Noctiluca

6th July 2019.

It's a Saturday lunchtime at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking, so this means it's time for some 50 Fath... wait someone's running late! What will we do?

It turns out that we'll 'do' 'Noctiluca'.

I'm not entirely certain what the theme of Noctiluca is:
Wikipedia states that noctiluca is 'a free-living, marine-dwelling species of dinoflagellate that exhibits bioluminescence when disturbed'.
So now you know, it's theme is 'collecting noctiluca'.

Despite appearances; Noctiluca is not a dice game. It's actually a set collecting game.

What's in a game?
There's a lot of very pretty colour and artwork in the components - particularly the cards. Noctiluca has the following components:

• Dice; Noctiluca comes with a lot of colourful dice, over 100 actually, that come in 4 different colours. Let me reiterate, this is not a dice game, no really it's not. You never roll the dice.
• Game board; apart from the nice artwork, there are 3 'circles' of hexes on the board - which all the game needs. The board is actually 2-sided and the other side is set for a single player game.
• 30 set collecting cards. These cards contain different coloured squares, in 4 different colours (Related to the coloured dice.). The cards also contain coloured symbols related to the 3 different scoring markers.
• 3 sets of different types of scoring markers in 3 different colours (To go with the cards.).
• 4 secret objective cards.
• 12 pawns.

How's it play?
First there's set up.

• Place the game board down and tip the dice out on to the board (Thus rolling them.). Then arrange the dice as follows (Without changing the sides.). All the hexes on the inner ring should contain 4 dice. All the hexes on the middle ring should contain 5 dice. The hexes on the outer ring should remain empty.
• The 3 different sets of scoring marker are placed in 3 individual stacks. Markers in each stack are worth 2-8 points, starting with 2 at the top and 8 at the bottom of each stack.
• The secret objective cards are dealt out to each player.
• 3 cards are dealt to each player, 2 cards are kept and the 3rd is discarded.
• The remaining cards are dealt into 4 face-up stacks.
• The 12 pawns are divided equally to all players.

Now we're good to go.

​The purpose of the Noctiluca is to collect coloured dice that match the squares on the cards. When all the squares on a card are filled with dice, that card is 'banked' and a scoring token of the relevant colour is collected by the player. The player then picks a replacement card from the top of one of the 4 face-up stacks.
How are dice collected? I'm glad you asked, because this is where things get interesting.

• As explained earlier, the outer ring of hexes is empty, there are 12 of these empty hexes.
• The active player places one of their pawns on one of these empty hexes. There will be 2 sides of this hex that face into the middle and inner rings of hexes. It is possible to draw an 'imaginary line' from one of these 2 sides through either 3 or 4 hexes that contain dice. The active player declares which of these 2 'lines' they are selecting and then declares a number from 1 to 6. The active player then collects all the dice that match the number that they declared; regardless of the colour of those dice.
• The active player then places these dice on empty spaces on their cards in any way they wish.
• If the active player has dice they cannot place on cards, then those dice are passed on to the next player who can use 1 of those dice on their cards and then passes any excess dice on to the next player who can use 1 of them. This continues until the excess dice are depleted or all the 'non-active' players have had the opportunity to place an extra die on their cards - any remaining dice are discarded.
• Play progresses clockwise until all 12 spaces have been filled with a pawn. Then any remaining dice are removed from the board. The board then is populated with dice again in an identical manner as before.
• Play now progresses anti-clockwise until all 12 spaces are filled with pawns again. This then triggers the endgame.

Endgame
​There are 4 ways to score points in Noctiluca.

• Scoring tokens & majority: During the game, every time a player completes a card, they collect the relevant scoring token and each token scores 2-8 points, depending where in the stack they were. However there is also something called 'majority'. Majority is calculated by counting the number of scoring tokens were taken by players. For each of the 3 types of token; it is determined who has the majority of the tokens (Value of the tokens is irrelevant for majority.). Whoever has the majority of a particular colour of token, will collect the remainder (If any.) of those tokens, however these tokens are turned over to their grey side and are each worth 1 point each.
• Cards: Completed cards earn 0, 1 or 2 points each.
• Secret objective card: Each secret objective card has a colour on it. Every completed card that has a square in that colours scores a point.
• Incomplete cards: Uncompleted cards can also score points, every 2 dice on an incomplete card scores a point.

Highest score wins.

Overall
Even though the rules are simple, players are given lots of options and decisions to make, particularly at the start of a phase when they are so many dice on the board. In fact at the there's almost too many choices that can be made!

​Noctiluca is a colourful, easy to learn game that is fairly quick to play. With a unique mechanic and scoring rules, it a little different to anything I've played before. I'd happily play it again.