The Castles of Tuscany - How To Play

hi and welcome to watch it played my name is rodney smith and in this video we're going to learn the 2-4 player game the castles of tuscany designed by stefan feld and published by ravensburger who helped sponsor this video come with me to 15th century tuscany with its rolling hills vineyards and magnificent castles we're in the home of the italian renaissance and here as influential nobles we'll be working to build up our own little corners of the region by developing an area around our castles into a beautiful and flourishing landscape so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up assemble the two pieces of the scoring board putting it in the center of the table the cards with this back are the region cards which you'll shuffle into a face down deck nearby along with this shuffled deck of what are known as the yield cards these are what they call the square tiles even though i'm pretty sure they're rectangular and there's five copies of each type which you organize by their types into their own stacks by the scoring board here we have the double-sided color bonus tiles they have a roman numeral in the center either a one or a two and you'll arrange these in a row with the numeral one side face up now their order doesn't matter but i like to arrange them so that these values at the bottom are in increasing order nearby i also set these orange workers white blocks of marble and the blue hexagons i have these in some game trays that i own and if you'd like to get some for yourself you'll find links in the description below each person now takes a player board double-sided castle tile and all the pieces in their chosen color which includes 21 hexagon tiles that will have their color on the back i'll be setting up a two-player game in this video so i'll return the unused player pieces back to the box set your double-sided castle tile aside but then shuffle all of your other hexagon tokens into three stacks of seven face down tiles each putting one stack on each of these three spaces of your board these are your scoring markers set the tall one on this 50 space of the inner red ring of the scoring board and the short one on the 50 space of the green outer ring then nearby you'll also set this double sided victory point marker with the 50 side face up now each person draws five cards from the region deck which they can examine but should keep secret from the other players these are the region boards which you'll sort into three piles organized by the letters on their backs a b and c then you shuffle each pile and give a random one from each stack to every player so each player will end up with their own a b and c region board once everyone has been given their own set the rest you can return to the box each person now arranges their boards face up side by side in any order and orientation as long as one long side is adjacent to another long side in other words you can't do something like this where a short side's next to a long side also boards cannot be offset by more than one hexagon up or down so i might arrange them like this but i could not shift this board down to here because now it's offset by more than one hex i can just move it up or down within this one hex range relative to the board beside it once you're all set you then set your double-sided castle on any one of these dark green castle spaces this stepper players are arranging their boards and placing their castle should be done at the same time by everyone without paying attention to what each other are doing until everyone's finished the double-sided card with this lion symbol on it is the starting player card and you'll give this to the youngest player or you can just choose the starting player randomly now beginning with the starting player and going clockwise around the table everyone chooses any one of these square tiles we set up earlier and puts it beside the matching area of their player board we'll discuss the various tiles later and their benefits but if anyone takes this tile which shows a green circle with a golden value these represent victory points and they immediately advance their scoring marker on the green track by two spaces finally mix these beige-backed hexagons into a few stacks and then flip eight of them face up within reach of all the players and that's the setup in castles of tuscany you and the other players will be collecting and adding tiles to your boards which will gain you bonuses and score you points whoever scores the most points over the course of the game will have built the most impressive region and win the game is played over three rounds and a round is made up of turns starting with the first player and then going clockwise around and around the table and on your turn you can take one of three possible actions so let's start by looking at the drawing a card action this one's simple just add two cards from the region deck to your hand and there's no limit to how many cards you can hold and if the region deck is ever empty when you need to draw reshuffle its discard pile which will be nearby into a new deck and then keep drawing what you're owed well that one was pretty easy let's now explain another action you could instead take on your turn the take a tile action to do this choose any one of the face up tiles in the common area placing the tile you chose on this hexagon shaped space of your board this is known as your storage space now if you were to take a tile when this spot is already full remove the old hex there from the game return to the box and then add in the new tile either way after collecting a tile you then take the top one from the leftmost face down stack of hex tiles on your board and put it face up in the common area so there are eight tiles here again if there are ever five face up tiles of the same color in the common area discard them to the side and then you draw five new tiles from those in these stacks to fill in the missing pieces these discarded tiles will no longer be considered this helps ensure there's always a good selection of tiles for players to choose from and that covers taking a tile so now let's learn the final possible action you can instead take placing a tile for this look at the color of the hexagon you have in storage and then discard two cards from your hand that match its color into a shared region discard pile so to place this red tile i collected on a previous turn i would discard two red cards you can also substitute a pair of any matching cards for any other single card you need for example if i had only had one red card i could discard these two yellow cards as the second red i would normally need or i could even spend any two pairs of cards to replace both of the reds i'd usually need for this tile either way after paying the cost i move the tile to a matching colored space of my board that's adjacent to at least one other tile i already have in play so at the start of the game i could only go into one of these three spaces and since this is a red tile