Publisher field guide / Healing Mountain

Save enough for the journey home.

Read the wind, share the action cards, and plan an outward flight whose return will cost more. Reach the mountain and bring it to Camp by the end of round nine.

1–3 players
Shared hand / rotating responsibilities
Rules & illustrated edition 0.4.0
Playable prototype in development

Healing Mountain journey panorama across coast, ocean and distant mountain — The existing journey panorama gives the expedition its world; the board turns the route into a shared planning puzzle.

The mission

Mountain at 4. Camp at 0. Nine rounds.

Reach Mountain, then return to Camp while carrying it by the end of round 9. Arriving at Mountain automatically lifts it for free: no extra card, preparation or round. Stop there for that action; the return begins with a later action.

Preparation is the table’s planning margin. It does not measure Hanuman’s strength or devotion. Returning costs more per edge, so a fast outward flight can leave a difficult journey home.

Prepare the expedition

Place the actual B01 journey board centrally. Start at Camp with preparation 8 and round 1. Leave the mountain marker beside Mountain.
Shuffle the 12 action cards. Deal four face up as the shared hand and two face up as supply. The remaining six form the concealed action stock.
Shuffle the nine weather cards separately. Reveal two as the forecast; conceal the remaining seven. Leave separate action and weather discard spaces.
Choose a lead and keep all three role aids visible. Location, preparation, round, hand, supply, forecast and discards are public. Do not inspect either stock.

Actual B01 Healing Mountain journey board with route, preparation and rounds — The actual B01 board tracks one route, preparation 0–8 and rounds 1–9. There are no branching routes.

Three decisions, in this order

Scout chooses weather. Take one forecast card for this round; leave the other in place. Do not reveal its replacement yet.
Navigator chooses an action. Play one shared-hand card or take free Pause. Pay the full legal movement cost before moving. Discard a played action.
Steward chooses the replacement. After a card is played, choose one available face-up supply card for the hand, then refill that supply slot from stock if possible. Pause never replenishes anything.
Close the round. Discard current weather and refill the forecast from stock, to at most two. Check the ending, then rotate lead and advance the round if play continues.

With three people, lead is Navigator, the next seat Scout and the third Steward. With two, lead is Navigator and the other seat owns both Scout and Steward. Solo owns all three decisions. Advice is welcome; each responsibility’s owner decides at its step.

Move, rest or pause

Stride

Move one edge toward the next endpoint. Pay 1 preparation outward or 2 returning, modified by this round’s weather.

Dash

Move two edges, or one when the endpoint is adjacent. Pay normal edge costs plus 1 coordination. Weather modifies only the first edge. You cannot stop a two-edge Dash early when two edges remain.

Rest

Play and discard a Rest card to gain 3 preparation, capped at 8. Replenish the shared hand normally.

Pause

Use no card and gain 1 preparation, capped at 8. Draw nothing. Pause is always legal, but still uses the round and spends its weather.

Actual Healing Mountain action card — One of the shared action cards; actions belong to the table rather than private hands.

Actual Healing Mountain weather card — Choose one visible forecast card before the Navigator acts.

Actual Navigator responsibility aid — The Navigator owns the action and distance decision; lead rotation passes responsibility around the table.

Spend the weather where it helps

Calm changes no cost. Gust adds 1 to the first moved edge. Tailwind subtracts 1 from that edge, to a minimum of zero. Rest, Pause and the free lift ignore weather costs.

A two-edge return Dash in Tailwind costs (2 − 1) + 2 + 1 = 4 preparation. A return Stride in Gust costs 3. With only 2 preparation, that Stride is illegal; choose an affordable action or Pause.

The unchosen forecast card stays, but one weather is spent each round. Resting during a Gust may preserve a Tailwind for the next move. Choosing a supply card also shapes future options; there is no reshuffle when stock runs out.

At the end of the round

Returning to Camp while carrying completes the plan. Check this before the round-9 deadline; round 9 gets its full action and replenishment. If you have not returned carrying when that round ends, record the position, preparation and remaining cards, then try a different plan.

The same successful source epilogue is read either way: the herbs restore Rama, Lakshmana and the army; Hanuman returns the mountain to the Himalayas. An incomplete tabletop plan does not rewrite the narrative.

The source narrative’s mountain-return scene at dawn — The successful return belongs to the fixed source epilogue, independent of your tabletop plan.

The story & the game

Jambavan’s mission

The selected episode is Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, Yuddha Kāṇḍa 74, using K. M. K. Murthy’s online English witness. Jambavan directs the mission toward four herbs; Hanuman brings the herb-bearing mountain. This is distinct from the later Sushena-directed mission in chapter 101.

The shared hand, forecast, preparation budget, nine-round clock and route locations are original mechanisms. Scout, Navigator and Steward are responsibilities at your table, not invented canonical companions accompanying Hanuman.

This publisher field guide introduces the current prototype; it is not the complete rulebook or a public game download. Sources were checked against committed Game Night Labs rules on 29 October 2026. Human play, balance, accessibility, cultural review and physical print handling remain separate development work. Proposed age and playing-time targets have not been measured.