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Australia
Authors: Wolfgang Kramer & Michael Kiesling
Publisher: Ravensburger
Year: 2005

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Australia is a large country, and a plane comes in handy as a means of transportation. With this plane we transport rangers to outposts of the various regions where they act like salesmen for projects. When the rangers meet certain numbers, an industry project is started. When all the outposts of a region are occupied, a wildlife project is started. In both cases the region is scored and the amount of rangers transferred to points. The player who activated the score gets additional points. At the end of the game the player with the most points wins.
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Every player gets a plane and a various amount of rangers, depending on the amount of players in the game. Besides that, he starts with two cards that he has chosen from four different stacks. These stacks have two symbols on the back: gold and rangers. One stack has cards that have 4 rangers on them, this is the amount that a player may put on one field in a region. The second stack has cards that show 3 rangers and 1 gold; the third shows 2 rangers and 2 gold, and the fourth shows 1 ranger and 3 gold. For gold, additional actions can be bought later in the game.
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In a turn, a player may perform two actions out of three possible ones: fly with your plane, put rangers on the board, or take them back; the same action may be taken twice. In order to be able to put rangers on the board, a card has to be played of the colour of that region. Additional requirement is that you have to have your plane in that region. The plane may fly to any region but it costs an action. A typical turn would be to fly to a region, play a colored card that matches the colour of the region where your plane landed, put rangers in one field of that region, and refill your hand to two cards with a card chosen from one of the four stacks.
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With a card, rangers may only be put in one field of that region, however, there is no limit to the amount of rangers that a field can hold; a player may put more rangers there or onto an other field of that region in future turns. The fields are situated on the border of a region and are also part of one or more neighboring regions; therefore placement of rangers on the fields of a region also has concequences for other scoring regions.
An industry marker ranging from 4 to 9, has been put randomly and face down in every region at the start of the game. When a plane lands for the first time in a region, the marker is turned face up and the value is revealed. This is the amount of rangers required to start an industry project, in other words: to activate a score of this region. If the marker shows ‘7’, an amount of 7 rangers of whatever player colour is required to score this region.
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