By replacing some of the Automa decision cards with Ravel Mode decision cards, Automa’s pace advancing around the Dragon Guild becomes partially based upon your progress in excavating your caves.

Apart from a few new icons on the decision cards that are described in the next section, the Ravel Mode variant follows all the Automa rules and instructions.

To summarize, it plays exactly the same as the Automa with the following 3 exceptions:

• The strength of some actions on her decision cards are based upon the state of your player mat (see the next section).

• Between rounds, you must discard to 2 coins.

• At the end of the game, Automa gains any fixed VP end game benefits where she placed her marker on the Dragon Guild tile.

DESIGNER’S NOTE: Ravel Mode deviates from the Automa design approach by introducing an interaction that doesn’t exist in the multiplayer game. In this mode, how you build your caves influences Automa’s pace of play and, ultimately, her score, giving you a little more to think about.

It makes no difference which cave is the most (or least) excavated or if multiple caves are equally so. All that matters is the number of excavated spaces.

Additionally, it does not matter whether the excavated spaces are occupied by dragons.

DESIGNER’S NOTE: Why ’ravel’? In English, the word ravel is a contranym, in that it can be its own opposite. Depending on how it is used, ravel can mean both tangle and untangle and I thought that sort of fit with what this variant tries to accomplish.

I hope you have fun raveling.