Ezra and Nehemiah - Official How to Play Tutorial

hi my name is Paul Grogen and in this video I'm going to be teaching you how to play Ezra and neima in 587 BC the city of Jerusalem fell after a 30-month Siege and the Babylonians destroyed the city along with its Temple decades later in the aftermath of the Persian conquest of Babylon Cyrus the Great issued an edict to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem in Ezra and neimah you and up to three other players will be repairing the city walls building the Temple and teaching the Torah to the returning Exiles you will be developing your land traveling to settlements outside of the city walls and keeping the fire of the altar burning bright historically the rebuilding of the temple and the Reconstruction of the city happened at different times and over many years this game combines all of those things together and takes place over a 3-we period a big thank you to Garfield games for sponsoring this video but I also rely on the financial support of my Patron campaign to keep the channel going so if you want to support me directly and become one of my supporters you can do so at patreon.com rules in this video I'll be explaining the rules for the two to four player game for the solo rules check out the rule book for the full details place the main board in the middle of the play area place the six gate cards nearby ensure that they are all showing the side with the outline of the worker if you're playing a four player game that's it for the gate cards but if you're playing with two or three players there's a few more steps in a two-play game flip over the muster gate and the East Gate and then move these cards onto the corresponding spaces on the main board Place neutral wall cards on these six spaces here and finally for a two-player game place two silver coins on each of the other gate cards in a three-player game cover the three spaces between the muster gate and the East Gate with neutral wall cards and place one silver on each gate card the pre-built Gates and neutral wall cards represent sections that have already been rebuilt in a four player game everything needs rebuilding next place the silver and the food tokens nearby to form the main Supply then place 10 of each of the resources into the main Supply gold stone wood and Cinders place the rest of the resources into the rubble bag and give it a good Shake on each wall and gate space of the main board draw a number of resources randomly from the bag as indicated by the number of these icons and then Place those resources on the space after doing this for all of the spaces add the remaining resources from the bag to the main Supply the bag can then be returned to the Box separate the scroll tiles based on their backs on the top row in this part of the main board randomly place the scroll tiles with the gold backs one on each space on the next two rows Place scrolls with the wooden backs and on the bottom row place the scrolls with the stone backs which are the three Heroes any Scrolls left over are returned to the Box Place three food to the side of the top row two food alongside the next row and one food alongside the next row the bottom row has no food next to it if playing with fewer than four players place the Temple mount on the main board covering over the existing Temple this side up for a three-player game and this side up for a two player game take the alter cards Each of which is two-sided and by choice or at random decide which side of which card to use and place it below the altar return the unused card to the Box place the two profits onto the numbered spaces of the altar track as indicated by the topmost numbers on the alter card here you place the profits on Spaces four and seven place the three hero cards nearby each player takes a player board and a player raid choose a starting player at random and give them the chaar take the development tiles and sort them by type each player takes a random development tile of each type and places them on their player board slotted into the corresponding space so that the artwork lines up correctly ensure that each tile is placed so that it shows the undeveloped side and not the side with the buildings and the nice green areas take one of each blessing marker and place them on the Zero space of their corresponding tracks each player chooses a color and takes all of the components in that color 16 workers an alter marker a VP marker and a tent also take your 10 character cards and your 12 wall cards Place six of your workers into your supply by the side of your player board these are the only ones that you have access to at the start of the game place the rest of them in the main supply place the alter markers on Space zero of the alter track stack them so that the the player with the chofar is on top the next marker is the next player clockwise and so on each player places their VP marker on the 10 space of the score track the order here doesn't matter place the T on the top Center space in this part of the main board again the order here doesn't matter take your 12 wall cards shuffle them and place them near your board take your 10 character cards shuffle them and also place them near your board draw the top four of these cards and place them into your hand take the two resources shown in the bottom left of your guard's tile and place them onto the spaces of that tile each player also takes three food and five silver on the bottom space of the levite track take a worker of each player from the main Supply and place them on the bottom space these workers are known as Levites then in Reverse turn order beginning with the player to the right of the starting player and going counterclockwise each player takes a worker from the main Supply and places it on one of the corner Gates on the main board these workers are known as Gatekeepers in a three-player game