captivade The Strategy Board Game of Evasion and Capture User Guide

captivade The Strategy Board Game of Evasion and Capture User Guide

Four notorious prisoners have escaped from London’s Paigntonville Prison: Ruby Red, Gary Green, Beatrice Bleu, & Yousef Yellow. A selection of highly-skilled M16 agents have been tasked with getting them back behind bars…

Objectives

In Captivade each player plays as both an escapee and an agent simultaneously.

As an escapee, your objective is to avoid being caught for the duration of the game.

As an agent, your objective is to re-capture the other escapees within the allotted number of weeks.

You may work with your fellow agents to do this, but note that each agent believes that a different escapee was imprisoned unfairly and wishes to help them evade re-capture.

Agent Brown – Ruby Red Agent Black –
Beatrice Bleu Agent Silver –
Yousef Yellow Agent White – Gary Green

These sympathies indicate which characters are played with together: if you are playing as Ruby Red you will simultaneously play as Agent Brown, and so on. If all escapees are re-captured, then the game ends in a draw regardless of who remained free the longest.

As such, if your escapee is captured early on in the game, you can still avoid defeat by helping re-capture the other escapees as you play on as an agent.

Set-up

Each player is given:
(i) a reference map
(ii) a travel log/agent’s notes sheet
(iii) a pen (not included)

(iv) an escapee character card (decided upon by agreement or at random)
(v) the corresponding agent character card
(vi) a summary card plus, in a two-player game:
(vii) an additional agent character card (decided upon by agreement or at random) plus, in a two-player game:
(vii) an additional agent character card (decided upon by agreement or at random)
The agent pawns are placed on, or by, London.
(There are no escapee pawns because the escapees move in secret.)
Players decide together whether they wish to play for 6, 8 or 10 weeks (rounds).

We advise playing 6 weeks for your first game. The calendar is set to display ‘Week 1’. The event cards are shuffled and placed face down on the board map.

The ‘blocked’ counters are set aside until required.

Order of Play

Each round (week) consists of the following actions (in this order):

1. RUN- escapees move
2. ROLL – escapees roll the dice to see what happens
3. CHASE – agents move

RUN
The RUN phase of the round happens simultaneously: all escapees move at the same time.
The escapees begin in London, each with £600 and move secretly.

The RUN phase of the round happens simultaneously: all escapees move at the same time. The escapees begin in London, each with £600 and move secretly.
Each round, each escapee can choose to:
(i) stay where they are,
(ii) move to a location up to two connections away, or (iii) move to a location up to two connections plus a flight (if location and finances allow). The cost of any flight is £300.

All escapees may travel to and through any of these location types.
Difficult journeys are marked by dashed connecting lines and are only passable by the escapee of the same colour as the connected locations e.g. only Housefly Yellow can move directly to and from Timbuktu (55) to Tripoli (53).

Lines marked with a thicker grey bar across them may be travelled along by all escapees: this annotation just indicates the boundary between the six different zones into which the map is divided: Zones A, B, C, D, E and F.

Note that Utqiagvik (1) connects to Anadyr (45), and Monteverde (20) connects to Vanua Levu (92).

Escapees may fly from any location with an accessible airport to any other such location, at any point on their travels (i.e. flight then connections, connections then flight, or connection then flight then connection). These locations are marked with a plane symbol. The cost for any flight is £300.

As they planned their initial escape well, Week 1 is a special round in which escapees may move up to four connecting locations plus any flights that they wish to make. From Week 2 onwards this reduces to up to two connecting locations plus flights. e.g. In Week 1 you could decide to fly to New York (13), and then move via 12, 3 and 2 to reach Utqiagvik (1). (Or you could move less if you like to: you could just stay in London, or remain in New York, Chicago, Ontario or Alberta).

Then, in Week 2 you could decide to travel into Zone E, to Anadyr (45) or Yakutsk (44), stay where you are, or move to Alberta, Ontario or San Francisco. (Or, if you are Beatrice Bleu, you could travel to Nunavut.)

Each escapee moves (or remains where they are) secretly. However, once they have done so they must, discreetly, record the number of the location at which they end up in their travel log, as well as any changes to their finances. The location where they end up is where they hide for that week.

ROLL

Once the escapees have had the chance to move, they must each roll the dice to see what happens during that week. Roll the dice to see who will roll first.
The escapee whose colour is rolled goes first every round.

(Re-roll if an! is rolled, or if the colour of an escapee who is not taking part is displayed.)

Now begin. If a coloured spot is rolled that: (i) matches the escapee’s character colour then this escapee has been spotted! You must then reveal the location in which you were staying in the previous week.

e.g. Suppose you are playing as Ruby Red, indicated here by this plain red figure, and you roll a red spot in Week 3.

You look at your Travel Log and see where you were in Week 2. If this was Location 53, you would then announce “Last week I was in 53, Tripoli.”

If you roll your own colour in Week 1 you just announce that in the previous week you were in London.

(ii) does not match the escapee’s own colour, but does match the colour of the escapee’s current location then the escapee’s broad location has been discovered. You must declare the zone in which you were staying in the previous week.

e.g. Suppose you are Gary Green, and you roll a blue spot, and are hiding in a blue location, such as Lapland (40) in Week 5.

