From this point forward, we are working on developing a set of rules for Cones of Dunshire. There are many ways to start developing a board game, but since we have a specific set of constraints, I think we should start with the win condition for the game. As we have gathered,

“Now the object is to accumulate cones. 4 cones wins. But, in order to get a cone, you have to build a civilization.”

What constitutes a cone? We have seen many different types of cone:

In the audio, cones are simply cones, they aren’t discriminated. We are told that cones are gained by building a civilization.

In the photos, we observed four colors of cone: Blue, Red, Green, and Yellow. We observed three sizes of cone: Small, Medium, and Large. We also observed Black cones, which appear separate from the other types and only come in Small or Large. They start on the board, while the other types do not (except in the published version, where the four large cones start on the board).

In the rules, we were told of two types of cone: 21 Cones of Dunshire and 15 Sub-cones (Cones of Brennmar). We are told there are four ways to gain cones: trade, purchase, advancement, scavenging. We are told that cones can be purchased if the player has advanced their armies past the Front of Tragarum, except for the Maverick who must first induce Paramilitary Disruption.

In our external sources, we learned about the Cone of Decision. It’s the large cone in the middle of the prototype, with the gold foil. If you control the cone, you can choose to have the world be night or day, which is represented by the gold “cone sheath” being placed or removed. This cone is missing from the published version, replaced by the Central Cone, which is a medium cone of one of the four colors.

Four cones win. That’s solid. Unmovable. But is the “build a civilization” literal or figurative. You must build a civilization to get your engine running, so that you have a shot at winning. I feel we can succeed on both counts by taking the two types of cones in the rules and making one figurative and one literal. The Sub-cones, the Cones of Brennmar, they are gained by completing achievements which represent your civilization advancing. A certain number of sub-cones will cause the player to change their “Stage of Civilization”, which is mentioned in the rules as once a player has acquired 3 Sub-cones. Sub-cones will not count for the four cone total. But, since cones can be gained through “Advancement”, we can say that a player can gain one cone out of the four total if they collect all of the Sub-cones, reaching the final stage of Civilization (I’m pretty sure Hot Pockets symbolize the final stage of Civilization).

But what of the real cones. Those bad boys? You only need four to win, so they have to be scarce. We also know that the small cones can’t equal a full “point”s worth of cone. since Ben has 6 cones before he makes the winning play against Gryzzl (A correction for Part 3: He actually has three small, two medium, and one large cone). We should develop a Cones Per Point Index (CPPI) to determine how many cones of each type are needed. There are only four large cones, so each should be worth one whole CPP. The Central Cone / Cone of Decision is equally important, so it is also 1 CPP. That means by game end, Ben has 2 Points, 2 medium cones, and 3 small cones. That equates out easily to 0.5 CPP for the medium cones and .33 for the small cones. BUT THAT’S TOO EASY! And here in conesfan.wordpress.com we have one rule: “If it makes sense it makes too much sense”. So let me instead pitch this classification: the medium cones are each worth .75 CP, the central cone is represented by a medium cone, so it is also .75CP, and the small cones are worth .25 CP. With this system Ben has 3.25 points before taking the central cone, putting him at 4.00 afterwards.

Unfortunately, this system leaves out the Cone of Decision, which is too fun a component to pass up. I want to include both it and the central cone, but how? Perhaps the Cone of Decision is how the game starts, but a player can corrupt it, replacing it with a cone of their color and removing the Cone of Decision, that space now called the Central Cone. Once a player does that, all the mechanics go away for the Cone of decision, and now it is just a medium cone space of any color. In fact, we can combine this with the “Scavenging” way of gaining a cone to say that if you Scavenge the Cone of Decision, this is what happens. As for what Scavenging is, we’ll get back to it later.

What are the other ways to gain cones? Purchasing and Trade. We know that you can only purchase Cones after you have passed the Front of Tragarum, except for the Maverick. Who are you purchasing these cones from? Well, we know that there are four colors, each with it’s own sub-board underneath. We also know that despite having more then four players, there are only four winnable colors, and you must win with all one color. Lets say for now that you can only purchase the large cones, and purchasing a large cone means you are going to be placing that color cone for the rest of the game. And how do you trade cones? Between players? No, that would make kingmaking too prevalent. Let’s abstract it a little bit and say that you “trade” resources for a cone, so you build a cone. What do you trade for a cone? It has to be something big, important. We don’t exactly know what resources we will have yet, so for the moment lets put it as some amount of resource tokens for small cones, and a larger amount for medium. We’ll revisit it when we look at building.

How many cones do we need? We have two contradictory accounts, the Rulebook and the Images. We’re going to use the images, which show for each color 1 large cone, 2 Medium Cones, and 3 Small cones. However, this means that you do not have enough CP from one cone color. You must have all your cones on the board and control the Central Cone, which seems awfully hard. Lets mitigate this by saying that the cone you get from Advancement is not on the board, but on a player sheet. That way you can win without getting every possible cone.

Lastly, what are the small black cones for? They appear near the black tiles (the “Doom Point”s), so it seems likely they’re tied to those. It’s confusing though, since the board is so expanded in the published version. They are the same color as the Cone of Decision, so perhaps they are related? What if scavenging on a Doom Point tile lets you find a black cone, which gives bonuses similar to the Cone of Decision, but on a smaller scale. And like the cone of decision, it can be turned into a small cone of one of the colors by buying it (with whatever mechanic that is).

That seems sufficiently insane.

This looks like a good start to our game. Lets quantify all the rules here so we have them all in one place:

Components 28 Colored cones (2 large, 2 medium, 3 small) 5 Black cones 1 Cone of Decision 1 Cone sheath

Ways to gain cones Trade Resources for Small or Medium cones Purchasing Large cone of each color or small black cones Advancement By gaining all 21 Sub-Cones (Cones of Brennmar), the player gains one large cone Scavenging The Cone of Decision can be turned into the Central Cone by scavenging it. Doom Points can be scavenged into small black cones.

How to win Gain 4 cones. Each cone is worth a number of CPP Large cones: 1 CPP Medium cones: .75 CPP Small cones: .25 CPP



That’s all for cones at the moment, but we might revisit this when we have a better idea of the rest of the rules. Next we need to get down what these cone colors mean, what they represent, etc. This will involve discerning the sub-boards use. See you then!