one of the corner Gates will be empty Place one of the white workers on that gate in a two-player game each player places two Gatekeepers both taken from the main Supply the non-starting player places their first one followed by the starting player and then each player in the same order places their second gatekeeper also in a two-player game place a white worker on the two outer Scrolls on the bottom row of the Torah and with setup complete you're now ready to play Ezra and Nea has played over three rounds each representing one week of time and each round consists of seven days the first six days of the week Sunday to Friday are for working on each of those days players will take a turn starting with the player with the chaffe far and going clockwise on your turn you will choose one of the cards in your hand play it carry out your actions and then draw a new card Saturday is the Sabbath the day of rest when players will be required to face the Judgment of the profits and also feed their workers Victory point or VP for short will be gained based on where each player has focused their efforts in the previous week after the third week the game ends and the player with the most points wins as just mentioned the first six days of each week is a work day on each workday starting with the player with the chofar and going clockwise each player takes a turn nothing special happens at the end of the day you just continue taking turns until each player has taken six turns on your turn you must first play a card from your hand to your player board then you perform one main action either a red banner action a gray Banner action or a blue Banner action and then finally you draw a card from your deck to your hand so that you have four cards again in addition to this at any point on your turn you can perform one auxiliary action and also at any point on your turn you can use one Trader and or One Elder let's start with the first step of your turn playing a card choose any card from your hand and place it onto one of the three spaces at the bottom of your player board each space can have no more than two cards played to it and this is the turn tracker once you have two cards on each space you know that you have played six turns for the first three days of the week it is recommended you play your cards onto the empty spaces as there is usually no benefit for covering a card early but then on the fourth day of the week the card you play must cover over a previously placed card and then on the fifth day you cover over another card and on the sixth day you cover up the final card so why is this important well it's all to do with the banners on the card card s you see once you have played a card the next step of your turn is to perform your main action the three main actions are summarized on your player Aid and you have a choice of doing a red banner action a gray Banner action or a blue Banner action and the strength of that action or how much you can do with the action is based on the number of banners of the matching color that you have showing not just on the card you've played but on the other cards too for example on Sunday you choose to play the teacher and then you choose to perform the blue Banner action and you do so with the strength of three banners on the Monday you play the musician you could choose to perform the red banner action with a strength of two or the blue Banner action with a strength of four on Tuesday you play the soldier you could perform the blue Banner action with a strength of six the gray Banner action with a strength of one or even the red banner action with a strength of two even though there were no red banners on the card that you just played on Wednesday you play The Gatherer covering over the musician you could perform blue with a strength of six gray with a strength of two or red with a strength of one on Thursday you play the Mason covering over the teacher you could perform blue with a strength of three gray with a strength of five or red with a strength of one and finally on Friday you play the Jeweler covering the soldier you could perform blue with a strength of one gray with a strength of six or red with a strength of two don't worry about the things at the top and the bottom of the cards for now I'll come back to those later but they will influence which card you choose to play on your turn after you've played your card it's time to perform your main action and as mentioned previously you have a choice of performing a red action a gray action or a blue action I've already explained the primary way in which you gain banners by adding up the banners on the visible cards on your player board but there are other ways in which you can gain banners too which I'll explain later on think of the banners that you have as a kind of currency and when performing your main action you will spend those banners to do things and it's possible to gain more banners whilst performing your main action in this case just add those banners onto what you have available for the turn you don't have to spend all of the banners you have available if you don't want to but any unused are wasted the red banner action is all about the temple and the altar as indicated by the cost of doing things in these areas there is a special rule however when performing the red action and that is before or after performing the action you may Place one worker from your supply onto the next space up of your column below the temple that worker is now a levite to do so you you must pay the cost in food shown to the left of the row in this case two food to pay a food cost return the appropriate amount of food from your supply to the main Supply if you cannot pay the food you cannot place the worker after placing the levite you immediately gain the reward shown to the right of the row in this case one Cinders take the Cinders from the main Supply and