Pamparo in Toronto

I bought this game and have played it quite a few times. This I can say,
VERY ADDICTING! I played this game with my ever dearest (& fellow gamer) Tin and she also loved it.
Now we’re both “Lost Cities addicts”. Even my mother loved it, and she only played it once!
Ok! Ok! Enough of these loving & addicting sentences … how does it work. Here’s a brief
explanation taken from the rulebook (well, part of it).

from Rio Grande Website Rules

Preparation
Place the game board with areas for the five destinations between the two players.

Decide how many rounds to play; three is a good number. If you choose to play more than one round, use paper and pencil to record the scores for each round.

Shuffle the cards and deal 8 to each player face down. Place the remaining cards face down near the board as the draw pile.

Players may now look at their cards; these are their starting hands.

Each player starts one or more expeditions and then uses cards to continue his expeditions as far as possible. At the start of an expedition, players may increase their investment and their risk. As backtracking is not allowed, successive cards added to an expedition must advance the expedition toward its goal. The cards show the progress of the expeditions from beginning to end, but, for ease of play, they are also numbered 2-10. When the round ends, the players‘ expeditions are scored based on their success.

Playing the game

On each turn a player must first play one card from his hand, and then must draw a card to replace it.

Play a card - The player has two choices when playing a card from his hand:

1. Add a card to an expedition

The player can start a new expedition or extend an expedition already begun. Players may only start or add to expeditions on their side of the board. To start a new expedition, the player simply places a card from that expedition face up next to the space on the board that corresponds to that destination. To extend an expedition, the player places a new card from the expedition so that it partially covers the previous card from that expedition. Any new card placed must represent further travel than the previous card. The cards must always be added at the end of the expedition and with increasingly higher
numbers. The numbers do not need to be consecutive, any higher number is permitted. The cards of an expedition are placed so that the values of all can be seen by both players.

For each expedition there are 3 investment cards. These may only be played at the beginning of an expedition and represent increased investment by that player in that expedition. Any number of these cards may be played before the first numbered card of an expedition. Once a numbered card has been added to an expedition, further investment cards are not allowed for
that expedition.

2. Discarding a card

The player can discard a card instead of adding to an expedition. To discard a card, the player places the card on the board in the space for the destination that matches the card to be discarded. If other cards from that expedition have been discarded, the new card should be placed so that it completely covers all the previous cards. Thus, only the last
discarded card for each destination will be visible.

Draw a card : The player adds a card to his hand.

He may either take the top card from the face down draw pile or the top card from any of the destination discards. The player may not draw a card he discarded on this turn.

Game end and scoring

The game ends when a player takes the last card of the draw pile. Players are allowed to count the cards remaining in the draw pile to better plan their plays.

Then the players calculate their scores. Each expedition is scored separately. The cards in the expedition are added together and then 20 is subtracted from the total. This is the value of each expedition except that if no cards have been played for an expedition its value is zero instead of 20.

The value of each expedition (whether positive or negative) is then multiplied by the number of investment cards that player played for that expedition plus 1. Thus, the multiplier will be 2, 3, or 4, if the number of investment cards is 1, 2, or 3, respectively. An expedition with only investment cards would be worth 20 multiplied by the number of investment cards plus 1.

In addition, each expedition which contains at least eight cards, earns a fixed bonus of 20
points, after the multiplier.

Thus, an expedition’s value will be between -80 and 236.

One player records the scores on paper, adding scores from the current round to those from previous rounds. All cards are shuffled for another round of play. The player with the most total points so far in the game begins play for the next round.

After the agreed number of rounds, usually three, the game ends. The player with the most total points is the winner.

Oki, now that you have read the rules maybe you can start playing … just remember, don’t be too conservative & of course not to be too obvious as well. Have fun!!!

Addittional info: From the e-mail I got from Rio Grande

>Hi, I just want to clear up something which is not too clear in the rulebook.
>What happens after the last person draws the last card from the draw deck ?

The game ends IMMEDIATELY!

>As what I have understand from each turn, discard one card then pick up one
card
>back(except the one that just got discarded).

Play or discard and then draw.

>It doesn’t make sense to draw the last card & not do anything with it, or
does it?

Drawing the last card ends the game, but it will never be played.

>What happens to the cards that were not used for any expedition that are
still in your hands after the round?

Nothing. Set them aside and score the cards in the expeditions.

Thanks.

Jay M Tummelson
Rio Grande Games