Terra Mystica rules refresher

Read the refresher

You are trying to finish with the most victory points after six rounds. You do that by terraforming land into your home terrain, building and upgrading structures, expanding into a large connected area, and climbing the four cult tracks.

For setup, each player takes a faction board and the pieces in that color: structures go on their tracks, seven priests and three bridges sit beside the board as your supply. Take the starting workers, coins and priests printed on your board, place your twelve power tokens in bowls one and two as shown, and advance your cult markers for the cult symbols shown. One marker goes on the leftmost shipping space, one on the bottom of the exchange track where three workers buy one spade, one on space twenty of the victory point track, and four on space zero of the cult tracks. Draw six scoring tiles at random and lay them in random order, one per round, then cover the right half of the uppermost tile, the round six tile, with the game end token. Deal out bonus cards face up: five for two players, six for three, seven for four, eight for five. Lay the twelve favor tiles out, turn the ten town tiles face up, and put one action token above each of the six power action spaces on the board. Then, starting with the start player and going clockwise, each player places one dwelling on an existing space of their home terrain. Going back counterclockwise, each places a second. No terraforming during this. Finally, starting with the last player and going counterclockwise, each player takes a bonus card, and one coin goes on each leftover card.

Each of the six rounds has three phases. First income: collect workers, coins, priests and power based on the uncovered symbols on your structure tracks, plus your bonus card and favor tiles. Then the action phase: beginning with the start player and going clockwise, each player takes exactly one action per turn, going round and round until everyone has passed. Then cult bonuses and clean-up, and the next round begins.

There are eight actions. Transform and build lets you change the type of one unoccupied terrain space, and if you made it your home terrain you may immediately build a dwelling there for one worker and two coins. Each step around the transformation cycle costs one spade, up to three steps, and you buy spades with workers at your current exchange rate. Spades cannot be saved: use them now or lose them. You may stop partway and not build, but the space you transform still has to be directly or indirectly adjacent to one of your structures, and you can never transform a space that has a structure on it.

Direct adjacency means sharing a hex edge, or being connected by a bridge. Indirect adjacency means separated by river spaces that your shipping value can cover. Indirect adjacency is fine for building, but only direct adjacency counts for power and for towns.

The other actions: advance one space on the shipping track for one priest and four coins, scoring the victory points on the space you reach. Lower your spade exchange rate one step for two workers, five coins and one priest, scoring six victory points. Upgrade a structure: dwelling to trading house for two workers and six coins, or only three coins if an opponent's structure is directly adjacent. Trading house to stronghold at your faction's cost, which unlocks your stronghold ability. Trading house to temple for two workers and five coins, and temple to sanctuary at your faction's cost. Each temple and the sanctuary earns you a favor tile of your choice, and you may never have two of the same tile.

You may also send a priest to an order of a cult: place him on one of the four spaces under a track to advance two or three spaces as shown, and that priest is gone for good. Alternatively return a priest to your supply and advance just one space. Advancing to or past spaces three, five, seven and ten on a cult track gives you one, two, two and three power, once each. Only one player can reach space ten on each track, and you need a town key to go there at all.

Power actions are the six orange spaces on the board, each available once per round, first come first served, costing three, four or six power from bowl three. They give a bridge, a priest, two workers, seven coins, one spade, or two spades. Special actions come from stronghold abilities, one favor tile and some bonus cards, and each is usable once per round. Conversions are free and not your action: five power for a priest, three power for a worker, one power for a coin, a priest to a worker, a worker to a coin. If bowl three is short, you may sacrifice power, moving tokens from bowl two to bowl three and permanently removing one token from bowl two for each one moved.

Remember the power bowls. Gaining power moves tokens from bowl one to two, and once bowl one is empty, from two to three. Spending moves tokens from three back to one. Whenever you build a dwelling or upgrade a structure, every opponent with structures directly adjacent may take power equal to the total power value of those structures, dwellings one, trading houses and temples two, stronghold and sanctuary three. Taking it costs them victory points equal to one fewer than the power gained, and it is all or nothing.

Towns form automatically when at least four of your structures are directly adjacent to each other with a combined power value of at least seven. Three structures suffice if one is a sanctuary. Take a town tile for victory points, a one-time bonus, and a key.

Passing is an action. The first player to pass takes the start player token for the next round. When you pass, return your bonus card and take one of the three available ones, but not the one you just returned, and take no new card in round six.

In phase three, award the cult bonuses shown on the right half of the current scoring tile, in the play order of the next round. Spades gained this way are used immediately, you cannot buy extra spades and you cannot build a dwelling with them. Remove all action tokens, put one coin on each of the three leftover bonus cards, and turn the current scoring tile face down.

The game ends when everyone has passed in round six, and there are no cult bonuses that round. Score each cult track separately: eight points for the highest, four for the second, two for the third, nothing if you are still on space zero. Then area scoring: count your largest group of directly or indirectly connected structures, and the highest gets eighteen, second twelve, third six. For both of those, tied players evenly divide the points of the tiers involved, rounding down. Finally, one victory point per three coins left over, converting other resources to coins if you like. Most victory points wins, and if there is a tie, there is more than one winner.

A turn, played out

It is round 3, and it is your turn. You hold 5 workers, 8 coins and 2 priests, and your exchange marker still sits at the bottom, where 3 workers buy 1 spade. Your cluster has a trading house, a temple and a dwelling, all sharing hex edges. Beside that dwelling is an empty space just 1 step from your home terrain on the transformation cycle. On its far side stands the blue player's trading house. You transform and build. The spade costs 3 workers, and the space flips to your home terrain. Then you pay 1 worker and 2 coins and place a dwelling there. That leaves you 1 worker and 6 coins. Your build touches blue's trading house directly, so blue may take 2 power, paying 1 victory point. Blue accepts. Blue has 1 token left in bowl one, so it moves to bowl two, and then 1 token moves from bowl two to bowl three. Now count your group. You have 4 structures, all directly adjacent, but their power is 2 + 2 + 1 + 1, which makes 6. A town needs 7, so none forms yet. Play goes clockwise, and when your turn comes back, you finish it. You convert a priest into a worker for free, so now you have 2. Since blue's trading house is directly adjacent, your new dwelling upgrades to a trading house for 2 workers and only 3 coins. Blue is offered 2 power again. Your group is now 2 + 2 + 2 + 1, which makes 7, so a town forms at once. You take a town tile for its victory points, its bonus and a key.