it has to go here future tiles could then go into any of these spaces again assuming they also match the color of the related space now after adding a tile to your board you check to see if it scored any points and this depends on whether or not it filled in the last space of all adjacent matching colored spaces matching colored areas are called zones and will be either one two or three spaces large here's another example of a two space zone and here's another three space zone my red tile went into a single spaced zone so it is now complete and the scoring for zones are shown here at the top of your board so this reminds me that completing a single space zone will earn me one point as a further example later in the game adding a tile here wouldn't earn me any points as the zone isn't complete adding a second tile here also wouldn't earn me any points but this third tile would complete the zone and as it says here i would gain six points as mentioned earlier anytime you see a gold value inside of a green circle it means you move your scoring counter that many spaces forward on the outer green scoring track so when i place my red tile i would earn one point to explain this next rule i've added a few more tiles to my board so this is what you might see later in a game now after you've added a new tile to your board and scored any points for completing its zone you then check to see if you've completely covered all the spaces of that same color across your entire board so here now i've covered in every single red space i now find that matching colored bonus tile and gain these points showing at its bottom so in this case two more points then if the tile is on the roman numeral one side as indicated here you flip it over to the two side the next player who covers all of the red tiles then just gets the points showing here and this bonus tile is then discarded to the box in other words if you had more than two players nobody else will score bonus points for completing all of their red spaces within a scoring complete you then carry out the special ability of the tile that you just placed and there are eight different tiles each with their own ability which we'll now go over to help with this your player board has a reminder of each tile's effect so let's start with the dark green castle tiles you start with one on your board but gain no points or effects from it however when you add a new one to your board later in the game you may immediately take any one tile from the face up common area and add it to your region board without having to discard any region cards you then replace it with the top tile from your leftmost stack now keep in mind you must still follow the regular rules for placement the new tile must go in a matching colored space and must touch a previously placed tile then you check for any scoring with the new tile and get its special effect as well when you add a gray quarry to your board immediately collect one of these marble pieces now you can place it on this space but you're not limited to just one marble token you can have as many as you're able to collect from quarries that you add so if i add another quarry later i would get another piece and just put it here as well once per turn you can spend a marble that you have even one you just collected return it to the supply and then take another action immediately for example if i just drew cards on my turn i could spend the marble and then draw cards again or instead take a tile or place a tile but remember you can only spend one marble per turn this is an orange village tile and when you add one to your board you gain one of these worker pieces now we haven't talked about these square tiles yet and we will later but for now know that when you gain a worker for each of these that you have you gain one more so by placing this village i actually gain one two workers and like marble you can have any number of workers at a time so if i later placed another village i would gain two more workers worker pieces can be used in place of one of the region cards needed when adding a hex tile to your board so now for example to add this green tile to my board i could spend two green region cards or just one green region card and one worker which i'd return to the supply or i might use two cards of another matching type with one worker or no cards at all and instead just spend two workers i should mention that workers and marble are not a limited supply so if either of these run out just use a suitable replacement these yellow tiles are monasteries when you add one to your board you immediately draw three region cards and add them to your hand next up are these beige wagon tiles and after placing one you draw a yield card from this deck reveal it gain the bonus it shows and then discard it so in this case i'd collect one marble many of these have symbols we've seen previously or we'll see later in this video but note that if you see a scoring symbol with a red background you instead move your marker on this track here we have some light green agriculture tiles and they have different images on the front representing the four types of agriculture olives grapes wheat and livestock some will even show two different types here olives and grapes when you add an agriculture tile to your board after scoring for your zones as usual you immediately score one point on your green track for each type of agriculture on that tile that isn't already in that tile zone so if i played this livestock here there's no livestock in this zone already because it's only one space so i'd score one point now let's say instead i had played it over here i already have another type of agriculture there but it's not livestock so i'd still score one point let's say this tile hadn't been here and we'd had this instead now by adding this tile here i'd score no points because there's already a livestock agriculture type in this zone of course i would still gain the points for completing this zone as usual let me clear these away and give you one more example let's say i played this tile here it shows two different types of agriculture and neither of them are in this zone so i'd actually score two points if instead this tile had been here and then i added this one later i'd only gain one point for this tile because olives are already in this zone but grapes aren't so i'd score for the grapes now don't forget you'll find a guide for all the various tile abilities here on your player board including a reminder of the four different types of agriculture next though let's explain the blue in tiles after placing one of these you then collect a blue wooden hexagon from the supply and place it in your storage area on a later turn you can use this piece as a wild hex tile putting it on any region of your board regardless of color now it must still touch a previously placed tile and you must still pay the related regions cards or workers to place that piece on the chosen spot but in every respect this piece acts as a tile of that color you'll score