How to play Rolling Heights

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If one more construction worker lands on his  head, we can finally finish this skyscraper.   It’s Ryan from Nights Around a Table.  Here’s how to play Rolling Heights.   You and your friends play rival contractors  in the 1920’s who are competing to complete   construction projects for wealthy real estate  moguls. You’ll roll your staff member meeples like   dice to gain construction materials that let you  complete the patterns on the buildings you buy,   which will earn you more meeples, points, and  money to start new construction projects.   When all the cubes of a certain colour run  out, that triggers the end of the game. You   finish up the round, and then play one final  round before scoring private and public goals.   Whoever’s earned the most points, wins! Rolling Heights is a deck-builder at heart,   except that instead of a deck of cards, you  have a handful of meeples - 2 brown carpenters,   and 2 navy gray construction workers - and  you’ll use those meeples to complete buildings,   which often earns you more and different meeples.  Everyone starts with a single Level 1 building   plan somewhere on the map. The cost to complete  a project is on the tile, and along the side,   because these spaces get covered up and you can’t  see them. So to complete this housing project,   you need to add 3 wood cubes to it. Then you  cap it off with your colour, and earn 1 point,   and either an architect or a  riveter meeple. It’s your choice.   In order to get the construction cubes you  need to finish your buildings, you have to   roll your meeples into your box, and you get  different stuff depending on how they land.   LET’S ROLL! The three ways for a meeple to land are flat   on its back, standing straight up, or some weird  head or handstand like this. A worker who lands   like this is exhausted. This meeple is working  hard, and these ones are working steady, although   i’m not sure i’d say that a carpenter doing a  headstand is all that steady. You’ll get the   most benefit from workers who are working hard. If  one worker lands on top of another one, that roll   counts, but if someone ends up hung in a weird way  and you can’t figure out if it’s ready to work or   not, you can re-roll that worker - even inside  someone else’s box, if you don’t want to smash   it into the meeples you’ve already rolled. So you roll up to 10 meeples into your box. You   only start the game with 4, so roll all 4. Later,  if you have more than 10 to choose from, you pick   10 and roll those. They’re considered your “active  meeples” for this turn. You pluck out any meeples   who are working hard or working steady. You keep  rolling the other guys until at least half of your   meeples are working hard or working steady. So  if you had an odd number of active meeples - say,   5 - you’d keep rolling and plucking until you had  at least 3 working meeples, and then you stop.   Let’s say that later in the game, you have 12  meeples. You pick these 10 and roll them. 3 of   them are working hard or working steady. You’re  not quite at half, so you roll the remaining   meeples, and 1 more is ready to work. Still not  at half. Roll again. Everyone’s tired. You’re not   at half, so roll them again. Aha! 2 more want  to work. That’s 6 meeples ready for action.   You could stop there, but this is a bit  of a push-your-luck game. If you want more   meeples to work for you, you could scoop up your  remaining meeples and re-roll them. Get to work,   you lazy so-and-so’s! You get to keep anyone who  wants to work - great! Here’s one more. You can   keep rolling like this, pushing your luck, and  keeping anyone who doesn’t land sleepy. But if   on any of those push-your-luck rolls, if every  meeple you roll is flat-on-their-backs exhausted,   you go bust! Your workers are tired of being  pushed to their limit, and they go on strike!   You have to lose half of the meeples who were  ready to work, rounded down. n But you get a   wild resource token as compensation. In order to keep downtime to a minimum,   the rules say that you can roll and keep  your meeples while the next players are   taking their turns. Let’s find out what you can  do with your meeples who are ready to work!   LET’S BUILD! Once you’ve sorted   out who’s working and who’s sleeping on the  job, you get to put your meeples to work.   There are four different construction  materials in the game: wood, concrete, glass,   and steel. If you have a meeple whose colour  matches one of those materials, you get 2 of   those cubes for a hard-working meeple, or 1 cube  for a steadily-working breakdancing meeple.   There are 5 other colours of  meeples you can hire, and we’ll   talk about what they do a little later. All of the construction cubes you earn on   your turn are use-it-or-lose it. You can put  them on matching spots on any construction   site you own to start completing the building.  If you finish it, you cap it off and collect the   reward. You might earn points, or extra meeples  to roll on your next turn, or even certain perks   depending on where this building is in relation  to other adjacent buildings of certain types.   