An Apple A Day - a Forests mini-expansion

[Cappy]

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.

[Novelty]

Nice, but where's Snow White?

- 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.

That would be the "Outlaw" from Merry Men.  A lot would depend on the artwork though.  It could just be the Merry Men for all I know

- 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

That would cause problems with the T&B trade counters... what happens when you finish a T&B tile and there's no more trade counters because you stole it with the Jean apple?

- 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.

I would prefer that the other tile is reshuffled back into the pile/stack/whatever

I like the idea.  Good job for the first pass, but it's the tweaking of the details that's the time consuming part.

Also, PM me the 6 tile configs on which you want apple icons!  I'll make those for you as promised... since I'm done with Green Dragon.  And technically, this is a Forests expansion, not a Green Dragon expansion.

[Novelty]

Here's my thoughts on the counters:

Poisoned Apple: Red apple with skull
An Apple a day: Red apple with cross
Green Apple: Green Apple
Jean: No idea...
Forbidden Fruit: Golden/Yellow apple
Target Practice: Red apple with Bull's eye
Red Apple: Red Apple

[Cappy]

Green Apples:

That would be the "Outlaw" from Merry Men.  A lot would depend on the artwork though.  It could just be the Merry Men for all I know

Outlaw it is! (For now...)

Jean des Appleseed:

That would cause problems with the T&B trade counters... what happens when you finish a T&B tile and there's no more trade counters because you stole it with the Jean apple?

Originally I had thought "tough, running out of resources is the price you pay." But Appleseed is supposed to be charitable action, so here's a rework: When the Jean des Appleseed meeple moves on, trade the apple token for any other type of trade counter from another player. That player may not refuse the trade. In addition, randomly draw a second apple from the resource pool and add it to your trade goods. Note: the player who received the Appleseed token may put it into play on his turn.

Forbidden Fruit:

I would prefer that the other tile is reshuffled back into the pile/stack/whatever

Well, I was trying to punish everyone for the tempted meeple's rash action (ala the Garden of Eden), but I can see that this would tick off many players. So the tile unused tile will get shuffled back in.

And technically, this is a Forests expansion, not a Green Dragon expansion.

Aww. I thought it would fun to have an expansion of an expansion. Okay, edit made.

Novelty, I've been carefully sorting through the hundreds of available forest tiles to pick out the six I'd like to use. Thanks for the offer and I will keep you updated. I do have ideas for the other apples, so don't bang your head too hard. And I like the "red cross" image for Apple A Day, thanks.

Question for you: in Forests, when you get to the wood/logs trade goods, will the tile icon be in the little shed-shaped outline as per cities? Or are you thinking a different shape? Because I'd like the apples to match.

[Novelty]

Question for you: in Forests, when you get to the wood/logs trade goods, will the tile icon be in the little shed-shaped outline as per cities?

Same as cities!  Why reinvent the wheel?

And I look forward to the Adam and Eve apple   Oh, I'm not looking forward to an adam's apple though

Three more counters...



How is the Jean Apple supposed to look?  Ideas?

[Novelty]

Well, Appleseed = cut apple showing the seeds like below?

Cappy, are these counters OK?

[Cappy]

That's exactly what I had in mind for Appleseed!

[Novelty]

Download:
Draft Tiles and Counters
Draft Rules (link deleted)

I chose 6 random tiles.  Cappy was supposed to tell me which 6 tiles he wanted, but I don't think he has the time to go through the "hundreds of forest tiles".  (Well, he didn't have to go through them, I can easily create any forest tile from scratch!  There are some, OK, at least 1, new configs for apples)

I also made a number of changes (sorry Cappy):

1. Total counters increased to 14 (reason: see 1 and 2 below)
2. Max number of counters to be drawn with a tile is 3 (or 6 with an extended turn).  (reason: if you go by Cappy's original rules: Place first apple tile, get 1 counter, 13 left.  Place 2nd apple tile next to first tile, get 2 counters, 11 left.  Place 3rd apple tile next to the 2 previous tiles, get 3 counters, 8 left.  Place 4th tiles next to the 3 previous tiles, get 4 counters, 4 left.  Place 5th tile next to the 3 previous tiles, get... 4 counters... and no counters left.  The person playing the last tile gets no counters as there are none left!)
3. Jean Appleseed doesn't get an extra counter, just the trade.  I don't think there are enough counters for #2 let alone for Jean to pick up when he/she does a trade.

Also, Jean Appleseed seems to contradict the rule "In all cases, once an apple counter is used (the meeple is moved off of it) it is discarded from the game." so I removed that line from the rules.

[Novelty]

I forgot the names of the apples, so I went back and added them:

Updated Draft Rules.

