The Platypus Game
Two players play the following board game known as Platypus.1 Setting up
One player is the Red Player, and the other is the Blue Player.
The board consists of 21 cells arranged in a row, as below. There is a distinguished cell in the middle known as the Billabong cell, with 10 other cells either side of it. At one end of the rows of cells is a Ghost Gum, and at the other end is a Wattle. Each of the cells (including the Billabong cell) contains a card, which is either green or yellow and shown face up. Each player has a token, which is either a kangaroo, emu, wombat or platypus, and coloured red or blue as appropriate. At all times in the game, each player has exactly one token on exactly one of the 21 cells.
Wattle Billabong Ghost Gum
Initially both players have their kangaroo token on the Billabong cell, and every cell contains a yellow card. Players distinguish their tokens by their colours (eg one has a red kangaroo, and the other a blue one).
Each player has in front of them a table with be different, but this is not a requirement.
7 entries as follows. These two tables should generally
Yellow Kangaroo COLOUR ANIMAL TREE
COLOUR ANIMAL TREE
Yellow Emu COLOUR ANIMAL TREE
COLOUR ANIMAL TREE
Yellow Wombat COLOUR ANIMAL TREE
COLOUR ANIMAL TREE
Yellow Platypus COLOUR ANIMAL TREE
ANIMAL is one of Kangaroo, Emu, Wombat and Platypus. This is randomly dealt from a pack of Animal cards.
COLOUR is one of green or yellow. This is randomly dealt from a pack of Colour cards.
TREE is one of Ghost Gum or Wattle. This is randomly dealt from a pack of Tree cards.
An example table is the one below. The italic entries will vary from table to table; the others are fixed.
Yellow Kangaroo Wattle
Play
Yellow Emu
Ghost Gum
Yellow Emu Yellow Wombat Ghost Gum
Wattle
Yellow Wombat Yellow Wombat Wattle
Yellow Platypus Wattle
Yellow Platypus Ghost Gum
Players randomly choose who plays first. Play proceeds in turns as follows.
1 Not to be confused with any other game of the same name!
The player identifies which cell their current token is on, and the colour of the card in that cell. They then identify the column of their table which matches the current token and colour of the current cell.
If the colour of the current cell and the colour in the third row if this column are different, then the player scores 1 point. If the two colours are the same no points are scored. The colour of that cell is changed (if need be) to the colour in the third row of that column, the token is changed to the animal in the fourth row and then placed on the cell adjoining the current one either in the direction of the Ghost Gum or the Wattle, as indicated by the tree in the fifth row. That ends the player¡¯s turn.
For example, if the Red player¡¯s kangaroo is on a green cell, and the Red player¡¯s table entry is as below,
Yellow Wombat Wattle
then the Red player scores 1 point, the current cell¡¯s colour is changed from green to yellow, the token is changed to the Red player¡¯s wombat, and is placed on the cell one place closer to the Wattle than the original cell. This is illustrated below.
Before Red player¡¯s move: Wattle
K
K
Ghost Gum
After Red player¡¯s move: Wattle
W K
The Red player scores 1 point for this move, as the original cell was green and it is now yellow.
As above, it is possible that both players¡¯ tokens are on the same cell, which means the cell colour may be changed by one player before the other players¡¯ turn.
If a player gets to the cell closest to the Ghost Gum and has to move towards the Ghost Gum, their move is to the cell immediately next to the Wattle.
If a player gets to the cell closest to the Wattle and has to move towards the Wattle, their move is to the cell immediately next to the Ghost Gum.
Winner
The game ends when either player¡¯s turn comes around when their token is a platypus on a green square (note that there is no entry for this case in the table). The winner is the player with the most points.
Players can play either a single game (in which the player who plays first is chosen randomly, as above), or a match. A match consists of two games, one in which the red player starts, and the other in which the blue player starts. The winner of the match is the player with the larger aggregate score across the two games.
Ghost Gum