place it on an available space of your guard's tile each player can have no more than six Levites below the temple performing the red action allows you to spend your available bers to either place resources in the temple or to place resources on the altar to place a resource in the temple you must choose a row and spend the number of banners shown to the left of that row to place a resource on the altar costs either three banners to place wood or one Banner to place Cinders and as well as the cost in banners you are limited on the total number of resources that you can place both across the temple and the altar one resource for each levite that you have for example if you as blue are performing the red action and you now have two Levites below the temple then if you have six red banners to spend you could use one levite to place a resource on the middle row of the temple and the other to place some wood on the altar you could not however Place three resources on the second row of the temple even though this also cost six banners you are placing three resources which would require three Levites but there is another use for Levites too each one that isn't being used to place a resource gives you one extra red banner for example if you have two Levites and you perform perform the red action but you only have two red banners you can use one of the Levites to give you an extra red banner and then use those three banners and the other levite to place one wood on the altar when you place a resource in the temple you can choose any of the rows but each row must be filled from left to right for example if you place a resource here then the next resource placed in the temple could be on any of these five spaces immediately after you place a resource in the temple you gain one point if you placed wood or stone and two points if if you placed gold and as any good Builder will tell you it's unwise to build a temple Out Of Cinders so it is not allowed to place that type of resource in the temple you also gain the reward depicted to the right of the row where you place the resource one silver one food one tent movement which I'll explain later and one worker to gain a new worker take it from the main Supply and add it to your own Supply once a row is complete no more resources can be placed on that Row the temple is also divided into three three sectors and there is a bonus for completing a sector in a four player game for example these are the three sectors if after you have placed a resource you have filled one of the sectors completely you resolve the effects shown here first the player who completed the sector gains two food then the player with the most Levites gains two points if tied like here it's the tied player farthest ahead on the alter track who gains the points next the player with the least Levites loses one point and if tied it's the tied player farthest behind on the alter track who loses the point and finally each player gains one silver for each levite they have note that in a two-player game there is no penalty for having the least levite when a sector is completed instead of your Levites carrying resources to the temple they can place them on the altar placing wood requires three banners and advances your altar marker to spaces placing Cinders costs one banner and advances your marker one space any resources used in this way can either be placed on the altar or just returned to the main Supply if you prefer when you advance on the altar simply move your marker forward if you move onto a space containing another player's marker place yours on top for each space that you move to or move past you gain the bonus depicted below the space on the track this icon is food this one is silver this is gold this is one ten movement which I'll come to later this is simply two points and these three are are blessings when you gain a blessing Advance the corresponding blessing marker on your player board one space forward I'll explain blessings in more detail later on one important rule about the alter track is that the order of the player markers on it acts as a tie break for all situations where a tiebreaker is needed and if two or more markers are on the same space then it's the one on the bottom who is considered farther ahead in other words the player who got to that space first so here blue is the farthest ahead and purple is the farthest behind once your marker reaches the end of the alter track each further space you would Advance you gain one silver instead and since I'm talking about the alter track remember those profits that we placed in setup well the position of your marker on the alter track in relation to those profits will be important during the Sabbath which I'll explain later in the video the gray Banner action is all about clearing Rubble building walls and Gates the most important rule about performing the gray action is that you must select a single Le wall or gate space around the edge of the board any Rubble on the space must be cleared before you can then build the wall or gate and you can both clear rubble and build in the same turn or you could just clear Rubble but not build and if the space was already cleared of rubble you could build there the only real limitation is that you can only focus on one space during the action the cost to clear each cube of rubble is depicted here one Banner for Cinders two for stone or wood and three for gold to remove the rubble take the cubes from the space on the main board and place them on your guards tile you are limited on the maximum number of resources that you can store at the end of a turn as indicated by the number of spaces it is not required to remove all of the rubble at once although it is usually beneficial to do so the player who removes the last Rubble Cube from a wall space gains the blessing depicted on the wall clearing rubble from Gates does not provide