Mummy's Treasure

Each player, or treasure hunter, has an excavation site board, or a rectangular cardboard grid decorated to look like an Egyptian archeological site. Stacks of treasure tiles are set up between the players, sorted by size and shape. Each tile holds a different number of treasures (one to four) and shows a different combination of varying kinds of treasure. To play, a player rolls the five treasure dice. Each die is covered with six kinds of Egyptian archeological treasures, the artifacts of Pharaoh Teubernus: a gold lamp, a gold coin, a scarab beetle, a lapis lazuli vase, a piece of gold and jade jewelry, and a hippo statuette. A player can collect any treasure tile that matches the symbols he or she has rolled. For strategic reasons, a player might be better off rerolling some or all of his or her dice to try to match a particular shape and pattern of tile. Players can roll the dice up to three times in all per turn. Players can rotate treasure tiles in any direction when placing them on their excavation site grids, but they may not move the tiles once they are laid down. Tiles cannot overlap one another or hang beyond the edges of a board. The first player to cover his or her excavation site board completely with treasure tiles wins the game. In an easier version of the game, players are allowed to shift their treasure tiles around after placing them down, which makes it less difficult for kids to pick and use additional tiles to cover the board.