Bus - How To Play

[Music] hi and welcome to watch it played my name is Rodney Smith and in this video we're going to learn the three to five player game bus designed by yours veer Zynga and Yoram Bauman and published by capstone games who have sponsored this video like any city the one in this game is filled with people wanting to move about their day from their homes to their offices to the pubs and your well-planned bus route will get them where they want to be unless someone starts interfering with the space-time continuum but like any good bus planner we'll worry about that later so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up first place the game board in the center of the play area and if it's your very first time playing you'll also have to attach this spinner to the board as well then set the five time stones on the spaces for them here next to the clock and point the hand of the clock towards the head symbol then set these 15 passenger tokens in the supply beside the board to help organize some of the components in this game I'm going to be using some game trays that I have and if you'd like to pick up some for yourself you'll find links for them in the description of this video then set it passenger token onto each of these four roundabouts that surround a central park in the color of their choice each player takes 20 action markers 25 line markers 5 bus tokens and a scoring disc which they'll set on the zero space of the victory point track here each player also puts one of their bus tokens at the top of the matching colored track in this area of the board randomly determine which player will go first and give them the start bus token then it's time for players to add the initial buildings and bus route line markers to the board there are three different kinds of buildings represented by these tokens homes offices and pubs people want to spend their days in the office their evenings at the pub and nights at home and all these tokens you'll keep in a supply by the board the game board shows name streets and crossings which have a grey dot and then numbered locations those crossings where buildings can be placed starting with the first player and moving clockwise around the table each person picks two buildings of their choice which could include picking the same building twice and then puts them on any two different locations of the board marked with a one after all of the players have added their buildings to the board they now take turns adding line markers once again starting with the first player and moving clockwise around the table each person takes one of their line markers and puts it on a street of their choice anywhere on the board I can even put it over here if I wanted to but I think in this case I'll set it here players are even allowed to put these first lines on the streets that already have a line marker on them but again I think in this case the yellow player will go let's say here once everyone has set their first line marker on the board then in Reverse player order starting with the last person who just placed their first line marker and moving counterclockwise around the table players expand their lines by adding a second marker onto a street that extends from one of the ends of their previously placed marker so for example the purple player here could extend it from this end of their route placing a line marker on any one of these five streets or extend from this end onto either of these two streets in this case we'll have them go here we'll learn more about the different rules for expanding your lines later but you must follow those rules here as well and that's the setup bus is a game all about getting passengers from where they are to where they want to be as time goes by passengers will leave their homes and go to work leave their offices and go to the pub and then leave the pubs to go back home and you'll get points for getting them to their desired destinations if you need a little help with this you can even stop time itself radically altering the space-time continuum to make your but wait a second what really huh yeah actually that is something you can do in the game well what do you know the game is played over a series of rounds each made up of two phases in the first phase starting with the first player and then going clockwise around and around the table players will take turns choosing actions there are seven different actions and each of them are identified here on the board to choose an action on your turn you place one of your action markers on an unoccupied space some actions can only be chosen by one player per round which is shown by a single circle with a white dot while other actions can be taken multiple times by different players or even the same players more than once the first person to choose a multi space action puts their marker on the a spot the next marker placed here must go on to B then C and so on also notice that while some actions have the letters going in order from left to right others are listed in reverse but no matter the direction you always place on a first and then B as explained planners will take turns until each is placed at least two action markers from that point on on your turn a player can choose to pass or continue by placing another marker anyone who does pass will be skipped over for the rest of this phase and once everyone has passed it's time for the second phase resolving actions you'll start at the top of the board with line expansions resolving any markers it might have there and then go to the next action and resolve its markers if any and so on until you've gone through all seven of the actions actions with more than one marker are always resolved from left to right even if the markers were placed from right to left during the previous phase so in a case like this blue would resolve first then yellow and then blue again when resolving actions many depend on understanding a value known as the maximum number of buses this