Shared Air

Full rules

1. Overview
2. The cards
3. Setup
4. Playing a turn
5. End of a dive
6. End of the game
7. Tips for beginners
8. Variants
9. Differences from the model game

Overview

In Shared Air you are treasure divers who share one submarine and one tank of air. A path of cards leads from the submarine down to the sea floor; the deeper the treasure, the more it is worth. As soon as you carry treasure, you use up air for everybody on every one of your turns, and you swim more slowly. Only treasure you bring back to the submarine counts. If the air runs out before you are back, you lose everything you are carrying.

The game has three dives. After the third, the player with the most treasure points wins.

• Players: 2–6.
• You need: two standard 52-card decks with their 4 jokers, 25 chips (counters, coins or matches) for the air, and one small token per player as a diver (a coin, a button, a ring – anything you can tell apart). Something to stand for the submarine, e.g. the card box. Paper and pencil for the scores.

Shared Air is our own adaptation for ordinary cards, inspired by Deep Sea Adventure (Jun Sasaki and Goro Sasaki, Oink Games, 2014). The original has treasure chips and dice; we use cards for both (see "Differences from the model game"). It has not been playtested yet.

The cards

Sort the two decks into four groups.

1. Treasure cards (first deck): the 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K and A of every suit – 32 cards. They form the path. Their suit shows their level; their rank doesn't matter:

2. Value piles (second deck and all 4 jokers): these decide how much a treasure is worth. Nobody knows that until the treasure is safe in the submarine. Make four piles of 8 cards:

A joker is worth 0 in level 1 and 15 in level 4; an Ace is worth 1 in level 1 and 14 in level 4. Shuffle each pile on its own and put the four piles face down beside the submarine, level 1 to level 4 from left to right.

3. Swim pile (first deck): one 2, two 3s, three 4s, two 5s and one 6 – 9 cards. It replaces two dice with the numbers 1–3: each number turns up exactly as often as it would with the dice.

4. Blank cards: all the other cards (the rest of the 2s to 6s of the first deck and the black 2s to Kings of the second deck). They lie face down in the path wherever a treasure has been taken.

Setup

1. Put the submarine at one end of the table and 25 chips on it: this is the air.
2. Shuffle the 8 clubs and lay them in a line leading away from the submarine. Continue the line with the 8 diamonds, then the 8 hearts, then the 8 spades, each suit shuffled. The line may wind around the table; it just has to be one path. Every card in it is one space.
3. Every player puts their diver token on the submarine.
4. The player who most recently swam in the sea takes the first turn. Play goes clockwise.

Playing a turn

On your turn, go through these four steps. A diver who is already back in the submarine skips their turns until the dive ends.

1. Breathe

Take one chip off the air supply for each treasure you are carrying. If you carry nothing, you use no air. If this uses the last chip (or you need more chips than are left), your turn is the last turn of the dive: finish it, then the dive ends.

2. Turn back?

Everybody starts a dive swimming down, away from the submarine. At this step you may declare that you turn back towards the submarine – but only if you are carrying at least one treasure. Turn your token round so that everybody can see it. You can turn back only once per dive; after that you keep swimming up. If you don't turn back, you keep swimming down.

3. Swim

Draw the top card of the swim pile and look at its number. Subtract one for each treasure you carry. Move your token that many spaces in your direction. Then put the swim card back and give the swim pile a quick shuffle for the next player.

• If the result is 0 or less, you don't move.
• Occupied spaces don't count: jump over every space on which another diver is standing, without counting it.
• If you would move past the last space of the path, stop on the last free space.
• Swimming up, you need no exact number: if you have enough to reach the submarine, you are back. Your treasures are safe, and you take no more turns this dive.

Example: Ben has turned back and carries two treasures. The air stands at 14 chips; he breathes and takes off 2 – now 12. He draws a 5 from the swim pile: 5 − 2 = 3 spaces. The second space towards the submarine is occupied by Anna, so he jumps over it without counting it and ends 4 spaces further up.

4. Treasure

Choose one of these:

• Do nothing.
• Pick up a treasure: if you stand on a treasure card, take it and lay it face up in front of you. Put a blank card face down in its place and your token on it. Everybody can see the level of what you carry – but not its worth. There is no limit to how many treasures you can carry.
• Put a treasure down: if you stand on a blank card and carry treasure, you may leave one of your treasures there. It replaces the blank card, and your token stands on it. This lightens your load.

End of a dive

A dive ends as soon as all divers are back in the submarine, or after the turn in which the air ran out.

1. Divers back in the submarine score their treasures. For each treasure card, draw the top card of the value pile of its level and turn it face up: that is the treasure's worth. Add up the points and write them down. Keep your treasure cards in front of you (they matter for a tie), and put the value cards aside.
2. Divers still in the water lose everything they carry – the treasures sink to the sea floor. Starting with the diver nearest to the submarine, they lay their treasure cards at the far end of the path in stacks of three (any order they like; the last stack may be smaller). A stack goes on filling up with the next diver's cards before a new one is started. From now on each stack is one space and one treasure: you pick it up, carry it, put it down and breathe for it as if it were a single card. When you bring a stack home, you draw one value card for each card in it.
3. Remove all blank cards from the path and close the gaps.
4. Put all divers back on the submarine and refill the air to 25 chips.
5. The last diver who made it back takes the first turn of the next dive. If nobody made it back, the diver who was deepest in the sea starts.

Example: The air runs out on Dan's turn. Carla is already back with a diamond and a club. She draws from the level-2 pile (6♥: 6 points) and from the level-1 pile (a joker: 0 points) – 6 points. Anna is still in the water with a heart and two spades; she was nearer to the submarine than Dan, who carries one club. Anna lays down her heart and her two spades as the first stack of three at the end of the path, then Dan his club as the start of a second stack.

End of the game

After the third dive, add up everybody's points. The player with the most points wins. On a tie, the tied player with more level-4 treasures (spades) wins; if still tied, compare level 3, then level 2. If that doesn't decide it either, they share the win.

Tips for beginners

• The air belongs to everybody. Every treasure a player carries costs all divers a chip each turn – so once others start collecting, the clock runs much faster.
• Each treasure also slows you down by one. With three treasures, a swim card of 4 moves you just one space. Count the spaces back to the submarine before you pick up one more.
• Turning back early with one or two good treasures often beats a greedy dive to the sea floor.
• Put a cheap treasure back down if you need the speed: a level-1 club is worth at most 3 points.
• The later dives have a shorter path, because the treasures that were taken are gone. And sunken stacks at the sea floor can be worth a lot.

Variants

• Real dice: play with two dice numbered 1–3 instead of the swim pile, or with two ordinary dice: 1–2 counts as 1, 3–4 as 2 and 5–6 as 3.
• No reshuffling: draw swim cards from the pile without putting them back, and reshuffle only when it is empty. You can then count which numbers are still to come.

Differences from the model game

• Treasure worth: in the original, the worth of each treasure is printed on the hidden underside of its chip. We draw it from the level's value pile only when the treasure comes home. Nobody could see it in the original either, and each level's value pile holds exactly the original's values (two each), so the chances are the same.
• Dice: the swim pile, shuffled after every draw, gives each number from 2 to 6 with the same chance as the original's two dice with 1–3.
• Components: the path is made of cards, blank spaces are face-down cards, the air is 25 chips, and any token can be a diver.
• Who starts a dive when nobody came back: the rules we used don't say; we let the deepest diver start.
• Everything else follows the model game.