There's a building boom going on in Manhattan, but it's not just there. All over the world, skyscrapers are springing up towards the sky. The players must build as many as possible, in Manhattan, in Cairo, in Sao Paulo, Frankfurt, Sydney and Hong Kong.
The only question is, do they prefer to build their own blocks, or is it easier to take them over from their opponents? Each player must decide for themselves, but who is going to quietly stand by and watch while someone else takes over that skyscraper that you just spent so much time and effort building?
Each player then places their score marker at the base of the scoring table.
Next choose a starting player. They take the yellow marker to remind everyone who starts the round.
Finally shuffle the cards and deal four face down to each player. The remaining cards are left in a pile face down by the board.
Now the first player chooses one of their cards, lays it down face up, and places a building element onto the relevant block in any of the six cities. (see under "Use of Cards", and "How to build"). Then they draw one new card from the deck.
The other players, in clockwise order, each carry out the same three actions, play a card, place an element, draw a new card.
Once all players have used all six building elements, then the first round is over. They now receive scores for their buildings, (see under "Scoring"). They place their score markers onto the appropriate space on the scoring table.
Once all scores have been noted, the player with the yellow marker passes it to the player to their left who starts the next round.
Buildings built in earlier rounds stay on the board, allowing cities to develop further until game end. There is no limit on how tall a tower may be.
Each player draws six more building elements in their colour and the second and subsequent rounds are played as per the first. At the end of the fourth round all building elements have been used up, and once the scores for the last round have been worked out, the game is over.
The player with the highest score after the fourth round wins the game.
The building plot shown by a card is different, depending on the direction in which the card is laid. This is not a problem, but it is important that each player plays all their cards in the same orientation throughout the game.
All cards played after the first are laid on top of the first card played so as to maintain this consistency of orientation. They should be played so that only the uppermost card is visible.
A card may be used to build in any of the six cities.
Once all cards have been used they should be collected, reshuffled and replaced face down by the board.
Players may put any size of building element onto empty spaces or onto their own towers.
For towers owned by opponents the following rule must be obeyed, After the new element has been added to the tower, there must be at least as many storeys of the complete tower in the new owner's colour as in the previous owner's. Some examples of this rule are shown at the bottom of page two of the rules.
The players each add together all their points and put their marker stone onto the relevant space on the scoring table. In the second third and fourth rounds they add their score for the round to their previous score.
The total points for the round are therefore, Black, 9 points, Blue 8 points, Red 6 points and Green 4 points. The coloured score markers are moved to the relevant spaces on the scoring track.
With 2 players each player takes two colours. They take four elements of each of their colours before each round. Players alternately play one building element of their choice. They may play their colours in whatever order they like. Each colour scores individually as if there were four players and the winner is the player with the highest combined score for their two colours.
For patient rule checking, innumerable test games and plentiful good advice, the author and publisher would like to thank: Christian Bonnet, Beate Bachl, Barbara and Dieter Hornung, Michael Meier Bachl, Markus Michalka, Karl Heinz Schmiel, Karen Seyfarth and Hannes Wildner.
Copyright 1994 Hans im Gluck Verlag Munich
This translation John Webley.
Distributed from The Rules Bank by Mike Siggins
Well, Manhattan is already a good game. But, after having played a bit too much poker, Eric Moore and I were discussing the game and I said "Well, Ben can't wait to steal a godzilla from an Alan Moon game and play Manhattan with it."
A few minutes later, these rules were born.
Take any convenient counter (of course, a Godzilla from one of Alan's games is preferred) and set it in the center of any city. For purposes of Godzilla, the cities form a 2x3 rectange that wraps around at both edges. Play of the game is completely normal, except, after you play a card and build a piece, Godzilla moves. If you played a card that let you build in the center, Godzilla doesn't move. If you played a card that let you build in any other space, Godzilla moves in that direction (diagonally if you built in a corner, horizantally or vertically if you built on an edge). Any building that Godzilla steps on is destroyed.
This sick idea was jointly conceived by Brian Bankler and Eric Moore.
Thanks to Ben Peal for the inspiration.
(The reason that we didn't give the center movement is that we felt giving it a wild move was too powerful, as the center is already a good card to get (IOHO).)