Alright! This is your Wobbegong! Yes it’s a funny word! Stop smirking! Yeah, all the fancy folk get to use their rovers called things like Mako and Great White, but no, here out in the dusty bum-end of galactic space, we use things named after the rubbish sharks. So! Your wobbegong is a bit of a retro pile of hardware, and it’s a bit weird to pilot! Listen up!
You, Wobbegong Rover pilot, you are trying to pick up cargo—either an astronaut or a space rock—and bring it to rest underneath the Uplink card.
Easy, right? Got it? Done and dusted! Oh, uh, wait—Just one detail? You move your Wobbegong Rover around by flicking it. You have to hit it on the sides of
the card where the wheels are visible. So you can’t flick it on the front, just on the sides or back.
There. That’s it. That’s all.
Oh, and oh, another detail, you can’t do this if you’re not Uplinked?
Oh, wait I didn’t explain Uplink. So there’s a card in the game, the uplink card, which you have to be holding in the hand you use to write with? That’s where they put your access chip, you see, so you need to use that hand to hold the card to move your Rover. If you’re not holding the card, your rover doesn’t work.
Okay, easy—
Oh wait, hang on, because of cutbacks, there’s only one Uplink card per game. So, uh, everyone’s going to hold the same one. If you want to move around so you can change your angle to flick your Rover, uhm, you have to let go of the Uplink card, then you move around, then you have to reconnect—you just count to three out loud, for voice printing, and take hold of the Uplink card again, and then you can flick your Rover.
That’s all you need to know, right?
Oh wait hang on, uhm, hang on, picking up Assets. Okay, so you pick up assets by flicking your rover under them. Yes, under them. You need to flick your rover so it gets underneath the asset token. Uh, if it doesn’t, you just try again. Right? Easy. Easy!
And uhm
Oh
One last detail…?
This is all in real time. Nobody takes turns.
Rules Summary
- Every player moves their Rover card by flicking the tyres
- Every player has to be holding the same Uplink card with their writing hand
- You can let go of the Uplink card to move around the table
- If you let go of the Uplink card, count to three aloud before you take it again
- You want to flick your Rover so it goes under an Asset card
- Then you want to flick your Rover, with the Asset on it, under the Uplink card
Setting Up
To start a game of Wobbegong-12 you need everyone around the table, roughly equal distance from one another. Everyone picks a Rover, then each player takes two assets, a rock and an astronaut, and drops them within arm’s reach of where they’re placed. Then, each player picks up the Uplink card, all players count down—and it’s time to start!
Command Cards
If you’re in a wheelchair or otherwise unable to get up or move around, then you’re a command unit.
If you’re a Command unit, you have a Command card, which is a reinforced uplink card. You position it in front of you, face-up with the name of your chosen Rover up where you can read it. This is the Rover you have current access to.
You can’t just turn the card around. That would be too convenient. To change your Command, you have to flip the card over, and you can reorient it while you
do this. Of course, this means if you turn it over to the wrong name, you have to turn it over again, and so on and so on.
If you take over a Rover that’s in your area, whoever did control it takes over the Rover you were controlling. This means that if your Rover gets out of your reach, you can sit there like a big dangerous hippo, ready to take command of anything that skirts too close, and leave recovering your old Rover to someone else. Or, you can wait until someone’s bringing their Rover with an asset to the Uplink card, and try to steal command of their Rover off them—and if you do, you win, not them!
Piloting Tips
Rovers are really flexible and tough—if you flip your rover, you’ll just wind up pointing in a different direction.
There’s no way to secure things on your rover. If you flick your rover and anything on the rover is left behind, welp, you gotta go turn around and pick it
back up if you want to keep it!
If your Rover falls off the table, that’s fine, just pick it up and return it to the table on the edge closest to where you are.
Extra Rules
There are three cards that have different extra rules in the game. They’re not obligatory, they’re just here in case you want to change things up a little—pick one of them at random and leave them on the table face-up where everyone can see them.
Damaging and Preparing Cards
Note that Wobbegong-12 comes with some redundant cards: there are multiple Uplink cards, because there is a decent chance that players will accidentally tear an Uplink card in a particularly frantic game.
There are also two each of Astronaut and Space Rock cards—cards you need to cut into pieces on the dotted lines, to turn them into tokens.
Credits
Development & Design: Talen Lee
Creative Commons resources:
Lorc, Felbrigg via www.game-icons.net
irmix via www.opengameart.org
Special Thanks:
Archie and Fox for laughing so hard at the playtesting
Æryn for all the support
Mispy, and everyone else who loved the Mass Effect 1 Mako