a blessing as there is no blessing icon on the space once the rubble has been cleared from a space the corresponding wall or gate can be built either during the same action or later in the game on another action to build a wall or gate you must spend the gray banners shown on the space along with the resources depicted and it is allowed to use the resources that you just gained from clearing any rubble and remember your resource limit based on your guard style only applies at the end of a turn so you could exceed that limit temporarily when clearing rubble and then use those resources to build meaning that you don't lose them whenever you build a section of wall draw the top three cards from your own personal deck of wall cards choose one of them and place it on the space where you are building immediately gain the benefit depicted on the card here for example you gain one point of the two wall cards that you did not select Place one on the bottom of your deck and the other one on top if you have fewer than three wall cards left when you build a wall just draw what you have but once you have built 12 walls you can build no more the cost to build a gate is always three banners one wood and two Stone after paying the cost take the corresponding gate card and place it on top of the space if there was any silver on this card you gain that silver then you must Place one of your available workers onto the gate as a gatekeeper gaining the depicted bonus if you have no available workers you cannot build the gate as depicted here whenever you are building a wall or gate you can use three gray banners or a gold instead of a stone or wood and you can do this multiple times so here you could build this gate with six gray banners and two gold if you really want wanted to every wall and gate card depicts a certain number of points in the bottom left corner these are only scored at the end of the game if you build a wall next to a previously built gate or vice versa you and the player who built the thing that you're connecting to gain a reward for example blue has previously built the muster gate if red then builds a wall next to the muster gate both red and blue gain one Cinders and one stone as depicted above the gate then later in the game the yellow player builds this wall both they and the blue player gain one Cinders and one stone and the same is true even if the wall and gate are built the other way around so here these walls have already been built if blue now builds the East Gate two connections are made so blue and purple gain two Cinders for the first connection and then blue and red gain two Cinders for the other connection however each player can only gain the rewards once from making each connection so here if blue builds a wall next to the horse gate which they claimed at the start of the game they only gain one one stone and one silver and not two of each if playing with fewer than four players some of the walls and Gates have already been rebuilt before the game starts these spaces cannot be interacted with in any way and if you build a gate next to a neutral wall or vice versa it does not form a connection and you do not gain the reward the blue Banner action is all about teaching the Torah and moving your tent around the city you can spend your blue banners either in this part of the main board which represents the Torah Andor moving your tent around the city here and you can do either or both of these things in any order but each can only be done once you can only place one scribe and you can only move your tent once to teach the Torah place a worker from your supply onto a scroll tile that worker is now a scribe and remains there for the rest of the game and each scroll can only have one scribe on it the first scribe in the game must be placed onto a scroll in the bottom row onto one of the heroes but once placed the two space above it become available to all players and when one is placed on one of those the two spaces above that become available the cost to play subscribe is indicated to the left of the row and it's a combination of blue banners and also money or gold in addition to this you must pay one silver for each scribe belonging to another player that you are using to reach your scroll for example you are blue and you are about to place a scribe these scrolls are available to you placing on either of these spaces will cost you seven BL banners and two gold and you must also pay one silver to purple for the link or you could place here at a cost of six banners and one gold and also paying one silver to either purple or yellow or you could place here six banners and one gold and also one silver to yellow or you could place here at a cost of five banners and three silver and one silver to yellow and finally you could place here at a cost of three banners and two silver the first player to place a scribe in one of the top three rows gains all of the food at the right of that Row the points shown next at each row indicate how many points each scribe is worth at the end of the game each scroll gives you a permanent ability to use during the game they are all fully explained near the back of the rule book and although I'm not going to cover them all in this video I will explain a few of them now the stone Scrolls on the bottom row give you the corresponding character card you immediately gain the rewards at the bottom of the card based on which round of the game you are in in round one you just gain the leftmost reward in round two you gain these two rewards and if you take the hero in round three you gain all of the rewards then you took the card beneath your player Aid so that only the top section is visible you now have one permanent Banner of that color for the rest of the game the gold Scrolls in the top row all give you extra points at the end of the game in addition to the four points for just being in the row