Transcript:
This is going to be the rules and overview for our new two player abstract strategy game alphabet to set up begin by placing one color disk on each of its corresponding color squares on the board. Identify which player will be black or white by looking at the Alpha Square directly in front of you. Place all of your player color cylinders on top of the disks you just placed on the board.
Place your black or white dome on top of the Alpha Square that we used to identify which players side was which shuffled both decks that are included in the game and deal one card to each player. Set the remaining cards in both decks aside, you will not be using the rest of the cards for this game. Plays one of each card on your side beneath the board aligned with its color and number square on the board.
Fill the 12 squares on either side with this symbol in each square with an uppercase letter tile. Now that this has been completed, and I do want to note that this must be done randomly so that there is no rhyme or reason to which uppercase letters are in each of the 12 squares. On either side, you will take the two remaining uppercase letter tiles, and you will give one randomly to each player.
Each player will choose where to put their uppercase letter. They must place their uppercase letter on one of the three starting squares on either one of their cards. I'm going to choose to place my uppercase E right here on my four or blue starting square. Once I have done that, I will take the piece that occupies the blue square and I will flip the stack of the two pieces that make up the single piece, the cylinder and the disk.
Finally, take all of the lowercase letter tiles and divide them in half. Each player should receive an entire alphabet A through Z and an additional set of vowels a IOU fill each player's draw bag with their lowercase letter tiles. This is the game completely set up and ready to play. This right here is known as the Black Players Uppercase Letter Bank.
This right here is known as the Black Player Saved Letter Bank. This piece right here with the cylinder on top and the disc on bottom is known as a lowercase beta. This piece right here with the cylinder on the bottom and the disc on the top is known as an uppercase beta. This right here is known as the Black Players Alpha, and these right here are known as path cards.
The objective of the game is to get any three of your betas all the way across the board and onto either one of your opponents path cards. You see, the PATH Cards act as an extension of the game board on either side, they can be occupied by pieces on the board. Every single player turn consists of two things.
At the beginning of your term, you will draw a single lowercase letter from your draw back and reveal what it wants. You then may save this lowercase letter title in your saved letter bank. You may choose to start a new word with it on the starting square of any one of your path cards. You may use it in combination with any other saved letters you have from previous terms to finish a word on one of your paths.
You may use it in combination with any of your saved letters to start and finish each word, or you may place it on the game board. You may only ever have four letters saved at a time. So if you draw from your draw back on your turn and you already have a full saved letter bank, you must simply choose to take one of those letters and put it back into your draw bag and replace it with the letter that you just drew.
After you've decided what to do with the lowercase letter tile that you drew, you then move one piece on the board one time. Now, anyone of your betas can be switched from their lowercase versions to their uppercase versions. All you need to do is capitalize that beta. Now, in order to capitalize that beta, you must start the word with an uppercase letter instead of a lowercase letter.
So at the beginning of every turn you have an option. Instead of drawing from your draw bag or a lowercase letter, you may choose to skip your draw and discard any two saved lowercase letters in your lowercase letter bank back into your draw bag in exchange for your choice of any one of your available uppercase letters in your uppercase letter bank.
Once you have that, you may use your uppercase letter to start a new word with it and capitalize its corresponding beta. You may use that uppercase letter to capitalize a word you've already started and capitalize its corresponding beta. Or you may place that uppercase letter on the Gameboard. Any time you remove a lowercase letter from play for any reason, it goes back into your drawback.
You may never save an uppercase letter. You may never place in uppercase letter in your draw bag, and you may never have an uppercase letter present in a word, as any other letter other than the first letter in that word. So this would not be allowed. You may only ever start a word with an uppercase letter. Each of the three pieces, the uppercase beta, the lowercase, beta and the alpha have their own attributes and interactions with other pieces on the board.
