How to Play Crown of Emara

hi it's ryan from knights around a table and this is crown of amara a two-ring circus of a rondelle game for one to four players let me show you how to play the benevolent king theodorius the wise is retiring you know how kings retire like that's a thing that kings do and you and your friends are vying for his crown but you'll have to prove to the king that you can rally the support of enough citizens and keep those citizens housed before he'll hand over his divine right to rule bestowed upon him by god because kings do that you know they just pack it in one day you have two markers on the scoreboard one to track the number of citizens you rule and one to track the number of houses you've built for them your score at the end of the game is the lower of these two totals so you'll generally spend the first part of the game trying to catch your citizen marker up to your building marker and the rest of the game trying to raise them more or less concurrently to do that everyone gets the same deck of cards with various effects on them and a little player board with three slots in it there are two locations the country and the city and you get a counselor in each location on your turn you'll play one of the three cards in your hand to one of the three slots on your board the card gets you some kind of benefit and you also get to move one of your two counselors clockwise around either the country circle or the city circle as many spaces as the slot dictates and then do the stuff on the space where you land the countryside has you gathering resources while the city has you spending those resources to gain citizen and construction points or buying extra helpers and resources to buy points in bulk or to carry extra favor with the king there's a pull up the ladder effect on most of these city spaces the first person to pay for an action generally gets the highest benefit and then the law of diminishing returns applies for everyone who comes after you take turns placing your cards and moving your citizens until your board fills up with three cards then you flip the cards and place three more and then flip those and play your final three cards then everyone scoops up their nine card deck shovels it and repeats that whole process again the second time you reach the end of your deck the game ends and whoever has the highest score on the lowest earning of their two markers wins town and country spaces these are the nine cards you have in your deck when you play one of these cards to a slot on your board you get the resource depicted either wood stone cloth grain or a signet ring these other cards take a little more explaining so let's loop back around to them when we understand the game a bit better so you play one of these cards to one of these slots and then move one of your two consular pawns clockwise around the circle it's on as many spaces as the shoe on the slot depicts you have to travel that exact number of spaces no more no less when your pawn reaches a new space you get to do something all of the countryside spaces work the same if you reach that spot you get to take one of the resources associated with that area stone up here wood here grain here and cloth here the city spaces let you do different things depending on where you land in the cathedral you pay a certain number of resources to gain a book so if you decided to pay wood the marker says you need to pay one wood for a book then you rotate the marker so that the next person who visits the cathedral and wants to donate wood has to pay 2 wood instead of just one if you ever get to a point where the marker has rotated all the way around or to the space with the player count symbols on it discard the marker and go with the exchange rate printed on the board in the cathedral you also get to grab three favor tokens from this stack keep one and discard the others these favor tokens get you extra stuff when you land on the space they depict and you cash them in so there are one use thing at your discretion if you move to the castle you pay resources in order to bribe the king for a signet ring which represents how fondly the king thinks of you again you turn the marker to pull up the ladder so the next person will have to grovel a little harder you can additionally or alternatively pay a book to gain five building points if you reach the market there are two different things you can do pay one of any resource to get a gold coin or pay a certain number of books to get a certain number of citizen points on this sliding scale so the more books you spend the more citizen points you get and finally at the construction site you can pay one stone to get both building points and citizen points in one shot and as usual you turn the dial to change the number so the next person to use this action gets less benefit from it you can also or alternatively pay one to three loaves of bread to get citizen points according to what's on the dial so if the dial said five and you paid three loaves of bread you'd get 15 citizen points before rotating the dial we'll see how to bake bread shortly and finally if you spend wood you can get five building points for one wood or 10 building points for 3 wood as is the case with all of the city spaces you can perform any all or none of the actions available when your counselor enters that quadrant bonus actions so in addition to playing a card and moving your citizen you get to take up to three bonus actions once each they are hire a craftsman increase your rank and recruit an advisor let's take a look at hiring a craftsman first you have four craftsmen at your disposal to sweeten up the spaces in the countryside look at where your countryside counselor is positioned if you pay the two resources on one of the houses there you can move a craftsman from your