Domains of Meh Rules

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Domains of Meh rulebook title

The calendars of Meh speak of the great wars of territory. The time when the four cultures of Meh met and decided who would own the greatest control of the country. So important is this history, they say, that they must re-meet and have the same war every few years.

The problem is, nobody’s really into it.

And now a war has broken out, on schedule, in which nobody really wants to fight.

Introduction

Access

To play Domains of Meh you’re going to need some space to lay out the territory cards. You’re going to need to be able to keep a hand of cards hidden from your opponents. You will need to be able to read your cards and do some maths at the end.

You should only need to shuffle once.

And always: Remember to respect the players and their needs.

Components

In your copy of Domains Of Meh, you should have the following:

  • 12 territory cards
    • 4 desert cards
    • 4 snow cards
    • 4 forest cards
  • 4 decks each of 9 soldier cards
    • 9 dwarf cards
    • 9 elf cards
    • 9 orc cards
    • 9 human cards

How To Play

In Domains of Meh, you and up to three of your friends are trying to win a war where nobody ever wants to fight. You want to send your soldiers to territory and hold it, but since all soldiers want to avoid fights, they’ll leave if it’s a fight they can’t win.

Setup

First, each player picks what army they want to play—the dwarves, elves, humans or orcs.

  • Dwarves are stubborn and suit taking lots of smaller spaces.
  • Elves get to draw more cards, and want to control the single largest territory
  • Humans benefit from being next to one another and other armies
  • Orcs are happy with open spaces, and look scary in groups.

When you have the army you want to play, you shuffle that deck and draw three cards.

Then, set up the territory. Shuffle up the Map cards, and lay them face-down in a 3×4 grid (or 4×3, either works fine). Then turn them face up. All the territory cards that match their neighbours make a single, larger territory.

Then, the youngest player gets the first turn1.

[ 1 Or some other method for determining first player. I’m not your dad. ]

Play

On your turn, you get to send one card from your hand to a territory card somewhere in Meh. Easy, right?

Put your army on a territory card. If that territory is unoccupied, that’s it! Your soldiers are holding that territory.

If there’s an army on that territory, you have to check to see which army looks bigger. The number on each card shows how big and scary it looks—1, 2, or 3. Some armies (dwarves and orcs) get to win ties, but otherwise, to move an army, you need to move it with a bigger army.

When a bigger army approaches a smaller army, the smaller army runs away home. Put those cards in your discard pile.

You can’t send an army to a territory with an army in it you control. If you dislike all the cards in your hand, you can choose to take a card from your hand and put it on the bottom of your deck.

After you’ve finished your turn and sent out your army, you draw a card from your deck, if there are any cards left.

Winning

When all the territory in the game has been claimed, (so there’s an army in every territory) or when players all run out of cards in their deck, the game is over and it’s time to see who won the game by scoring the most points.

First, each player gets 1 point for each territory they control.

Second, each army has a special rule that applies for each member of that army in any territory.

  • Dwarves get +1 point per Dwarf card if all their territory matches. So, if you only control 4 snow territories, you get +4 points for each one, or 20 total points!
  • Elves get +1 point per Elf card if they control the largest territory—the territory that’s made up of the most connected territory cards of the same kind. Those elves don’t have to be in the biggest territory! If there are two territories that are the same size, controlling either of them counts for this bonus. Elves need a lot of space!
  • Humans get +1 point per Human card that has any neighbours in adjacent territory. That can be a human card or another army’s cards.
  • Orcs get +1 point pre Orc card that has no neighbours in adjacent territory.

What’s adjacent mean in this context? It only means up-down and left-right, so it doesn’t include diagonals. The people of Meh have not developed diagonal technology yet.

Credits

Game, Rulebook: Talen Lee

Art: from http://finalbossblues.itch.io/

Fonts: from http://somepx.itch.io/

Creative Commons Resources:

Special Thanks

To Jeb, who helped inspire the non-conflict war game

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