You can always trade two cubes of any  colour for a glass, wood, or concrete cube,   or three cubes of any colour for a more  premium steel cube, as often as you like.   Once per turn, you can also buy a new building  plan. The available plans are in two rows on   either side of the board. The level 1 plans are  here, and the fancier level 2 plans are here.   The cost of each plan is next to the tile, so  this one costs two of any type of cube, for   example. You take the plan and put it somewhere  on the board, and then add one of your ownership   markers to it. You can place the building  site on any unoccupied land space, but for   every space between the new tile and your closest  existing project tile, you have to pay 1 cube.   So place here, and you need to pay 0 extra  cubes, 1 extra cube, 2 extra cubes. And you   have to be able to pay the number of cubes that  that plot of land demands. If you can’t afford   to buy a certain tile AND place it, you’re not  allowed to buy that tile. And you can’t save   tiles off the map for future turns. When you place the tile, add one of your   ownership markers to it at ground level. Some of the spaces on the board reward you   for laying down certain types of building plans.  So if you place a housing development or a park   on this space, you immediately earn one point. If you buy a tile from the level 1 market or the   level 2 market and it’s not one of these two end  tiles, you sweeten those two tiles with one wild   token apiece. These tokens can really pile up.  Whichever player buys these plans gets to keep   any tokens that have accrued on them. After you’ve used all the working meeples   you’ve found a use for, and optionally bought and  placed a new building plan, in any order you like,   you return all your leftover cubes to the supply,  kick all of your workers back to your pool,   and if you bought a building plan, you slide the  tiles towards the end to close the gap, and deal   out a new tile to fill the hole. If one stack is  empty, take the new tile from the other stack.   Then it’s the next player’s turn,  going clockwise around the table!   LET’S HIRE! Now we know enough about the game to   find out what the rest of the meeples do! The green meeples are public   servants. A steadily-working green  meeple gets you an invigoration point,   while a hard-working green meeple gets you  two invigoration points. Those points let you   upgrade a meeple to the next level of workplace  readiness - so with one point, you can turn an   exhausted meeple into a steadily-working meeple,  or a steadily-working meeple into a hard-working   meeple. With two points, you can upgrade two  meeples once each, or rouse an exhausted meeple   into a hard-working meeple. What’s going on here  thematically? Is it coffee? It must be coffee.   A green worker can’t invigorate another green  worker. You can’t invigorate anyone who wasn’t   in the original batch of up to 10 active  workers you rolled on this turn, and you can’t   expend a working meeple, and then use a green  worker’s power to make that worker work again.   It’s just coffee, not espresso. It’s just coffee,  not speed. It’s just coffee, not time travel.   A steadily-working yellow politician  meeple earns you 2 points, while a   hard-working politician gets you 2 points. A pink executive meeple gets you either 2 or   4 spending points. Spending points are an  ephemeral currency that you can use in place   of physical cubes anywhere in the game, except  for constructing buildings. So instead of blowing   cubes to buy a building plan from the market, you  can use the spending points. Rather than paying   3 cubes to buy this building plan, you can use 3  spending points if your pink executive meeple is   working hard, or 2 spending points and any cube  if your executive is merely working steady. You   could also apply your spending points to the cost  required to put a building plan down on the map,   or the cost required to space it out from  your other buildings. If you have multiple   execs working for you, you can potentially afford  more expensive building plans - but you can still   only ever buy 1 plan during your turn. And just  like cubes, any unused spending points go away at   the end of your turn. You could also spend these  points on commodity trades - as we saw before,   two points get you any of these cubes,  and three points gets you a steel cube.   A black city planner meeple who’s working steady  lets you re-roll your exhausted meeples, and hang   on to whoever’s ready to work. You can’t go bust  on this free roll. A hard-working city planner   lets you take an extra building plan for free.  Each hard-working city planner you have lets you   buy an additional building plan over your limit  of 1 tile per turn. The cost of the bonus tile   is free, and you don’t have to pay any distance  fees when you place your free tile, but you do   have to pay any costs on the space itself. Now the purple meeples are public figures,   and they’re interesting: if they work hard or  steady, they don’t do anything…. Unless you’ve   completed a building that has a purple  meeple power on it. Here’s one example:   if your purple meeple is working steady and  you’ve completed the Gambrel Museum, you get one   extra spending power this turn. If your purple  meeple is working hard, you score 1 point for   each empty space that’s adjacent to the museum,  including water. So here, you’d get 3 points.   