board to that house you get an increasing number of citizen points every time you hire a craftsman on successive turns these houses can each hold one craftsman so they're first come first served if your counselor lands on a countryside space with one or more of your craftsmen in a house you can take that many extra resources so moving to this space with two of your craftsmen on it means you can get one cloth plus two more one for each of your craftsmen alternatively each craftsman lets you bake one of your grain resources into bread so if you moved your counselor to this space and you had at least a couple of units of grain in your personal supply you'd take one bundle of cloth and then have the option of taking two more cloth or baking your grain into one loaf of bread and taking a cloth or baking two units of grain into two loaves of bread if you want to take the bonus action to improve your noble rank you pay a certain combination of gold and signet rings to take the next available rank card you have to start here as a baron and eventually work your way up to the highest rank of duke in this order pay the price take the card and put it behind your head on your player board to depict your fancy new crown you'll also get some citizen points for improving your rank and it's a bit of a race along this board because after barron each stack of rank cards has a depreciating number of citizen points on it the third bonus action you can take on your turn is to recruit an advisor there are two advisor cards per section in the city and when you take this bonus action you'll be buying a card from the section your counselor is currently on the price for an advisor card is at the top and the benefits are at the bottom most advisors give you an instant increase in citizen or building points and then a secondary benefit this symbol means the benefit is immediate and once only this one means that you get that benefit once per turn and this infinity symbol means the benefit is ongoing throughout the rest of the game when you hire an advisor replace the card with one of the new advisors waiting in the wings actions order oh yeah the rules gremlin reminds me that there are a few picky points about the order of the things you can do on your turn watch there are up to five distinct actions you can take playing a card using the movement points and doing the thing at the section of country or city where your counselor arrives is one action using the perk on the card is its own separate action and then there are three bonus actions you can take hire a craftsman recruit an advisor or improve your rank you can take these five discrete actions in any order you like that means that you can for example hire a craftsman in the countryside slot you're on then play your card and use the movement points to move your counselor and do the thing wherever you arrive then take the action on the card and then pay to improve your rank but doing the thing at the location and moving your counselor are the same action so what you can't do is make a donation at the church before moving your city counselor onto another space and you can't move to a new countryside space hire a craftsman and then take extra resources because you would be splitting up the move slash do the thing action action cards so now that we know how all of the moving pieces work together let's take a look at what those last few action cards can do for you this one lets you activate any city space even when your counselor isn't on so you can for example play this card move your counselor and activate a city space and then activate a second city space without moving which could be the same city space you just activated or you could do that same sequence in reverse order or you could play this card move your countryside counselor and take the location perk and then use the power on the card to activate any of the four city spaces and of course you could take any or all of the three bonus actions before after or between your card and movement actions the one boot card is similar in that it allows you to activate two quadrants in one turn so you play it to a space and then either move a counselor that many spaces and do the thing and then move either your country or your city counselor one more space and do the thing or perform those actions in the reverse order move either counselor one space and do the thing and then move either counselor as many spaces as the slot you chose and do the thing and then once again take any of those three bonus actions before between or after those two actions this card lets you hire a craftsman or an advisor on this turn at a discount of one resource you have to choose one or the other you can't get two discounts if you hire both a craftsman and an advisor and finally this card lets you pay one resource for one gold or any three resources for two gold end game and scoring the final thing to know about the game before you're ready to play is that each round begins with an event card the event card changes the circumstances of the round it might reward or punish certain types of scoring or it may just give everyone extra resources right off the bat at the top of the round you reveal a new event card and resolve it whenever the card says you're supposed to then everyone takes turns playing a card from their hand and when everyone's three slots are filled up you flip those cards draw three new ones pass the start player horse clockwise flip up a new event card and carry on playing when everyone has had 18 turns in other words when everyone has run through their entire nine card deck twice the game is over once the game ends your leftover resources give you some flex points that you can spend moving either your citizen or your building points marker up the track each leftover favorite tile book