Jump Gate
- By MattWorden
GAMES Magazine’s
2011 Traditional Game
of the Year!!
Buy Jump Gate Read: Jump Gate, 1st Edition, Rules (Color PDF) (414) Watch: Tom Vasel’s Video Review Research at BoardGameGeek.com See the results of the Launch Celebration Give-Away Contest See the results of the Jump Gate Geocache Finders-Keepers Contest (January 2012) Read Posts About:Â Jump Gate
Explore far-away planets. Discover what resources and surprises they hold. Be the first to set foot on a new planet and claim it as your own. Collect resources to gain fortune and fame. All of this comes courtesy of: the Jump Gate.
Players are spaceship captains that are competing to be the best at claiming new planets and collecting the resources found at those planets.
Players score points at the end of the game based on the number of planets they scanned and claimed, and their combination of resources collected. Each type of resource has a different method for being scored — so, collecting sets of the same resource is encouraged … and disrupting other players’ collection plans is good strategy.
Disclaimer: This board game is not related to nor affiliated with the multi-player online game of the same name, nor its sequel “Jump Gate: Evolution“.
Dear Matt,
My brother bought Jump Gate for my birthday and it has proven very popular with my game group. (We tend to prefer multi-player games). I have 3 questions regarding rules.
1. HARVEST ACTION, page 7–If your ship is on a planet that has been claimed by another player, can you take a HARVEST action there anyway? Or must you also “LAND & CLAIM” it in order to HARVEST it?
2. SETUP, page 5–When each player is dealt their initial resource card, if it has a black hole icon, is the player required to place a marker on the Black Hole Board? Or does this only occur when one acquires a resource by performing an action?
3. ACTIONS, Jump and Scan, page 6–If you want to perform the actions JUMP and SCAN on your turn, and you have one card that contains both of the correct numbers for the planet you want to jump to and scan, can you play just this one card and do both JUMP and SCAN actions? Or must you play two cards in order to do a JUMP and a SCAN, no matter what?
Thank you for you help.
Roger Cox
Hi Roger … Glad you enjoy the game! I believe that I answered these questions for you via the BGG game page & forums.
But for those who haven’t seen those answers, here goes:
1. As soon as *anyone* claims a planet, it is open for harvesting by any other player. Think of it as “landing & claiming” being the work needed to initially prep the planet for resource production … once that infrastructure is built, anyone can use it.
2. You do *not* add a chip to the Black Hole when getting your initial resource card during setup … you only need to add a chip to the Black Hole when you *choose* to take a black-hole resource from a planet.
3. Each of these actions uses up a card. So, the Jump will use up one card, and the Scan will use up another. You cannot take 2 actions off a single card (except for a couple of the special actions).
Let me know if you (or anyone else) has any follow-up questions.
-Matt
Two questions:
When someone lands and claims – must a player who has a scan take a resource or is this optional?
If someone has two scans when someone lands and claims – do they get two resource cards or just one (with the two scans only letting them chose first before another one scan player)?
Thanks. Very fun especially with my brilliant game playing 8 yo son using superior strategy as alwys.
Mark
Hi Mark …
I had to double-check how I wrote the rules for the first question … but I wrote it as “may” take a resource — so, they can choose to *not* get a resource. I can see someone wanting to avoid it if the only resources left have Black Hole markers and they don’t want to add chips to the Black Hole board.
Having multiple scan markers on a planet just gives you priority in selection order over people with fewer scans on that planet … but you still only get 1 resource when the planet is claimed. (Check out point #5 under “Land and Claim” on page 7 of the rules.)
I hope that is helpful for you … and I’m glad you’re enjoying the game with your son! I also hope you get to play the game with 3 and 4 players, because it really shines with that number of players.
Thanks,
-Matt