Game
- roll 2 dice (3 if you’re the lead player)
- using number on dice to do 2 actions
- buy a tile from the corresponding market into your holding area
- place a tile from your holding area onto a corresponding slot on your board
- sell corresponding goods from your crate area (gain 1 silver and each worth 4 at the end)
- without needing corresponding: gain 2 workers (can be used to +/- 1 from your action dice)
- Free action during your turn (max once per round)
- spend 2 silver to buy a tile from the black market in the middle
During Play
When playing tiles onto your board you gain bonuses:
- mines – give you silver at the end of each round – target these early on
- tiles for extra actions from:
- have an extra action (pretend you have another dice of any number) – castle
- have an extra action using the white dice number – white castle
- gain extra tiles from market – carpenter, church, market
- place a tile on your board – town hall
- monastries
- keep an eye on which bonuses are on offer
- farms
- keep an eye on which animals have been/gone
- ships
- get you goods and advance up the shipping (turn order) track
- other tiles
- get 2 silver – bank
- get 4 workers – boarding house
- get 4 VP – watchtower
- sell 2 type of good – warehouse
Gain Points From
- completing areas – the earlier the era for more points
- being the first/second to complete all areas of a colour gets bonus chit
- being the first/second to link the 3 castles around the edges of the board gets a bonus chit
- sold goods are worth 4 points each
- building a farmland of similar animals adds up (1 point per matching animal, each time you add/expand the farm)
Tips
- mines have their own colour on the board
- don’t mix up yellow monastry and beige building
- roll the white dice too if you’re first player
- In a 4 player game the goods don’t stay in the market area for long
- at the start of each era read the power ups on offer from the monastry tiles in the market
some are really good (1 silver for 2 workers) - some work well with others (2 workers for 1 building)
- get some for bonus scoring at the end
- 2 of the same building types (beige) can’t be in the same area as eachother (e.g. 2 banks)
Inns expand an area by a bonus 1 – best used within bigger areas for bigger bonuses - Look for shipping opportunities to get goods that stack so that 1 selling action gets multiple tiles scoring
- Look to sell goods that match covered bonus tiles on the trade route (sell a stack to cover multiple bonus tiles – they unstack)
- Try to place tiles in a way that there are a range of numbers and colours connecting to keep options open