coin loaf of bread or pair of resources gets you one flex point to spend while each leftover signet ring gets you two flex points to spend as you see fit look at where your lowest marker ended up on the score track and whoever's lowest score is highest wins if two or more players are tied whoever's other marker is highest on the scoring track wins still tied well whoever has the highest noble rank wins still tied alright whoever earned the highest number of citizen points on their highest nobility card wins in other words whoever reached that rank first is the winner if you're still tied after that i don't know what to tell you i got other stuff i'd rather be doing setup to set up the game randomly assemble the country and city locations the boards are double-sided one has rich saturated artwork but it can be tough to see the relevant icons the other side is desaturated with popped out iconography the desaturated side might be a better bet for your first game put all of the four resources in their respective countryside quadrants and stack the bread near the grain put the counter tokens on their respective spots in the castle cathedral and construction site these tokens are double-sided make sure you use the side with your proper player count on it in a two-player game rotate the stone and cloth counters in the castle to two in the cathedral rotate the wood and grain markers to two and in the construction site for two player game rotate both markers to the next number in sequence separate the advisors into a and b decks and shuffle them both deal eight cards from the a deck out to the city two advisors per quadrant and then put the rest of the deck back in the box [Music] pop the b deck face up nearby put the rank board on the table and sort the ranks into separate decks with the lowest scoring ranks on the bottom and then on up in ascending order place the decks on the board from barron to count to prince to marquis to duke everyone gets a player board and the wood pieces and card deck in their color put your four craftsman along here split out the reference card from your deck shuffle the remaining nine cards and draw three of them for your starting hand shuffle and place the event deck nearby randomly pick a starting player that player's two counselors start on the two spaces indicated on the event card and everyone else in clockwise order places their two counselors on the next available space going clockwise around those circles everyone gets one starting resource according to wherever their country counselor begins the game assemble the score track and put your citizen marker on zero put your building marker on the number indicated by the event card the rulebook suggests putting your buildings on 35 for the first game to make it a little easier alternatively you can just start your buildings on the same mutually agreed upon space the rulebook mentions two variants you can try if you know the game inside out first you can randomly mix up the country and city locations during setup the other variant has you playing with your full hand of nine cards after everyone has played three cards those three cards come back into your hand and you have the full selection of nine cards again solo mode there are two ways to play a crown of amara solo and in both modes you square off against a dummy player named victoria if you play a one-off game against victoria you try to beat your personal best high score if you play a campaign against victoria you play with an ever decreasing starting score that gets harder and harder each game you play to set up for a solo game choose a color to represent victoria and place her on the zero citizen space victoria only scores points for citizens for building points don't matter set up the stone marker and bread marker for a four player game like this and the donation and gift markers for a two player game like this get rid of the early winter card from the event deck at the end of every round of three played cards except the first victoria gets citizen points as if she paid one stone and one bread at the construction site and you rotate the markers to reflect that her rank also goes up one level from baron in round two all the way up to marquis in round five her rank doesn't go up at the end of round six but of course she earns whatever citizen points she's due every time her rank goes up at the end of the game victoria's score is wherever her citizen points end up and your score is the lower of your building and citizen scores as usual if you're playing a one-off game against victoria start off with your building points at 40 for an easy game and anywhere between there and 15 points to make it harder on yourself if you're playing a campaign against victoria start your building marker on 40. if you beat her play the next game starting on 35 points and if you beat her again start the next game at 30 building points and so on if you lose you gain two building points from your last starting position so if you played the 40 point game against her and lost you start the next game on 42. you have to get more points than victoria to win if you tie her it's a loss keep facing off against victoria to achieve your campaign high score and now you're ready to play crown of amara [Music] 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Channel: Nights Around a Table

Views: 2,115

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: instructional, how to play, tutorial, let's play, watch it played, guide, board game, board games, rondel, court, king, eurogame, low luck, deterministic, hand, cards, resources, wood, stone, cloth, bread, craftsmen, city, country, castle, cathedral, market, construction, building, citizens, Pegasus Spiele, multiplayer, solo

Id: FkhhbNIFE5o

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021