Components
- 30 truck cards
- 64 points markers
- 5 special dice
- 96 wooden pieces
Setup
Shuffle truck cards into a face-down draw pile.
Place the wooden pieces next to the draw pile. Give each player 75 points' worth of markers (1x50, 2x10, 1x5). The remaining markers form the bank. The youngest player takes the 5 dice and starts the game.
Game Play
The game is played over several rounds. Each round consists of
- Receive load
- Pick a truck
- Load truck
- Score points
The game finishes once a player runs out of points.
1. Receive Load
Each player rolls the 5 dice. Each die shows the number of wooden pieces in the corresponding color that the player has to take.
Example:
White die: 3
.
Grey die: 2
.
Brown die: 3
.
Turquoise die: blank (counts as 0)
.
Purple die: 1
.
The player takes 3 white, 2 grey, 3 brown, and 1 purple pieces.
2. Pick a truck
Each player receives 2 truck cards (in a 3 or 4 player game) or 1 truck card (in a 5 or 6 player game). He places the card(s) face down in front of him, with the arrow on each card pointing towards him.
Players simultaneously flip their cards over so that everyone can see the shape of the loading area and the number (which represents the number of pieces to be stacked on the truck) for each truck.
Each player now grabs a truck as fast as possible. This can either be a truckcard that is in front of another player (you can NEVER take a truck hat is in front of yourself) or the top card from the face-down draw pile.
The last player to pick a truck has no choice: he has to take the top card from the draw pile.
Truck cards that were not chosen are placed on the discard pile.
3. Load Truck
All players simultaneously try to load their wooden pieces onto their truck There is no penalty for being the last player to finish loading.
You can only load onto the truck's white area.
The number on the truck card shows the number of levels that the truck carries. A 1 means that no stacking is allowed, a 2 means one layer on top of the first, etc.
There must be no "overhanging" pieces, i.e., if you load a piece on a level other than 1, there must be no gaps underneath this piece.
You can load pieces lying down or standing up
Once all players have loaded their trucks, proceed to scoring.
4. Score Points
Players now pay points as follows:
Empty spaces on the truck
Each player checks how many white pieces (i.e., pieces of size 1) would fit onto his truck. For each such piece, the player pays 1 point to the bank.
Example: This truck has room for 3 more white pieces, so the player pays 3 points.
Surplus wooden pieces
For each wooden piece that a player could not load onto his truck, he pays twice the piece's size in points.
Example: The player did not load two brown pieces (size 3). He, therefore, pays 2x2x3=12points to the bank.
Often, a player will have to pay for empty spaces and surplus pieces.
Example: This truck has space for 5 more white pieces, and the player did not load a purple piece. This costs 5 points for the empty spaces plus 10 points (2x5) for the purple piece. The player pays 15 points.
The player or players who paid the fewest points in this round receive(s) 10 bonus points.
Example: Four players have paid 14, 9, 4, and 6 points, respectively. The player who paid 4 points receives the 10 point bonus (afterpaying her 4points).
For the next round, return all wooden pieces (and truck cards), then start by rolling the dice to get wooden pieces. Game then proceeds as described above.
If there draw pile runs out, reshuffle the discarded truck cards.
End of the Game
The game finishes as soon as someone has no more points at the end of a round.
Whoever has the most points left is the winner (in case of a tie, the players with the highest score win together).
Continue Reading