You look at your Travel Log and see where you were in Week 4. If this was also Location 40, then you would announce “I am on a blue and last week I was in Zone C.”

If you roll the colour of the location in which you are hiding in Week 1 then you simply announce you are on this colour location and that last week you were in Zone C (as London is also in this zone).

Note: If you roll your own colour when you are on a location of your own colour, you do not need to declare that you are on a location of your own colour – simply follow the instructions in (i) on the previous page.

(iii) doesn’t match either character or location colour then turn over, and read out, an event card.

e.g. Suppose you are Yousef Yellow hiding in a red location, and you roll a green spot.

You would simply declare “I’m not hiding in a green location” or “I’m not on a green” then take a card.

If an! is rolled, then you also turn over and read out an event card.

If the details of any event has a bearing on your travels, you must record it in the Notes column of your Travel Log.

Play the proceeds in a clockwise direction. When other players’ escapees are rolling, you may like to turn over your sheet and write down any information you learn about them in one of the columns.

CHASE

Once all escapees that are on the run have rolled, it is then time for the agents to move, beginning with the sympathising agent for the escapee who rolled first, and proceeding clockwise. (In a two-player game, sympathising agent then assistant agent.)

Each agent can choose to:
(i) stay where they are,
(ii) move to a location up to three connections away, or
(iii) move to a location up to two connecting locations away and take a free flight at any point from one accessible airport to another at any point on their journey.

e.g. Suppose an agent is in Perth (87).
On their turn they could move to Alice Springs (88), Sydney (89) and on to Hobart (90). Or they could move to Sydney and take a flight to e.g. Beijing (72).

There is no limit to the number of agents being present at any one location. However, agents cannot travel along dashed connections as such journeys are too difficult even for them.

Agents only have time to search for escapees in the last two locations which they travel to each week. As they move they must call out the numbers of these last two locations in order.

e.g. If this agent travelling above just moves to Alice Springs they would call out “87 and 88.”

If the agent moves all the way to Hobart, they would call out “89 and 90.”

If they wish to remain in Perth, they could either just call out “87”, or take a return trip to Alice Springs and call out “88 and 87.”
If any escapee is hiding in a searched (announced) location, they must declare this immediately for they have been tracked down! Such escapees can only evade re-capture if they can roll their own colour in a single roll.

Otherwise, they are immediately transported back securely by this agent to Paigntonville Prison where they remain for the rest of the game.

They must then turn over their character card to indicate that this escapee is no longer on the run. In the unlikely event that two or more escapees are tracked down to the same location they are both re-captured and taken back to London (unless they can roll their own colour). In the similarly unlikely event that two or more escapees are tracked down by the same agent in the same week when hiding in different locations, then the escapees in the location that the agent travelled to first must roll the dice to try and evade re- capture. If any are re-captured then the escapees hiding in the second location can continue their life on the run.

Only if the escapees in the first location evade re-capture must any escapees in the second location roll the dice in an attempt to stay free.

The agent transporting re-captured escapees back to London remains there for the remainder of the week (without searching this location).

Immediately before this agent resumes their travels in the following week, they are told which zones all the remaining escapees that they (singular) are looking for are in. This information is announced to all players.

If any week finishes with an agent staying at a location where the escapee for which they have sympathy is hiding, then a brown envelope passes hands, and the escapee can quietly add £300 to their funds at a suitably discreet moment. (This does not happen with the assistant agents in the two-player version.)

Time Passes By
Once all the agents have moved, the week draws to a close. The calendar is then flipped forwards a week and the escapees decide where they would like to hide next. Then they roll, then the agents chase, and time ticks on as the players continue with their mission to capture and evade…
The End is Nigh…
If the time comes when there is only one remaining free escapee, the agent who sympathises with this escapee immediately enters assassin mode: if, at any point from that moment onwards, they find themselves at the same location as one of the other agents, they may attempt to take this agent out! The assassin-agent roles the dice, and if they roll the same colour as their own escapee’s colour, then this other agent is no more! If not, the assassin will probably be able to try again the following week…

In a two player game, when a sympathising agent takes on this mode, their assistant agent is sent off on holiday somewhere warm and takes no further part in the game. The assassin-agent can only make one assassination attempt per week. If an agent is eliminated or no longer involved, remove their pawn from the board and flip their character card over.

In a two player game, when a sympathising agent takes on this mode, their assistant agent is sent off on holiday somewhere warm and takes no further part in the game.
The assassin-agent can only make one assassination attempt per week. If an agent is eliminated or no longer involved, remove their pawn from the board and flip their character card over.

Finishing the Game

• The game ends when: all the escapees have been re-captured
• there are no agents left that are chasing the sole remaining escapee, or
• the allotted number of weeks have passed (the public purse will only fund the hunt for so long…)

If just one escapee has successfully evaded re-capture for the whole game then that player is declared the winner.

If two or more escapees have successfully evaded re-capture, then the winner is the person who has travelled the least number of connections overall (thus finishing with the most energy). Simply count up using the map and the relevant travel logs. Each flight taken counts as three connections and any ferry journeys taken (obtained from an event card) count as two. If it’s a tie, these players are declared joint winners.

Good luck!

Mewstone Games 2023

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