Published by FX Schmid
Translated by Peter Wotruba (pwotruba@ucsd.edu)
Edited by Mike Siggins
Distributed from The Rules Bank by Mike Siggins
Version 1.0, 13th November 1996
Take it Easy is The Simple Thinking Man's Game for 1-4 gamers from 10 years old and upwards.
The Start is easy. All maps are empty and there is enough space for the hexagonal playing pieces. But little by little it becomes harder to form continuous lines of one colour from one edge of the map to the other. And - naturally - towards the end of each round those pieces keep coming up you certainly don't want! The aim of the game is to collect more points in four rounds than your opponents. When all the hexagons on the map are covered, points are added up. This constitutes one round. Four rounds makes one game and the highest total wins.
Each player receives a map and 27 hexagons of the same backing colour. A player is elected to lead the game as 'caller'. The player with the most recent birthday is suggested. The job of caller rotates each round so all players have a turn.
The caller puts all his pieces in front of him face down and mixes them thoroughly. All the other players keep theirs face up, ideally sorted into groups determined by the top number.
The caller picks one of his pieces and announces the values of the colours printed on it aloud. (Example: the lower piece on page 2 of the German rules would read: 2-9-4) He places this piece on any empty space of his map. At the same time, the other players pick up their corresponding piece (but in their backing colour) and place it on any empty space of their map. Please note that it does not have to be the same space (though it may well be) and it is not done to look at what the other players are doing... The caller then picks another piece after the other players have placed their former piece on their map and proceedings go on as before until the last space of each map is covered.
The pieces have to be placed on the map in a vertical manner - ie the numbers have to remain upright. Once a piece is played, it cannot be moved again later in the game, but you can move the piece until the caller shouts the numbers for next tile. As nobody knows how to do it right and which pieces will show up, it will not help to look what the others do!
Sadly, not every piece will fit properly, especially towards the end of the round when the map is covered with pieces. It may be that a tile will have to be placed so that it will ruin 1, 2 or even 3 scoring lines for you - but take it easy, and don't worry. You have to put them somewhere on the map anyway. But try to think which row will is the best one to be 'broken' - that is, it is usually better to break a line of threes rather than a line of nines, but you have to work out the chances of more nines or threes coming along!
When 19 of the 27 pieces are placed on each map, and the map is full, the score for each player is calculated. Each complete edge to edge row consisting of pieces of the same colour line counts as a valid score. If therefore there are one or more pieces showing a different colour within a line, it does not score any points! Rows can exist in all directions:
The points a row scores are calculated like this: Length of Row (= Number of Pieces) multiplied by Value of the Colour (printed on the corresponding line on the hexagonal piece). The middle vertical row consists of 5 pieces showing a vertical yellow line which counts as 9 Points each. So you score for this row: 5 (pieces) x 9 (value of the colour) = 45 points. All points (from all the scoring rows) for all players should be recorded and a running total kept until four rounds are played. The highest combined total is the winner.
If you like you can naturally play less, or more, than four rounds. There is an optional rule to make the game harder. Only the first piece can be placed on the map wherever you like. The following pieces have to be placed adjacent to an already laid piece. To make the game easier (and faster?) there is another optional rule: the Leader always picks up two pieces at the same time. Only the last piece is taken on its own. To prevent a one off bad score affecting your whole game, you can also play best of three, five or seven boards - the highest single score taking the board eg, 1-0, 1-1, 2-1 with no carry over to the next board.
The highest possible score for one round is 307 points! There are even two ways to achieve this - care to try and match it? The chances are very low of achieving such a high score, but a good score is 150 or more, a very good score is 200 or more and an excellent, but very rare, score is 250. At the start, while learning, you may score less than this - even 50 points!