once you know the game it's recommended to look at the Gold Scrolls that are in the game at the start so that you have something to aim for if you choose to go down that route as mentioned in setup in a two-player game there are white workers on the outer two characters you can use these scribes to place on higher Scrolls but you must pay the one silver to the bank or you could place your worker onto the tile with the neutral scribe if you do move the Scribe to the tile above keeping as close to the edge as possible if a neutral scribe ever reaches the top row remove it from the game the other option you have for spending blue banners is to move your tent around the city and I mentioned earlier that you can only move your tent once on your turn either before or after you place a scribe well that's true but when you do move your tent you can move it one two three or four spaces by paying the cost shown here two banners to move one space four banners to move two spaces seven banners and a cinder stone or wood to move three spaces and 10 banners and a cinder stone or wood to move four spaces you cannot combine these options so it's is not allowed to spend 12 banners for example to move five spaces each space you move advances your tent one space clockwise and there's no limit to the number of tents on each space the other players do not block you after moving your tent you gain each bonus that you pass over as depicted in the middle of this area if you ever gain a worker but you already have all of your workers or you gain a blessing but you cannot take it because you already have the maximum then you move your tent one space instead and those things apply throughout the game not just when gaining a worker or blessing from moving your tent in addition to your main action you may perform one auxiliary action on your turn which can be performed at any time you have two options for an auxiliary action which are shown at the bottom of your player Aid trade or flip a development tile to trade you use one of the trading options on the card that you played this turn this type of trade allows you to sell resources for coins and you can do it any number of times this type of trade however requires you to First pay one silver to the owner of the indicated gate if the gate has not yet been built place the silver onto the gate card instead that money will go to the player who builds the gate if you own the gate you don't need to pay and in a two-play game if trading at the muster gate or the East Gate the cost is paid to the main Supply then you conduct one of the trades listed on the card here you can either just gain one stone or you can pay an additional two silver which goes to the main supply for two Stone the other auxiliary action that you can do is to flip one of your development tiles and this can even be done before you play a card to do this you must pay the indicated resources shown in the top left of the tile you then gain the bonus shown with the green background and flip the tile over as shown here each flipped tile is worth two points at the end of the game if there are any workers next to a development tile when you flip it and I'll explain soon how you place workers there they do not move nor do they gain any additional benefit for the tile flipping even if the bonus they are next to is better than the one before what each development tile does is explained in the rule book in addition to your main action and your auxiliary action you can also use one Trader and or One Elder on your turn but no more than one of each to use a Trader Place one of your available workers onto an empty space to the left of your trading tile and then gain the benefit depicted the fronts of each trading tile are identical but when flipped over they are all different to use an elder Place one of your available workers onto an empty space to the left of your Elder tile and again gain the benefit depicted which as you will notice is extra banners and on the developed side possibly something else too for example you play the soldier and you want to perform the blue Banner action you have six blue banners but you really want eight no worries just place a worker on this space choose to take two additional blue banners and also gain a silver note that you only gain the bonus for placing a Trader or Elder once on the turn that you place it Traders and Elders remain in their spaces until the end of the week when they will be returned back to your supply we've already seen a few ways in the game in which you can gain a blessing each time you do you move the corresponding marker one space to the right and sometimes in the game you will see this icon this is a wild blessing and it means that you can gain any type of blessing each time you have a full set of blessings you gain the bonus shown at the top of the column for that set for example here you gain an orange blessing you now have one full set and you gain one movement on the alter track if you then gain another orange and a red blessing you now have two full sets so you get to move your tent one space and so on anytime you would gain a blessing but you are unable to do so because you already have all of the blessings of that type you move your tent one space instead Saturday is the seventh day of the week and time for rest first all players must prepare for the Sabbath and then conduct the Sabbath itself when preparing for the Sabbath players can usually resolve this simultaneously however if there are any timing disputes resolve each player's preparation in turn order to prepare for the Sabbath you will use farmers and laborers resolve the Judgment of the profits and you may also have other effects to resolve too such as this scroll this icon here represents preparing for the Sabbath and you can resolve each of these steps in any order you want to but first I'll explain using farmers and laborers if