When you decide to go to press, you have to first build, and then score your front page.
Building
To build your front page, you will take the stories you picked up (where you had the most or tied for the most reporters) and place them on your newspaper's front page, represented on your player mat. There are several rules you must follow when building your front page:
-
First, look to see if you have any stories from top news beats. Top news beats are those whose arrows point to the highest value (look at the numeric value, and not just the position of the arrow markers).
These are the big stories of the day, and they must touch the top edge of your front page, a newspaper's most valuable real estate. If you have multiple stories from top news beats, you must place as many as possible touching the top edge.
-
If you still have more stories from top news beats, you must place as many of them as possible on the rest of your front page.
-
Finally, place the rest of your stories in the remaining space on the front page. These stories can go anywhere there is room.
You may turn your stories horizontal or vertical as desired, but you are required to turn stories from top news beats in the optimal orientation to achieve the "as many as possible" requirements in the above rules.
If you place stories sideways, you can flip them over to achieve a more pleasing look.
Before scoring, give the other players a chance to validate that the above rules were applied correctly in building your front page.
Important: You may not move your advertisement when building your front page!
Scoring
Once your front page is assembled and ready for press, you reap the benefits!
-
You may declare one 'exclusive' story, which your newsboys will use to sell more newspapers. Choose a story that is not from a top news beat but still touches the top of your front page.
This story scores double its news beat value! You can only declare one exclusive-even if you fit other stories at the top of the page, they will not score double.
-
All other published stories score their news beat value.
-
Empty spaces (those not covered up by a story) are penalized at either -1 or -2, as printed on the space.
-
Your advertisement does not score any points, but it does cover up the penalty of an empty space. It is removed after scoring, and replaced with a new advertisement once you draw a headline card.
-
Unpublished stories-those stories that you could not fit on your front page-score their news beat value as negative points. In addition, these stories are put back (in star order) on their supply stacks. You may not keep them for final scoring.
Tally the total score for your front page and move up the circulation track. You can never move backward on the circulation track, so a negative total score for going to press is counted as zero. Despite this, remember that you cannot go to press without at least one claimed story!
An example of building and scoring:
The Times (the yellow player) has gone to press! They are able to claim three stories, scooping The Sun (the blue player) on two of them. After picking up the three stories and returning all reporters on them to their respective player mats, it's time to build a front page.
The Times (yellow) scores 12 points:
- +4 for the Politics story.
- +6 (3x2) for the exclusive Crime and Calamity story.
- +3 for the War story.
- -1 for the empty space.
The Sun (blue) scores 2 scoop points:
- +1 for being scooped on the Crime and Calamity story.
- +1 for being scooped on the War story. The fact that it is an exclusive does not affect the scoop points.
Later on in the game, The Herald (black) has gone to press twice, and has an advertisement in quite a pesky place. Their reporters are in great position to claim three stories that would fit beautifully on their front page, but there is a problem.
New York has become the top news beat, and so each claimed New York story would need to touch the top edge of the front page.
The War story can't fit if The Herald goes to press now, and the front page would be worth almost nothing!
Continue Reading