is simply the largest number of buses owned by any one player the higher that number is the more powerful actions become for everyone to check for this value look at this area of the board and see which player has the greatest number of buses there and how many buses that is at the start of the game it's the same for everyone so the maximum number of buses value is one if it was later in the game the tokens looked like this the maximum buses value would be calculated as the amount of buses owned by the purple player because they have the most so that maximum buses value is three later if it looked like this then the maximum number of buses value would become four and remember that value applies to everyone not just the player who happens to be generating that value at this time with that understood now let's go through each of the actions one at a time and see how they're resolved this is the line expansion action the spaces here are in reverse alphabetical order which as we mentioned earlier means that although this one was placed first it will be resolved last when resolving this action it will allow you to add a certain number of your line markers to the board based on the letter that is under your action token and the value assigned to that letter will be based on that maximum number of buses value that we talked about earlier to help me explain this I'm going to add two more buses to this area of the board which will make the maximum number of buses value now equal to three whoever put their action marker on the a space will be able to add a number of their line markers to the board equal to the maximum number of buses value so this action token would allow the blue player to add three of their line markers to the board the player on B adds one less than that so only two a player on C adds one less than that so one and a marker here adds one less again meaning they add nothing remember you still resolve the tokens from left to right but it's important to understand each tokens value first which is always the maximum bus value on a one less on b1 less again on C and so on knowing this may also give you some insight into the decisions you'll have to make when adding action tokens to the board in a situation like this it wouldn't have made sense for a player to put their token here during the choose action step as they would not have been able to add any lines to the board during this phase and the blue player putting another marker here would have to have decided whether or not using this action token was really worth it knowing they only get to add one extra line there is one last other rule to keep in mind here if you have five players in the game you add one extra line more than you normally would place when taking the line expansion action so this action marker is resolved instead of placing three lines they place for the yellow player would place three the blue player here would get to place two and purple would get to place one something else to understand is that you must always fully resolve any action that you're taking for example in the case of placing lines if the action would let you place three then you must place three if you're able for example if you ran out of lines then you would be able to place fewer but you would have to place as many as you could speaking of lines let's talk about the rules for placing and extending lines next anytime you're adding more of your lines to the board they must always be extending the current line that you have in play for example I could place this next piece here because it's extending this end of my line but I could also place it here or really on any one of these streets or I could have extended the other end of my line here or on one of these streets what you can't do is create a branch out of your current route so placing it in this position would not be allowed when placing you can cross another player's line but you cannot run parallel to their line aside from a couple of exceptions which I'll explain by setting up some examples if your line that meets the end of another players line you can place a piece parallel with theirs there even if you had other options but now if I want to add another piece to this end of my line I cannot go here I only got to do this before because the ends of our lines were meeting this is not the end of their line so I'd have to go here say or maybe here or perhaps on the other end of my line the other exception is if you have an end of your line that is totally blocked in that situation you can always build along another player's line even if you're not meeting their line at one of their ends or if you had other options that you could pursue so in this case I could go here after that though if I wanted to extend my line from this end I'd have to go here here here or even here as well because in this case my blue line is meeting the end of the purple player's line or of course I also have the option of extending from the other end of my line as well if the ends of your line ever meet creating a kind of loop pick at which point they joined and then put one of your unused markers there as a reminder that when you place your next piece of line it must extend from that position and those are the rules for adding lines with the line expansion action next up we have the bus's action the player who chose this if any adds one of their bus tokens underneath of their current buses here already and if this creates a new maximum number of buses value which in this case it does a new maximum value of two then that value goes into effect right away for all future actions like this one passengers each token resolved from here allows that player to add a number of passengers from the supply to the board and the number of those passengers they get to add works just like the number of lines in the line expansion action in other words the player on the a space places the current maximum bus value of passengers the B space adds one less and so on so