you have any workers remaining in your supply each of them must be assigned as either a farmer by placing them on this tile or as a laborer by placing them on this tile thematically you aren't just sending the worker out during the Sabbath it is after all a day of rest this just represents what they have been doing during the week and you now gain the rewards each farmer gains the things printed on the tile also if the farming tile has been flipped you gain an extra bonus during preparation that bonus is just once not per farmer each laborer gains either of the benefits printed on the tile here this laborer can produce two non-old resources or one non-old resource and two silver to resolve the Judgment of the profits look at the position of your marker on the alar track if it's to the left of the dark gray profit you resolve the effect shown in the left column of the alter card this one in round one one this one in round two and this one in round three if your marker is between the profits you get the middle column effect and if your marker is to the right of the light gray profit you get the effect in the right column for example at the end of round one the markers are like this purple loses one point red and yellow both gain a red blessing and blue gains a blessing of their choice a lot of the icons on the alter cards will be familiar to you but if you see one that you don't understand check out the relevant page in the rule book for an explanation of what it does once all players have prepared it's time for the Sabbath itself represented by this icon this step can be carried out simultaneously by all players first you must pay one food for each of your workers except for any workers still in the main Supply and also any Levites in other words Gatekeepers scribes Traders and elders and farmers and laborers an easy way to calculate this is 16 minus the number of Levites and your workers still in the main Supply you must pay the food if you have it and for each worker that you cannot feed you lose two points next from the six cards that you have on your player board you must Tu one of them into the top of your player Aid above any cards already there and if this is the Sabbath in round two you actually took two cards instead of one as depicted here choosing which card to tug is a big decision it gives you a permanent extra Banner of the color shown and as I'm going to explain in more detail soon it gives you the scoring condition printed on the card in each Sabbath so the card that you took in the Sabbath of round one will score for you three times during the game the two that you took in round two will score twice and the one that you took in round three just once but also the card that you took is gone from your deck meaning that you have lost the possibility to play that card in the future for its banners and its trade ability the final step of the Sabbath is to score all of the cards that you have tooked this one for example is simply one point for each wall that you have built each of these is fully described on the back page of the rule book after the Sabbath there are some things to clear up before the start of the next round if this was the last round of the game you can skip this part and go straight to final scoring first move the profits on the alter track to the spaces indicated on the next row for example if you are moving from round one to two move the profits to spaces 8 and 12 the player with the chofar passes it to the player to their left each player returns all of the workers from their player board back to their supply the player whose alter marker is the farthest head gains one new worker each player shuffles the remaining character cards on their player board to form a new draw pile if this was the end of round two you will only have three cards in hand as you would have been unable to draw one on your last turn of round two in this case draw another card to your hand so that you now have four after the third Sabbath the game comes to an end and you perform final scoring first all players convert any remaining resources into silver each gold is sold for three silver each stone or wood is worth two silver each food is also worth two silver and each Cinders is worth one silver then you score one point for every five silver so here you would score two points each of your flipped development tiles is worth two points three points is given to the player farthest ahead on the Altar and remember if more than one player is on a space it's the one who's on the bottom that is considered farthest ahead you then scor the points depicted on all of the walls and Gates that you have built and you gain points for each scribe based on which row they are on and bonus points for the scribes on the top row based on the scoring condition printed on the scroll and the player with the most points wins in case of a tie the tied player who is farthest ahead on the altar is the winner I hope you found this video useful in learning how to play Ezra and neima if you have any questions about the game please leave them in the comments and whilst you're there give the video a like And subscribe to the channel for more content and as mentioned earlier I do rely on the financial support of my patreon to keep the channel going so if you are in a position to be able to do so please visit patreon.com gaming rules for exclusive access to the gaming rules community and some additional bonus content until next time take care and thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Gaming Rules!

Views: 6,507

Keywords: boardgame, board game, gaming rules, paul grogan, ancient, city building, religious, jerusalem, crowdfunding, kickstarter, tabletop game, table top game, how to play, how it plays, hand management, solo game, instructional, ezra, nehemiah, garphill

Id: 8jwHPX2thwY

Length: 33min 2sec (1982 seconds)

Published: Mon May 27 2024