points if it completes the zone and you perform the effects of the kind of tile it represents so in this case because of my bonus square tile i'd gain two workers also if you use the blue hexagon as a light green agriculture tile it counts as a unique type of agriculture so it will always score one point it is possible though rare to gain more wooden hexagon pieces than you can hold if your storage space is full and you gain a blue hexagon instead of collecting this piece you gain two victory points on the red scoring track not the green scoring track the red one this brings us to the final type of tile red cities its ability allows us to collect any one of these square tiles from the supply and add it beside the matching pictured space on our board there are no limits to the number and types of these tiles you can have but once a type of tile runs out players can't collect it anymore so let's take a moment and go over how each of these work this one relates to the draw cards action you can take on your turn and as shown here you normally get to draw two but for each of these in your area you draw an extra so now when i take the draw cards action i would get to collect two as normal and then one two more now sometimes a yield will let you gain cards but if so you do not trigger any bonus draws from these tiles and this is true for every type of yield you only get what's shown on them not anything extra for any bonus tiles you might have whenever you collect one of these storage tiles as we saw earlier you immediately gain two points on the green track but these also give you an extra place to store hexagons that you collect and then if you're taking a place a tile action later you can take that tile from any one of these spaces if you happen to have any marble bonus tiles then when you add a quarry to your board you gain an extra piece of marble for each so if i had two bonus tiles as we see here and i added a quarry i would add a total of three marble pieces to my supply the worker bonus squares we talked about already and with both marble and workers there's no limit to the number of them that you can hold in your personal supply if you have any of these yield bonus tiles then when playing a yield hexagon you gain and resolve an extra reward for each so in this case i'd resolve two also if the yield deck is ever empty then you shuffle the discard pile into a new face down deck and those are all the different tiles you can place and actions that you can take and remember on your turn you'll either draw cards take a tile or place a tile and remember with every tile you take from the common area you replace it with one from your leftmost stack and if you're the first player to take the last tile from your leftmost stack it marks the end of the first round you finish taking your turn and then you make sure that everyone has had an even number of turns that round for example in this two player game if the player with the first player card had emptied their leftmost stack first then the second player would go and then the round would end because they'd each have had an even number of turns that round but if it was the second player who was first to empty their leftmost stack then the round would end at the end of their turn because everyone would already have had an even number of turns either way once a round does end you stop and conduct the end of round scoring here each player looks to see where their scoring marker is on the green track and then adds that many points to their total on the inner red track moving the red marker to that new total so here blue has 17 points on the green track which they add to zero moving this to the 17th position yellow already had two points on the red track and they just earned 14 points from green so 14 plus 2 moves them to the 16th position on the red track the important thing is to leave the green markers where they are don't reset them in fact you don't reset anything but now begin the second round starting with the first player again now this means that some players may still have some tiles on their first stack and when they take tiles they'll replace them with these and that's fine but it's only once someone empties their second stack during the second round that the second round ends in other words during the second round if somebody empties their first stack nothing happens you just keep playing but once the end of the second round is triggered everyone finishes their turns for that round and then there's another scoring phase remember players did not reset their green markers at the end of the first round so in the second round they would have been adding the points they earned to that previous total bumping it up even higher so now they look at that new total and move their red marker that number of spaces in this case the blue player has 27 points on the green track and 17 points on the red track so they would add these totals together getting 44 and move this marker to the 44th position yellow has a green total of 31 which they add to 16 moving their marker to 47. that ends the second round scoring and again you don't reset anything leave the green markers where they are and as you earn points in the third round you'll keep increasing their totals now the third round begins again starting with the first player and the end of it is triggered as soon as a player empties their rightmost stack you then keep playing until everyone's had an even number of turns and then you go around once more giving every player one final turn after each player has taken that extra turn round three ends and you perform the final scoring phase which works just like before add the number of points showing on your green marker to the value of your red marker also in this final scoring give yourself one point on the red track for each unplaced hex you have in your storage including any wooden blue ones and give yourself another point for every piece of marble and each worker you have you also score an extra point for every three region cards remaining in your hand so here i'm holding seven cards and we get two extra points if you ever go all the way around the loop with your red token just put your 50 point piece under your marker to track your current total and if you go all the way around again just flip it to the 100 point side now whoever has the most points on the red track is the winner in the case of a tie the tied player with the most empty spaces in their region is the winner and if there's still a tie the tied player with the least points on the outer green track is the winner and if there's still a tie the tied player with the fewest cards in their hand is the winner and that's how you play the castles of tuscany if you have any questions at all about 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 games page at board game geek 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 any time we post a new video but until next time thanks for watching [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 21,040