Here’s another example: if you’ve completed the  City Tribune and you have a steadily working   purple public figure, you get 1 point. If you  have one who’s working hard, you get to double the   points from your yellow politicians this turn. Each purple meeple has to use the purple meeple   power on a different building  - you can’t double dip.   Multiple purple meeples cannot use the same purple  meeple power on the same turn. Each one has to use   a different power. LET’S SCORE!   The end of the game is triggered when any  single colour of cubes runs out. Then,   you introduce these orange cubes that stand  in for any cube colour for the rest of the   game. You finish out the current round until  the last player in turn order takes a turn,   and then you loop around the table and do one  more final round where everyone gets a turn.   Hopefully, you’ll already have racked up a whack  of points during gameplay, but there are a few   more ways to score at the end. First, there are  three public goals called “ads” that could swing   your score either up or down, because a few of  them actually take points away. So this one lets   you choose the neighbourhood with the most parks,  finished or unfinished, and re-score one of your   completed buildings there. A neighbourhood  is one of these six rectangular map tiles.   This one gets you 5 extra points for every set  of buildings containing a park, a housing unit,   a factory, and a commercial building that you’ve  completed. But this one loses you 1 point for each   of your buildings - completed or otherwise - in  the neighbourhood with the most factories. And   those factories don’t have to be owned by you,  in order for you to lose points from them.   Next, you’ve been hanging on to two of these  personal Target tiles since the beginning of the   game. Now’s your chance to choose one of them, and  score it. Here’s one that gets you 3 points per   completed government building that’s orthogonally  adjacent to any of your completed parks. The parks   have to be yours, but the government buildings  don’t, so you can piggyback an opponent’s planning   to earn yourself some points. If you choose this  one, it gets you 1 point per completed building   you own that’s orthogonally adjacent to water. Any time your score marker passes the 50 points   mark, throw a cap of your colour on the space  as a reminder to add 50 to your score.   You also get 1 point at the end of the game  for each wild token you’ve held onto.   Whoever has the most points, wins! If  there’s a tie, whoever has the most   meeples wins. And if there’s still a tie,  all tied players share in the victory.   LET’S BEGIN! To set up the game, start with the   scoreboard at the top of the table. Randomly build  the map below it. The neighbourhood tiles have an   A and a B side: in a 2-player game, you use all  the A sides. With 3 players, use 4 A’s and 2 B’s,   and in a 4-player game, you go half and half. The  B-sides are more densely packed with land spaces   than the A-sides. Then, you build the Level 1 and  Level 2 market strips on either side of the board.   Shuffle and stack the building plans, and deal 9  tiles out to each side. Randomly select 3 Ad tiles   to use for this game, and place them here. Group  the meeples by colour, and the resource cubes too.   In a 3-player game, remove 13 cubes of  each colour, and in a 2 player game,   remove a per-colour total of 25.  Stack the wild tokens nearby.   Each player gets a box to roll their meeples,  two brown construction workers, 2 navy gray   construction workers, and two randomly dealt  target tiles. Take all the ownership caps   in your player colour. Put your player cube on  zero points. Choose who goes first at random.   That player gets the start player… village person.  Beginning with the last player in turn order and   going counter-clockwise, everyone gets to take  a single building plan from anywhere along the   Level 1 row and place it anywhere on the  map - just not on water, and not on any   spot that costs cubes to place something. Mark  the plan with your building marker, as usual.   Then the next player in reverse turn order gets to  pick and place a level 1 plan, but each player has   to be a minimum of 2 orthogonal spaces away from  everyone else. That means diagonals are okay.   If you place a tile and it matches the  zoning parameters on the space you choose,   you get those bonus points immediately. Once everyone has placed, you slide the   tiles down, fill up the row, and start rolling! And now, you’re ready to play Rolling Heights!
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Channel: Nights Around a Table
Views: 7,768
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: board game, boardgames, construction, skyscrapers, art deco, 1920s, 1930s, AEG, John D Clair, stacking, cubes, glass, wood, concrete, brick, zoning, hardhat, girders, bag-building, Pass the Pigs, meeples, rolling, dice, goals
Id: VNZbi1IaTdw
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)
Published: Fri Feb 17 2023
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