Constellate

Two observatory crews race to light their stars. With two or three players there is one crew, and the race is against the dawn.

Twenty-four cards are dealt face up from a larger deck. Each card is a picture of one thing, not a printed word. Most of them are stars that belong to a crew. Some are haze. One is a comet.

In a rivalry the crew that goes first has eight stars and the other crew has seven. In Before Dawn your crew has eight stars, seven cards are clouds, eight are haze, and one is a comet.

Only a Stargazer can see which is which, until a card is touched or the game ends. Then the whole sky is shown.

With four to eight players, odd seats are Gold and even seats are Teal. Seat 1 is Gold's Stargazer. Seat 2 is Teal's Stargazer. Everyone else on a crew is a Spotter.

With two or three players the game is Before Dawn. Seat 1 is the Stargazer. The other seats are Spotters.

The Stargazer names the constellation and does not touch the sky. Any Spotter on the active crew may touch. The first touch is the one that counts.

The Stargazer spells one word on the letter keys and chooses a number from 1 up to that crew's remaining stars. The word is about the pictures. The cards do not print it.

The word has to be two to ten letters. It has to be an ordinary word or a name. It cannot be a slur. It cannot name the thing a card shows, or a plural or other close form of that thing, whether that card is already lit or not. The name of a pictured thing, when that name is four or more letters, cannot sit inside the clue, and a clue of three or more letters cannot sit inside that name. Two-letter clues are not checked that last way, and a pictured thing whose name is three letters does not block a longer clue that merely contains those letters.

If the word is refused, only the Stargazer sees why, and the turn is not spent. Send it again.

Once the word is accepted, everyone sees it and the number. Spotters may touch that many dark cards, plus one more if the crew is holding a banked touch. Taking the constellation spends the bank, whether or not the extra touch is used. A crew can hold at most one.

Touching your own star lights it. If your crew has touches left, the Spotters keep going. If that was the last star, your crew wins.

Haze ends the turn. Nothing is banked.

In a rivalry, touching the other crew's star lights it for them and ends your turn. If that was their last star, they win. Touching the comet ends your turn and lights two of their dark stars at random, or the one they have left. That can win the game for them on the spot.

In Before Dawn a cloud ends the turn and spends one extra hour. The comet ends the turn and spends two extra hours. There is no other crew to light.

After at least one touch, the Spotters may stop. One unused touch is banked for next time. Stopping with more than one touch left still banks only one. Ending the turn any other way banks nothing.

Before Dawn starts with seven hours. Accepting a constellation spends one. If the track is at zero or below when a turn ends and a star is still dark, dawn breaks and the crew loses. Lighting the last star still wins, even if the track is already at zero.

How you finish:

The lobby can limit each step to 60, 90, or 120 seconds, or leave it off. Naming and spotting share that length.

If the Stargazer sends nothing in time, the turn passes. Before Dawn still spends the hour. If the Spotters run out of time, spotting ends with nothing banked, even if they never touched.

In a rivalry, if a crew lets the naming step expire on two of its own turns in a row, the other crew wins. An accepted constellation clears that count. Before Dawn has no forfeit. The hours end it.

Anyone who is naming or spotting can flag a constellation. The flag does not take the word back and does not undo a touch.