Keywords: Learn How To Play, Rules, Miniatures, Instructions, Play Throughs, Game Rules, Card Games, Tabletop, Stefen Feld, Tutorial, Learn, Board Games, Tutorials, Board Game, Instructional, How To Play, Ravensburger, Watch It Played, The Castles Of Tuscany

Id: CV53qTuCItI

Length: 22min 57sec (1377 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/HeroOfLight]

Looks like I got two rules wrong:
*When 5 tiles of the same color come out, only replace those 5 tiles, not all 8.
*When you have no room for a blue token, you get 2 red points (rare, but it happened to me, and I just discarded it)

My wife and I absolutely love this game by the way. It's a bit similar to Castles of Burgundy but shorter and lighter. Super fast turns. We played 7 times already, with 3 games in a row twice now. Highly recommended if you want something tactical and fast, and don't mind a bit of luck.

[u/LordVader07]

I still would love a how to play video for Castles of Burgundy. Recently purchased the game and was hoping that Rodney had a rules video for the game. Don’t think it’s going to happen.

Still will check out this video later on.

[u/boardgamebarrage]

This one was a swing and a ....maybe? For me. I am not the biggest Feld fan so not perhaps the right audience for this. Way too much to get my family (mom/younger siblings) into, but pretty light for heavier gamers. The nature of card collecting is a bit rummy,a bit TTR, and frustrating when it doesn't go your way.

[u/LinFTW]

I don't understand the purpose of the two scoring tracks. It seems like it adds unnecessary math and is a confusing element with no benefit. There is no reason I would ever want to score points on the orange track over the green track as each of those points is worth 3 times as much as a point on the orange track. It inflates the scoring and adds complexity that doesn't provide a benefit.

[u/onthehop]

They just added a new rule where the take cards action is now three rather than two. What do ya’ll think?

[u/Im_Not_That_Smart_]

It took way too long for me to realize this was a real game and not a spoof April fools joke about a mash up game based on Castles of Burgundy and Viticulture: Tuscany. The multiple score tracks starting at 50 plus the 50 tokens at the center of the score tracks seemed too odd to be real.