Tolstoi: Wieviel Erde braucht der Mensch? 1997

The first (?) game based on a Tolstoi short story ("How Much Ground Does a Man Need?"), this game's premise is simple: Two to four people have paid 1000 Rubles to the Bashkirs for a "day" of land. How much is a "day"? Well, you start on a mountaintop and begin walking. If you come back to the mountain by sundown, you get all the land you encircle.

The board is a 24x32 grid. Each player drops a small cylinder to indicate their starting location, and then draw cards (generally) to move. Each card indicates how far and in what direction you move (your "boundary" is indicated by plastic cones in your color) and how much time it took--around the board, a Sun token moves from Dawn to Dusk. When the Sun token hits Dusk, the game is over. If you end up back on your mountain, you get points equal to the area you have enclosed (plus how many spaces are in your boundary--for the Go-enabled, it's "Chinese scoring"). If you're not on your mountain, you get nothing. If nobody is on their mountain, the Bashkirs win--just like in the story...