[Cappy]

Yep, hundreds and hundreds of tiles! Egads! It's actually surprising how close your "random" draw came to the tiles I carefully selected. The first pass tiles look great, but half the fun of this project was getting into all those forest tiles. Having spent the brainpower, might I convince you to go with the following line-up:

rwww - Forest pg 1, A3
fwfw - Forest pg 1, B5
ffww - Forest pg 1, C5
rrww w/ inn - Green Dragon pg 2, C1
ccww - Green Dragon pg 4,B5 w/out the shield
   and I dropped one to fit in the cliffs -
cfwr w/ cliff - basically the cliff orchard you've shown, but the road turns and enters the city. I hadn't got into the cliffs whilst perusing, but now that you've done it, well, I'm hooked.

So, I've got to ask: which is the new tile config?

As for token count, I was bouncing around on that and hadn't really settled on a final number. Limiting the "adjacent orchards" bonus to 3 works for me, but I come up with a final total of 15 counters.

I would like to mix them thusly:
7 red apples
2 Apple A Day
2 Forbidden Fruit
1 of each other special apple (4 total)

Thank you, sir!

[Novelty]

Final tiles.  Sorry Cappy, it's way too much work to change the apple images at this stage.  Finalise the rules and then we can get it ready for Gantry to put on the public downloads area!

Now, I finally get to work on my Rowing meeples expansion with Rivers!

[Scott]

Novelty asked me to take a look at this expansion. I found two things:
1. In the preparation section, there is no mention of mixing the new landscape tiles with the other landscape tiles.
2. In the apple description section, the third apple is called "target practise" (British spelling), but then the word "practicing" (American spelling) is used in the second sentence. One of these instances should be changed to match the other for consistency.

[Joff]

ADDITIONAL RULES

The opening sentence makes it sound like you can only play An Apple a Day with the Forests expansion exclusively.

Question: What happens if there are not enough apple counters in the supply? (I appreciate that this will be highly unlikely, but the scenario must be covered. By my reckoning, it would be possible to require up to 15 apple counters in a game).

Highly improbable example: Player 1 plays an apple tile onto a forest (1 tile played, 1 counter drawn, 1 counter total).
Player 2 takes his turn and draws another apple tile which he places next to the last apple tile (2 tiles used, 2 counters drawn, 3 counters total used).
Player 3 draws an apple tile also and plays this next to the last apple tile (3 tiles used, 3 counters drawn, 6 counters total used).
Player 1 draws an apple tile and again places it next to the other apple tiles (4 tiles used, 3 counters drawn, 9 counters total used).
Player 2 draws another apple tile and places this next to the other apple tiles (5 tiles used, 3 counters drawn, 12 counters total used).
Player 3 draws the remaining apple tile and places this next to the other apple tiles (6 tiles used, 3 counters drawn, 15 counters total used).
This scenario requires 15 counters not 14.

How is it possible to get an extended turn while using this expansion?
Footnote 1 reads:
"During an extended turn, where two tiles is drawn and played, a player may draw up to 6 apple trade goods counter from the supply, 3 for each tile, provided that both the tiles drawn have the apple trade goods logo, and that those tiles are placed next to at least 2 other tiles with an apple trade goods icon"
You cannot place a builder in a forest, that would contradict Forest rules. An apple tile does not give an extended turn, so an extended turn (or double-turn) is impossible, isn't it? (unless I have overlooked something).
If I have overlooked something then the footnote should read: "During an extended turn, where two tiles are drawn and played, a player may draw up to 6 apple trade goods counter from the supply, 3 for each tile, provided that both the tiles drawn have the apple trade goods logo, and that those tiles are placed next to at least 2 other tiles with an apple trade goods icon"

What is the point of the ‘Jean Appleseed’ counter? I can see that you can exchange it for another players counter (does this include Trade goods counters from T&B?), but if any other players have no counters to trade you give them the ‘Jean Appleseed’ counter to a player of your choice… which in effect is giving away an advantage!

Other than that, everything is good.


Edit: I had missed something! 4 of the final 6 tiles have features that could well be used to gain a extended turn when using this expansion! Sorry 

[Novelty]

Scott, I'm of the school which states that practise and practising is a verb while practice and practicing is a noun and adjective.

Joff, yes, include trade good counters from any other expansion including T&B, Timber!, Gold Mines, Lavender Fields, etc. etc.  The player chooses to play the 'Jean Appleseed' counter under a follower (they may choose not to!) so it's up to them whether they would like to take the risk of giving the counter away.

Updated Rules.

[Joff]

Novelty is correct: 'practice' is the noun and 'practise' is the verb. This is the correct English.

However, I think the correct way of writing the rules is. 'Target Practice' - this is the name of the 'sport', while 'practising' is the action of carrying out the 'sport'. Although many people choose to use 'practice' and 'practicing'.

In the original, I believe, that Nov has it the wrong way around, but I don't think there is any problem with using the noun and the verb in the same sentence.