Turn order. To be honest, I’ve feared this portion of the rules. It’s so finicky, but will make or break the experience. We don’t want it to take too long between each player’s turn, but with 8-12 players, there’s little we can do about it. The problem is we also have contradicting accounts of how turn order works. In the first instance of Cones on Parks and Rec, Ben says:

“Each turn goes roll, buy, action—“

The Rulebook backs this up, adding more phases after Ben is cut off: Roll, Buy, Action, Scavenge, Build, Second Buy, Advance.

The problem arises when we watch the Gryzzl episode, where Ben and Gryzzl take turns in succession, building, doing actions, and advancing without any rhyme or reason. I had thought for a long time that these were contradictory, and they still are, or at least, the Rulebook is. But we can take what Ben says and what happens at Gryzzl and make them match. The trick is that every player does each of these in succession, then we move on to the next phase. One player doesn’t do each phase and then hand over the reigns to the next player. So, what are our phases?

Roll. Obvious, we’ve already gone over this. Pre-roll then roll. This phase ends when each player has rolled their full-roll.

Buy. We need to separate the idea of Trading from Buying here. Buying is when you get a cone affiliation, and nothing else. In this phase, we check to see if any player has units at the peak of a Sub-board. If they do, they now have that Cone affiliation, and no other player can. This phase ends once everyone has been checked.

Action. Here is where each player uses their dice to perform specific actions, as we decided in a previous post. This phase ends when every player is out of dice.

Scavenge. Here is when each player gets their passive scavenge resources from each of their cities. The phase ends when each player has received their resources.

Rinse and Repeat.

Well, that was quick. What else do we have to do? Let’s take a look at what we’ve done so far and try to pin down what’s left.

We know how to win. We know how to make each turn. We know each of the conditions that take you closer to winning. We know how to build up power. We know the types of objects we will have, if not what they are specifically.

What’s left? We need to determine what each of the player mini’s do. They’re definitely asymmetric, but how much? Are we talking Pandemic levels or Root levels? And what about those Sub-boards? We need to figure out what specific benefits they give. We also need specific cards for Spirit and Spell. We need to map each action to a number on the die. After that, it’s basically going through and doing all the things I said “We’d finish up later”.

That seems like a solid enough checklist. Next time, we’ll hit the first mark, how each player operated differently. See you then!