Feeling Inventive? Time to Try ‘Newton’!
Put on your inventor’s caps (to protect from falling apples, of course) in Newton, the Italian area control and card game from Cranio Creations.
Welcome in, fellow gamers! Area control games are becoming increasingly common, with new entries like Blue Lagoon crossing swords with classics like Risk. By the same token, card collection games like Dominion are gaining surprising traction. However, few games combine the two seamlessly without losing what makes them great. Well, that’s precisely what you get with Newton, the game of innovation from Cranio Creations.
What is Newton?
Newton is a combination card and control game for 1-4 players. Players take on the role of an up-and-coming genius, such as Galileo or Paracelsus. They must travel across Europe, performing experiments and breaking new ground in the scientific world. They do this by playing cards from their hand to undertake various actions on the board. At the end of six rounds of play, the player with the most victory points takes the crown as the greatest mind of the 18th century.
Newton was created in 2018 by Simone Luciani and Nestore Mangone, with art by Klemens Franz. It was originally published in Italian but has since been translated into several other languages. Cranio Creations produces the English variant.
How Do You Play?
Board Setup
- Place out the Game Board, then place the Tracks under the Map.
- Randomly place all the Lands, University, and City tiles on the Map, then randomly place one Medicine Tile for each player.
- Randomly place five Specialization tokens, six Objective tokens, five Invention tokens, all Income and Development tokens, and one Bonus token for each player on the Tracks.
- Put the three Action Decks on the table and flip three cards from each deck. In a single-player game, only flip two cards.
Player Setup
- Randomly choose a Study board and place three Bookshelf tokens and twelve Travel cubes in their designated spot.
- Draw six Action Cards of your color.
- Place one of your Student counters on the Technology Track and the other three on your board.
- Place one Player Marker on the 0 space on the Maps Victory Point track and one on the start space of the Work Track.
- Take one Summary tile and two Coins.
- Randomly determine the Starting player, then deal four Master Cards to each player.
- Players draft one of the four cards, then pass the remaining three to the player on their left. Continue until all cards are drafted. In a single-player game, draw six Master Cards and draft four of them.
Rounds of Play
- Each player plays one card in their leftmost desk spot and takes the action printed on the card.
- The player may take either the Main or Bonus action printed on the card or any number of Quick actions. The Main and Bonus power is equal to the number of corresponding symbols on their desk.
- Possible Actions include:
- Travel (Compass): Move your Scientist a number of spaces equal to this Action’s power, paying any route fees with coins. If you land on an Ancient Site, City, University, Master Space, or Objective, you can drop a Travel Cube.
- Work (Ruler and Pencil): Move your marker a number of spaces on the Works Track equal to this Action’s power and collect one coin per space moved. If you are at the end of the track, you can still collect coins.
- Technology (Gear): Advance one of your Students a number of spaces on the Technology track equal to this Action’s power.
- Lessons (Graduation Cap): Take a card from the row that corresponds to this Action’s power (i.e., 1 Power = First Row).
- Study (Book): Place one Book on the row that corresponds to this Action’s power.
- Joker (Jester’s Cap): Perform any action with one extra power, then this symbol becomes inactive.
- All actions played contribute to your future actions, so play order is essential.
- Quick Actions include:
- Pay one coin to reveal two more cards in any row.
- Pay two coins to boost an action by +1 (can only be done once per turn).
- Pay three coins to buy a Potion.
- Pay five coins to take a Student token.
- Play continues until each player has played five cards.
End of Round
- At the end of each round, players score income from the following:
- The number of completed rows on your Bookshelf.
- Any Income tiles you’ve picked up.
- Take one card played this round and place it under the leftmost space of your Study Board. That card cannot be used again, but its symbols still contribute to future plays.
- Refill your hand and start the next round.
Scoring
At the end of six rounds, the player with the most Income points wins the game. If two or more players have the same number of points, the game ends in a tie.
Expansions
Players can experience even more excitement in the Italy Grand Tour and New Horizon expansions. In addition, they can embody more modern great minds like Stephen Hawking and Robert Hooke with special promotional cards.
