Thinking back to your younger years, you remember reading books about Pick-Axe Pete, a gold and silver prospector of the old west back on Earth. His adventures thrilled you then, and this new opportunity before you to prospect in space rekindles those old feelings.
But your nostalgic reverie is interrupted by the harsh reality of the present. It’s time to point your ship towards the unknown, hoping that a combination of skill, intuition, and a bit of luck will bring that big strike that will make you wealthy like the prospectors of old.
Your ship is basic, but worthy. Along the way, you may find opportunities to improve its capabilities, but you can only afford a couple of upgrades, so you’ll need to choose wisely. You’ll need to find the right asteroids, identify their mineral deposits, and then mine and sell them for the best prices you can get.
Down deep, you know you can outwit and outmaneuver your competition and get rich in the process, but you know it will take some luck along the way. It’s like Pick-Axe Pete used to say, “Ya gotta play the cards yer dealt.”
Your objective is to be the first person to reach a total score of 4000 points over the course of multiple hands of play. To end a hand, one player must fully deplete the minerals from one small, one medium, and one large asteroid.
Starship
Starship cards contain a summary of the basic rules to follow during your turn. As you obtain upgrade cards, you may increase some stats to help you during the game. Here is a summary of each stat on your starship card:
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Storage
You may keep up to five cards of any type in your hand at the end of each turn. Storage upgrades allow you to hold more.
Engine
You may draw one card per turn from either the discard or draw pile. Engine upgrades allow you to draw more cards.
Drill
You may mine one mineral per price card from a seeded asteroid. Drill upgrades allow you to mine more minerals with a single price card.
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Starship Upgrades
The deck contains three types of update cards that can enhance each of the stats on your starship card, as described in the Starship section.
You may play more than one of each card, but you may play no more than two upgrades of any kind at a time. You may also change the upgrades in play during your turn.
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Asteroids
The deck contains asteroid cards with three sizes of asteroids: small, medium, and large. Small asteroids contain two minerals, medium asteroids contain three minerals, and large asteroids contain four minerals. You may play one of each size asteroid during each hand.
You must then “seed” the asteroid with minerals, after which you can mine the minerals and sell them. To end the hand, one player must play and seed one asteroid of each size and then mine their minerals to depletion.
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Minerals
The deck contains six unique mineral cards:
Aluminum, Cobalt, Iron, Magnesium, Nickel, and Platinum.
After you play an asteroid card, you “seed” the asteroid by laying down a set of as many of any one kind of mineral as the asteroid size requires.
You may then mine and sell the mineral cards during this or subsequent turns.
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Price Contracts
The deck contains price contract cards with six different values, ranging from 20 credits to 120 credits.
When you mine the minerals from an asteroid, you do so by pairing them with a price contract card from your hand.
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Download the Prospectica Instruction Booklet for Complete Game Play Details
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