Cubes and Sticks

Cubes and Sticks: YOUR SCHOOL HERE Edition
by Dwight Sullivan and Mark Galvez

Players: 3 – 6
Time: 1 hour
Ages: 10+

How much influence does your clique really have in College?

Object: Get as many of your Cubes and Sticks in the right place on the higher levels as you can.

Parts:
30 – 1" Cubes of wood. 5 in each of the 6 colors



30 – 4" Sticks of wood 5 in each of the 6 color.




1 – Customized board with the top view of the campus with 6 areas: Student Union, Arts, Mathematics, Library. Sciences and Athletics (Can change with each edition.).


6 - Clique cards (Edit for each edition). These tell what 3 colors you care about and the areas of the campus you need to get your colored pieces in to:

Football Team scores: Blue, brown, or green pieces in Athletics or Student Union.
Think Tank scores: Red, blue, or yellow pieces in Mathematics or Sciences.
Beatniks scores: Green, red, or yellow pieces in Arts or Library.
Greek Council scores: Orange, brown, or blue pieces in Library or Mathematics.
Party Animals scores: Brown, yellow, or blue pieces in Student Union or Sciences.
Cheerleaders scores: Yellow, orange, or green pieces in Athletics or Arts.



48 – Vote cards, up to 8 for each player. When you use these they are spent until your turn when you can replenish them.



Set up:
First pull out the correct Clique cards for the number of players and discard the rest:
3 players use Think Tank, Football Team, Beatniks
4 players add in Greek Council
5 players add in Party Animals
6 players add in Cheerleaders

Shuffle the Clique cards and deal one face down to each player. They can look at it but keep it face down and a secret during the game.

Deal vote cards to each player equal to the number of players plus two.

Put the board in the middle.

Pile all the cubes and sticks next to the board.

The ugliest player goes first.


On your turn:
1 – Draw vote cards:
Draw enough vote cards to bring your total cards equal to the number of players plus 2. You can only replenish your vote cards on your turn.

2 – Select a piece and convince others:
Select a cube or stick and begin to discuss with the other players possible placements of that piece. Try to learn their interest in that piece. You don’t have to tell them all of where or how you plan to place it but they may not vote for you if you don’t. If so then plan to out vote them.

HINT – Since there are at least two people for each color, a stick that spans two areas might get more votes.

3 – Call for a vote:
Starting with you each player will spend a vote card or pass. If they spend a card it will go in to one of two piles YES or NO. Each player can vote as long as they have vote cards to spend. The voting ends when no one wants to continue voting. Count the votes. If there are more YESs, if there are zero votes, or if it is a tie then you win and can place the piece.

If there are more NOs than YESs then the piece is passed to the player on your left and they have to try and get a positive vote to place that piece. If they fail it is passed to the left again. If the piece comes back to you, you can then place it anywhere you want.
Spent vote cards return to the deck.

HINT – Spend your vote cards wisely. You can only replenish your vote cards on your turn.

4 – Place the piece:
Whoever wins the vote should now tell everyone exactly where and how you plan to place the piece. You can not deviate from anything you promised before the vote.You can place the piece on the directly on the board or stacked on other pieces. If stacking a stick it has to have at least two other pieces under it, one on each end.

You can not have a stick hang over into the green areas of the board and you can not place a cube on a spanning stick such that it is over the green areas of the board.

HINT – You want your colors to be stacked as high as you can so let the other colors be on the lower levels.


Play then moves to the left.

Game end:
The game ends when all the pieces are on the board.

Scoring:
Each Clique card shows how it will score. It has three colors and two campus areas. A piece of the right color in either area is a scoring piece. A scoring piece on the board level is worth one point, on the second level up is worth two, and so on.

Example:
The Beatniks want Green, Yellow, or Red in the Library or Arts department. So far in this example they will score 6 points for the green stick on the 3rd level, 2 points for the stick on the 2nd level, 1 point for the green cube on the 1st level, and 2 points for the red stick on the 1st level.



In this example the Beatniks would score a total of 11 points.

The winner is the person with the highest score.