The Castles of Burgundy rules refresher

Read the refresher

You are trying to end the game with the most victory points. You do that by taking hex tiles from the game board and placing them into matching coloured regions on your player board, completing regions for points and triggering each tile's effect as you place it.

For setup, everyone uses the number one side of a player board, with a castle tile face up on the dark green centre space. Shuffle the forty two square goods tiles face down and make five piles of five, one on each phase space A through E. Each player takes three random goods tiles from the leftovers, placed in the three goods storage spaces, plus one Silverling, their two dice, a scoring piece on the zero space of the victory point track, and their hundred slash two hundred tile set aside. The twelve bonus tiles go on the board. Determine a start player: that player takes one worker tile, the next clockwise takes two, then three, then four. Mark turn order with your second piece on the first space of the turn order track, start player's piece on top of the tower. The start player also holds the white die.

The game is five phases, A through E, each of five rounds. At the start of every phase, clear all remaining hex tiles from the board, though goods tiles on the depots stay, then refill the six numbered depots with face up tiles matching each space's colour: twelve spaces with two players, eighteen with three, all twenty four with four. In a three player game only, the dark green space in depot six gets a mine instead of a castle in phases B and D. Refill the black depot in the middle with black backed tiles, two to eight depending on player count, and lay the five goods tiles for this phase on the round spaces. Each round, everyone rolls their two dice at once, the start player also rolling the white die. The start player first moves the top goods tile from the round spaces onto the goods space of the depot matching the white die. That die does nothing else, it cannot help the start player and can never be adjusted. Then players take turns in order, each taking exactly two actions, one per die, in any combination. The phase ends after five rounds.

Your four action options are these. With one die, take a hex tile from the depot whose number matches that die and put it on one of the three storage spaces in the lower left of your board. If all three are full, discard one first, out of the game. With a die, move a tile from storage into your estate onto an empty space showing that die number. It must match the space's colour and must touch a tile you have already placed, so your first tile goes next to the start castle. You can never place straight from the board into your estate. With a die, sell goods: the die result names a colour, and you sell every tile of that colour from your goods storage, turning them face down onto the sold goods space, for one Silverling plus victory points per tile, two per tile in a two player game up to four in a four player game. Or, ignoring the die result entirely, use a die to take two worker tiles.

Worker tiles are your flexibility. Spend one at any time to shift a die result up or down by one, and one to six or six to one also costs just one. Spend several to shift further. Separately, once per turn, before, between or after your actions, you may pay two Silverlings to buy any tile from the central black depot, placing it in storage as normal.

What happens when you place a tile depends on its colour. A ship lets you take all the goods from any one depot's goods space, your choice, unrelated to the die you used, though you can only ever hold three different goods colours, so leave behind what you cannot store, and then you move one space right on the turn order track, on top of any pieces there. An animal tile scores its two to four animals immediately, and if that pasture already holds animals of the same type, all of those tiles score again too, even if not adjacent. A castle gives you an immediate extra action with a die of any value you like. A mine does nothing now but pays one Silverling at the end of every phase. A building gives its advantage immediately, no die needed, and remember each of the eight building types may appear only once per city. Briefly: the warehouse sells a goods type, the carpenter takes a building tile from any numbered depot, the church takes a mine, knowledge or castle, the market takes a ship or animal, the boarding house gives four workers, the bank two Silverlings, the city hall lets you immediately place a second tile from storage regardless of colour with all its effects, and the watchtower gives four points. Yellow knowledge tiles each bend a rule or score at the end. If a building's advantage cannot be used, you may still place the building and simply lose the benefit.

Completing a region matters most. The moment a coloured region is fully covered, score for its size, from one point for a single space up to thirty six for eight spaces, plus a phase bonus that is the same for any region: ten points in phase A, sliding down to two points in phase E. Also, the first player to cover every space of one colour anywhere in their whole estate takes the large bonus tile for that colour, worth five points with two players, six with three, seven with four; the second player takes the small one for two to four points. Nobody after that scores.

At the end of each phase, mines pay out and some yellow tiles trigger. The game ends when phase E finishes. Then score one point per unsold goods tile, one per Silverling, one for every two worker tiles, and whatever your yellow tiles award. Hex tiles still sitting in your storage spaces score nothing. Most points wins; if tied, the tied player with the fewest empty estate spaces wins, and if still tied, the one who went later in turn order.

A turn, played out

It is phase C, round 3, in a three player game. You roll a 5 and a 2. Your storage holds a ship tile and nothing else, and you have 1 worker tile and 1 Silverling. On your estate, there is an empty space matching the ship's colour showing a 5, touching the pasture you placed last phase, so the ship can go there. You spend the 5 and place the ship. Now you look at the goods spaces. Depot 4 holds 2 yellow goods and 1 red. Depot 1 holds a single purple. You already hold unsold blue, purple and yellow goods, so that is your three colours. You take depot 4. The 2 yellows join your yellow, and the red stays behind because you have no room for a fourth colour. The ship also moves your turn order piece one space right, on top of the red player's piece, so next round you act before them. Now the 2. Depot 2 offers only a mine you do not need, but depot 3 has a castle. You spend your 1 worker tile to turn the 2 into a 3 and put the castle into storage. Placing it later will give you a free action with any die value. You would like to buy the ship waiting in the black depot too, but that costs 2 Silverlings and you have only 1. Your turn ends.