Agents of M.A.R.S.

Agents of M.A.R.S.
Niko Lepka
A game of altering the board state to fulfill your secret objective and mess with your opponent's presumed objective
:Players	Players:	2 - 2
:Time	Length:	Long
:Complexity	Complexity:	Medium
Trios per color:		5
Number of colors:		3
Pyramid trios:
Monochr. stashes:
Five-color sets:
- - - - - - Other equipment - - - - - -
chessboard
Setup time:		3 min
Playing time:		20 - 45
Strategy depth:		unknown
Random chance:		Some
Game mechanics:
Theme:		The wikipage input value is empty (e.g. <code>SomeProperty::, [[]]</code>) and therefore it cannot be used as a name or as part of a query condition.
BGG Link:
Status: Complete (v1.0), Year released: 2023

Intro

Agents of M.A.R.S. is a hidden-information abstract strategy game for two players. Players play the roles of rogue agents from the super secret agency, M.A.R.S. (Multinational Agency for Raunchy Secrets) who secretly try to manipulate the political landscape for their own benefits. Secretly assign victory point multipliers to specific colors of pyramids, then take turns filling the board with randomly-drawn pyramids, trying to create clusters of certain colors to meet their secret agenda. The winner is the player with the most points at end-game when all clusters of four or more same-colored pyramids are scored.

Materials

Gather 75 pyramids as shown below. (15 red, 15 green, 15 blue, 15 yellow, 8 white, 7 black)

Gather these pyramids to start

Setup

Now give the 4 large white pyramids plus a medium pyramid of each color to Player 1.

Give these to Player 1

And give the 4 medium white pyramids plus a small pyramid of each color to Player 2.

Give these to Player 2

Set Secret Agenda

With the materials you have been given, use your white pyramids to conceal your colored pyramids. Place the four colored pyramids inside the four white pyramids, secretly deciding which color should be worth how much, from 2 points down to -1 points. Your opponent will do the same.

Your secret agenda, hidden from your opponent by the opaque pyramids

Fill Bag

Remaining pyramids after secret agenda setting. Put these in an opaque bag.

Put Out Board

Set the 8×7 board out on the table with the short edges closest to the players. Before play begins, your setup will look like this.

Completed Setup. Ready to begin play.

Rules

A turn is structured as follows:

1. (Optionally) Reveal two objectives and swap their places.
2. Then do one of the following:

• Draw a new pyramid and place it on an empty space on the board.
• Move a pyramid that is already on the board.
• Swap two dissimilar pyramids.

The game ends the moment the last space on the board is filled.

Placing a New Pyramid

Grab a single pyramid from the bag without looking. (In the event you end up with a nested pyramid in your hand, just drop the smaller one into the bag and use the outer one you originally grabbed.) Place this pyramid in any empty square on the board.

Moving a Pyramid

A pyramid may be moved into an empty space by moving it its face value in any of the four cardinal directions on the board. A large moves exactly 3 spaces, a medium moves exactly 2 spaces, and a small moves exactly 1 space. Pyramids can jump over one another to get to an empty space, but they cannot move beyond the edge of the board. If they would be stopped by the edge of the board before traveling their full distance, they cannot move in that direction at all.

Swapping Two Pyramids

In lieu of placing a new pyramid or moving an existing pyramid, you have the option of swapping two pyramids already on the board. Swapping works by moving one pyramid its regular move distance into an already occupied square, and then placing the previous occupant on the moved pyramid’s original space. This is allowed regardless of size. A large pyramid can move three spaces to swap with a small, and a small can move one space to swap with a medium. Note that black pyramids can never be swapped. (The pyramids you swap must be differ from one another in at least one aspect: size, color, or both. You cannot swap two identical pyramids to "pass" a turn.)

Black Pyramids

The black pyramids in the bag act as blockers. Once placed onto the board, they can never be moved or swapped! Thus it is of vital importance to place these strategically. Although they cannot themselves move or be swapped, the black pyramids do not block the colored pyramids from moving as normal. Black pyramids can be jumped over.

Revealing and Swapping Objectives

As long as there are fewer than 4 black pyramids on the board, players are allowed to reveal two of their secret objective pyramids and swap them. Place the two larger pyramids that were previously hiding the secret objectives upright, and place the colored pyramids on top of them. They are now public information. The benefit of doing this is that it may mitigate point loss by switching allegiance to a certain color. However, this comes at the loss of secrecy, as doing so reveals some of your plans to the opponent.

Ko Rule (No Undos)

Similar to the game of Go, Agents of M.A.R.S. employs a Ko-rule, which simply states that the opponent may not perform any move that would undo the move just performed by the previous player, i.e. by moving a piece back to where it once stood. This is to prevent endless back-and-forths.

End Game and Scoring

The game ends as soon as the final space on the board is filled. Every contiguous cluster of 4 or more pyramids in the same color is counted. For pyramids to be part of the cluster, they must be orthogonally adjacent (share an edge). The total value of a given color is the total sum of all the pyramids’ face values in all of the aforementioned clusters. Count these and note them down.
Once every color is counted up, the players reveal their Objectives, and multiply the objective values with the counted colors. The sum of all these numbers determines the final score.

Example Board and Scoring

::SPU	::SPU	::SPU	::SPU	::MPU	::SPU	::SPU
::SPU	::SPU	::SPU	::SPU	::LPU	::LPU	::SPU
::SPU	::SPU	::SPU	::LPU	::MPU	::MPU	::SPU
::MPU	::MPU	::LPU	::MPU	::MPU	::MPU	::SPU
::SPU	::LPU	::MPU	::LPU	::LPU	::LPU	::LPU
::MPU	::LPU	::LPU	::LPU	::LPU	::LPU	::LPU
::MPU	::SPU	::LPU	::LPU	::LPU	::SPU	::LPU
::SPU	::MPU	::MPU	::MPU	::LPU	::MPU	::LPU

If your objectives were like so for the above board, then your score would be as below.

Yellow	Green	Red	Blue
2	1	0	(-1)

Yellow	2 × 24 = 48 points
Green	1 × 18 = 18 points
Red	0 × 0 = 0 points
Blue	(-1) × 16 = -16 points
Sum	0 + 18 + 48 - 16 = 50 points