in the situation we have here the yellow player would go first and they would add two passengers to the board passengers are always added to either of these two train station spaces and you can split the pieces you're adding between them in any way that you like you do not need to have one of your lines connected to that train station space the building's action allows you to add buildings to the board again based on the maximum bus value and the placement order so in this case with a maximum bus value of two the blue player will get to add one building and the yellow player will get to add two if you're placing more than one building you can choose any kind combination of types you like from the supply buildings are put on the numbered spaces of the board but you must always cover the lowest numbered locations first so early on this means only the number one spaces will be available once they've all been filled in the number two spots can be built on and so forth if a player chooses the clock action they may choose to stop time if they do the clock hand stays exactly where it is and the player takes one of these time stones and puts it in front of themself when there are no more time stones left on the clock the players have messed with the space-time continuum too much it ruptures and the game ends immediately you do not complete the next action and instead head straight to final scoring if no player chose the clock action or if the person who did chooses not to stop time then move the hand forward so that it points at the next building symbol in clockwise order the room action is used to move passengers along your bus route to the buildings that they want to travel to which is represented by the symbol the clock is currently pointing at in this case they want to go to work first you need to see if any passengers are already where they want to be if a passenger is at a crossing that has a building of the right type move that passenger onto that building they won't be taking a bus this turn because they've already arrived and keep in mind each building can only hold one passenger you should also keep an eye out here for any figures that are on the wrong type of building perhaps they were there from a previous round you'll want to make sure that they're moved back onto the crossing unlike the previous actions players resolving this action don't consider the maximum bus value instead they can move as many passengers to the desired location as the number of buses that they have in this area in other words although the maximum buses value right now is 4 and this player is on space a they only have two buses so they will only be moving at most two passengers when resolving this token the player here yellow can move three passengers and when it's blues turn again and they are resolving this token they again get to transport two more passengers to move a passenger look at each one anywhere on your line that isn't currently at their desired building type which in this case is work and then pick one of those passengers to move to one of those buildings as long as there's an open one located somewhere on your line for example I could move this passenger to this work location or this one I'll pick the one over here you don't have to pick the closest space blue had two buses so I could move one more passenger along their line but there are no passengers that are already at their desired locations so my action would have to end here for each passenger you do move successfully you score one point moving your marker upwards one space on the track here once everyone has finished their rooming it's time for the starting player action if anyone shows this give them the start bus token they will be the first player for the next round if no one shows this action then whoever has the start bus token just passes it to the player on their left after performing all the actions take all the action markers off the board and return them to the box players won't be able to use them again this game so make sure you always assign your actions wisely if you place a lot of your action tokens early in the game compared to the other players you might run out of them and when this happens you will not be able to pick any more actions to be resolved for the rest of the game and the other players will continue to take actions as normal that's it if at the end of a round only one player has action markers left or if there are no more empty numbered building spaces on the board than the game ends and don't forget the game will also end immediately when the final time stone is used which will cause that rounds of room action to be skipped after all you broke the space-time continuum with the bus apparently however the game ends you now check each player's score and subtract one point for each time stone that you collected in the case of a tie the tied player with the most stones Wynn's if there's still a tie the tide pyre whose point disc is on the bottom of the point stack wins this means they got to that score first and that's how you play bus if you have any questions but anything you saw here feel free to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance you'll also find forums for discussion pictures other videos and lots more over on the game's page at BoardGameGeek and I'll put a link to that in the description below and if you found this video helpful please consider giving it a like subscribing and clicking that little bell icon so you get notification anytime we post a new video but until next time thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 19,234

Rating: 4.9256506 out of 5

Keywords: Learn How To Play, Instructions, Tabletop, Board Games, Tutorial, Board Game, Play Throughs, Game Rules, How To Play, Tutorials, Card Games, Capstone Games, Learn To Play, Splotter, Learn, Watch It Played, Rules, Bus, Miniatures, Instructional

Id: CKW0tYoIU_k

Length: 18min 50sec (1130 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 07 2020