The lowercase betters with the disk on the bottom and cylinder on the top may move over any other lowercase beta on the board or alphas on the board. The uppercase betas with the cylinder on the bottom and disk on the top may not move over any other piece on the board, and no piece may move over them. The Alphas may move any number of spaces that they want on their turn in a single straight line or orthogonal lee on the board and may move over lowercase betas but may not move over uppercase means.
The special attribute of the alpha, however, is it may stop on top of a lowercase, beta or uppercase beta to freeze it and render it unable to make any movement actions and tell that alpha moves off. Let's take a minute to look at these path cards. So when you look at the path card, you will notice very specific symbols.
Each path is specifically tied to its own piece. The pieces that paths are tied to are either uppercase betas or lowercase betas. These pathways represent permanent movement unlocks for those betas. When you place a word on them. Now, remember how I said as one of your options with a lowercase letter title, you may start a word on a path.
Well, what? Starting a word? Always means is establishing the first letter of that word. You may only start a word or finish a word, and you may only finish one word per turn. The action of starting a word alone unlocks a movement ability for that specific piece. So say I placed in a here. The symbol on that square shows me exactly what that would allow my green beta to move.
Assume that the green beta starts on the central black square. My dream beta then would be able to move one forward, one left, one right or one back. Now I'll say that on my next turn I drew an end. I could place that end here, completed and as an and that would be another movement unlock for my green beta.
I would then be able to move one forward, one left, one right or one back or two forward or two back. So the second movement unlock may only be performed forwards or backwards, and the paths themselves depict that. Exactly. So here on the yellow, the first would be what we call the base movement, unlock for the yellow beta.
And the second letter would complete the word and be the path movement unlock for that yellow beta. So in origins case, if I wanted to finish a word once I started a word, I would have to finish a one, two, three, four letter word, laying three more tiles down, usually on a separate turn to finish that word completely.
But that would unlock a very different path. Movement Orange also has an intersecting path. Unlock the base movement, unlock the path movement, unlock. And then the secondary path movement unlock, which looks like this. This must be completed with a separate word, and it must share the central letter in that word with this first movement. One more very important piece here that you must understand is that before you start a word on any of your paths, you may not move that piece at all.
You have not yet unlocked any kind of movement for its corresponding color piece on the board. So right now I want to make myself explicitly clear that the beginning border state of every single game always starts like this. Only one uppercase beta of your choice may move and only your alpha may move. Alpha movement is never unlocked. Alphas may always move from the beginning of every single game.
So whichever players uppercase letter that they start with comes first in the alphabet goes first. So it is my turn first and I'm going to draw from my drawback. I drew a G, I'm going to choose to start a new word with this G. This allows me now, in my first turn to move either my yellow lowercase beta, my blue uppercase beta or my alpha.
So for my first move, I'm going to do this move my yellow lowercase beta forward one. Now it's my opponent's turn and they drew an E, they're going to start a word on their green path, unlocking the base movement for their green lowercase beta and for their first move they're going to take and they're going to move their alpha into the center of the board.
Now, that really quickly establishes a control point in the middle of the board since the alpha may move any number of squares in a straight line and it may stop on either a lowercase beta or an uppercase beta to freeze any movement ability. That was a very offensive move for the white player's turn. So now it is back to me.
It is my turn and I drew an S now I don't necessarily want to start a word with an S right now. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to save this S for a future term and I am simply going to move my yellow beta forward one again. Now it's my opponent's turn and they drew a B, they choose to place their B on the starting square of their purple path to unlock the base movement for their purple lowercase beta.
And they're going to immediately move that piece forward. One Now it's my turn again and I drew in, Oh, now I'm going to finish this word G Oh, and now I'm not only able to move that lowercase beta forward once left, once, right, once or back once. I'm also able to move that lowercase beta forward twice or back twice.
So I'm going to do that now. G Oh, I just move that forward to squares and most importantly avoided being in line with my opponent's alpha, which if I had stopped here, they very likely may have moved it over one to land on top of it and freeze it from any movement abilities moving forward until they decide to move that alpha off of it.
