and the move would have been performed as announced. If a player made an unsuccessful protest, other players may still decide to protest against the announced move in clockwise order.

The black Suitcase

When an agent leaves a space, he may decide to take the suitcase or not. To take the suitcase from another agent, the other agent does not have to be eliminated. Any agent can just take the suitcase, if he is in the same space as the suitcase, regardless of other agents there.

End of the Game

The game ends immediatly, when an agent with the black suitcase reaches his homebase (where he started).

The Winner

The winner is the player who put the highest bribe on that agent. If two players bid the same amount on an agent, the player who moved the winning agent to his homebase wins the game.

Have fun..... Amigo

The Game Cabinet - editor@gamecabinet.com - Ken Tidwell