Basil Vendryes

Colony Battle

Objective: Get to the bottom-most board and establish your colony’s presence before your opponent.

Materials:

-3 sheets of grid paper

-paper tokens (provided)

-a means to elevate the sheets at different levels

Rules:

1.       Both players begin on the top-most grid on their respective starting places. Each starts with a queen token on their space.

2.       Queens are the essential unit of each player and must be protected at all costs. Queens are capable of spawning all other types of units, except “item” units. If a queen dies, the player who owns that queen loses.

3.       Unit types are:

               a.       Workers:

                                     i.      Workers are basic grunt units who excavate into the lower boards and are the only ones capable of carrying items. Workers may move up to 3 spaces per turn and have 1 HP. Queens may spawn a worker every turn, but a player cannot have more than 10 workers at a time.

b.      Soldiers:

1.                                                                i.      Soldiers are stronger units that are ideal for escorting the queen or assaulting other ants. Soldiers may move up to 2 spaces per turn and have 3 HP. In order to spawn a soldier, a queen has to forfeit movement and spawning for 1 turn. Max number of soldiers a player can have is 5.

c.       Drones:

1.                                                                i.      Drones are specialty units that are mostly used for more quickly traversing the boards. Drones can move up to 3 spaces per turn and have 1 HP. When drones move, they leave a chemical trail behind them that grants an additional space of movement to any friendly ants that touch it at least once in their movement. The chemical trails do not negatively affect enemy ants and are not accessible to enemy ants either. In order to spawn a drone, a queen must forfeit 2 turns of movement and spawning. Max number of drones a player can have is 2.

d.      Queens:

                                                               i.      Queens are the key unit of the game. They are responsible for spawning all other units and must be moved to the finishing area to claim victory. Queens may only move 1 space per turn. They have 10 HP and are incapable of attacking. Queens are unable to be spawned. Any unit that is spawned from a queen must be placed adjacent to the queen as a starting point.

Item Units:

1. a.       Antlion
1.                      Antlions are special item units that can be used strategically to guard areas or divert enemies. Antlions are placed anywhere on the map but are incapable of movement. Any enemy ants that come within 3 spaces of an antlion are destroyed, after destroying 3 enemies ant lions are destroyed as well. Queens are immune to antlions.

             b.      Termite bomb:

                       i.      Termite bombs are special item units that can take out clusters of enemies. Termite bombs can move up to 2 spaces and have 1 HP. When a termite bomb dies, all units (both friendly and enemy) within 4 spaces of the termite bomb take 2 HP damage. Termite bombs must be placed adjacent to a queen when they are acquired.

4.       Items are scattered across the board. In order to claim them, a worker must move adjacent to them and then carry them back to the queen to activate them. Items can be either beneficial or detrimental to both you or your opponent, so keep that in mind if you are trying to take as many as possible. If a worker is killed while carrying an item, the item drops where the worker was killed.

5.       In order to move into the lower parts of the map, entrances must be excavated by worker ants. To excavate, workers must be adjacent to an entrance for a set number of turns. Having more workers around the entrance will NOT speed up the number of turns before it is excavated. Additionally, if all workers around an excavation site die, the number of remaining turns stays the same and does not reset. Number of turns for the first excavation is 3, the second is 5 and the burrow throne is 10. After the burrow throne is excavated, whichever queen moves to the position first will win the game.

6.       All units, except queens who cannot attack, do 1 point of damage to HP per attack. In order to attack, a unit must be adjacent to an enemy unit. Note that in all battles, both participating units receive damage, the exception being when a unit attacks a queen only the queen receives damage as queens are unable to attack.

7.       When the number of units a player controls exceeds 3, a player may only move up to 3 units in a turn.