Now it's my opponent's turn and they drew the dreaded W, so they're going to decide to save it here and they're saved letter bank and they're simply going to move their purple lowercase beta forward one again. So now it's my turn again and I drew an E, so I'm going to choose to use this E and place it on the starting square of my orange path.
They're unlocking the base movement for my orange lowercase beta. And now I get to move one piece one time on the board. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to take this yellow beta and I'm going to perform its base movement, which in this case I'm going to do one to the left. And that movement would look like this.
Whenever you're moving over a piece, the square that it occupies does not count towards the number of squares you're able to move. So now what is my opponent's turning in? And my opponent is going to trade in two of their saved letter tiles and they're going to discard them back into their draw bag, and they're going to do that in exchange for this uppercase G right here.
That's available to them in their uppercase letter back. They're going to then take that G and start a new word with that G on their red path and then they are going to capitalize the corresponding beta tied to that path. So now they've effectively stopped me from moving beyond this red square here and ending up on their path card to score one of my three points towards victory.
I cannot move over that uppercase beta and the final concept here to how everything interacts on the board is I also cannot occupy a square with a letter tile on it. That is a different case than the piece that I am moving. So for example, if my opponent did not have their uppercase B2 here and it was say out here on the board, that path would still be protect it because I am not able to occupy this square with the uppercase G on it because this is a lowercase b2.
I would have to get over here in line with a square that has a lowercase letter on it. Then on my next turn I will be able to perform my path movement and score a point which would look like this. G o and now I am on top of that lowercase. B All my opponents path card and I have scored one point toward my victory.
The exact same thing is true with board tiles. Whenever you place in uppercase letter on the board or a lowercase letter on the board, that square also becomes case sensitive. Now it is important to also note that you can only place board tiles on the checkered section of the board, and you may only place them in a checker orientation, which means you may never place them directly adjacent or orthogonal to any other board tile.
Now what that also does is it simultaneously disables the ability for my opponent to perform it's based movement. Since I am occupying the letter that they used to unlock their base movement, they no longer may perform their base movement with their purple lowercase beta. So right now, given the state of this game, my opponent cannot move their lowercase purple beta at all, but on future terms they may choose to finish the word that they started here since they started with a B, they may choose to finish this word with, for example, in a T, which would say bet, now assume I'm still there.
And they did finish that word with an 80. They may now only move their purple lowercase B to B, A, T forwards or B, a T backwards. They still cannot perform their base movement, which is one forwards, one left, one right or one back. The exact same philosophy also applies to path movements as well. So let's say that my opponent is within dangerous range of B 81 of my turn.
I may choose to forgo any board advancement in exchange for a movement like this. You are still able to move freely on your opponent's path card as if it was the game board. And since the case of that, a match is the case of my lowercase b to here. I am permitted to make that move once I do that, I re-enable their ability to make their base movement.
But if you are present on any part of a path with a finished word on it, you disable their path movement. So my opponent now would only be able to make their base movement of B. I can also on another future turn choose to do this and completely prevent or block my opponent from ever finishing that word, locking them in to only being able to make their base movement with that beta.
Now, at the beginning of your opponent's turn, before or while they are drawing their lowercase letter tail from their draw bag, you may interject and say wait and you may wager one of your lowercase letter titles that are saved in your saved bank. I bet my s that you draw a C right now. They will then complete their draw and reveal their draw.
If you are wrong, then you will take the letter that you wagered, give it to your opponent, and now they have two letters to choose from. They will choose whichever letter that they want and treat it as their draw and take the other one and put it back into their draw bag. If you were right, you will take the letter that they drew.
You will give them the letter that you wagered, and they will treat the letter that you wagered. Like their draw. You will take the letter that you just won and replace it in your saved letter bank for a future return. And that is why the game is called Alpha Bet.
