USPS: The Great American Mail Race - How To Play

[Music] hi and welcome to watch it played my name is rodney smith and in this video we're going to learn the 2-4 player usps the great american mail race designed by ed nyokis and published by big potato games who helped sponsor this video the united states postal service needs your help and whether you use a mule train or air balloon your job is to deliver as much mail as quickly as possible so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up put the main board in the center of the play area nearby set these transport cards separated by their three levels as shown on their back shuffling each individually and then stack them so that the level one cards are on top and the level three cards are on bottom you'll then deal three cards from the top of the deck into a face up row beside it the cards with a stamp in this corner are known as the delivery cards which you shuffle into four piles of matching stamp cards shuffle each of these separately and then put them face down above the area of the board that shows the same symbols as those decks stamps then flip the top card of each deck face up onto the matching spaces below so it looks something like this when you're done now add the mailbox standee that matches the color of each stamp to the related cards next find the postcards which have this design and shuffle and set them above this space adding the top card here note the location name printed on it and then find that matching named location on the board and set this postcard token on it then find the four colored cubes and set one onto each of the colored depot spaces these are the ones that show an animal symbol within their space for your very first game you'll need to add some of the included ink from this bottle to this stamper i've already added some ink let me just show you how this works first you need to flip this over and you'll want to press down a little bit on the stamper this will just help the mechanism inside clear this tray which you're going to push out by pushing on the other side which pops it out like this once you've removed the tray you're then going to take the dropper and then add some ink to this pad now give it a few seconds so that after you've dropped some in it'll soak into the sponge also be careful not to spill any of this and then once it's ready you're going to slide it right back into the slot again just push down a little bit then press the tray into the slot and you're all good to go you'll then set your ink stamp somewhere nearby for use during the game each player now picks a delivery truck and bicycle card in their chosen color and then takes a delivery slip from the included pad in this game we'll assume that we have two players and will return two of the delivery trucks and bicycle cards back to the box each player should now put their truck onto this starting space of the board and then the last player who sent mail is chosen to be the first player or you can just choose someone randomly and that's the setup in usps the great american mail race players will be using various historical and modern methods of transporting mail so they can race to pick up and deliver postcards mail and parcels to earn stamps on their delivery slips which will earn them points the player with the most points at the end of the game will win the game is played over a series of turns starting with the first player and then going clockwise around and around the table and on your turn you'll perform exactly three actions that you must divide between taking transport cards and playing transport cards each player started with a bicycle card but if you flip this over you'll find a reminder of the four possible ways you can split your three actions for example you could draw zero cards and play three of them or as we see at the bottom you could draw three cards and play none or some combination of both the important thing to understand is you must always draw first and then after you can take any of your play card actions in other words once you start playing cards you can't draw anymore to draw simply pick any one of the three face up cards showing here beside the transport deck and add it to your hand immediately replacing it with a new card from the deck and if you have more actions you can draw again if you want also instead of drawing a face up card you can choose to take the top card of the deck here if you'd rather after using actions to draw with the actions you have left you can then play cards from your hand to play a card reveal it face up on the table in front of you resolve its effect and then set it into a shared discard pile in other words every card you play you'll only get to use once the exception is your bicycle you never lose this card after playing and resolving it you add it back to your hand and if you like you can in fact use it up to two times each turn spending a play card action each time there are a variety of action cards in the game and we'll go through each of them to see how they work but first let me explain some of the general rules for moving first off there are a variety of differently named locations on the board and these are connected by different types of paths solid lines like we see here are known as roads and these are represented by a wheel on some cards well dashed lines like this represent trails that are also indicated by this cactus symbol green lines like this one here are water paths which are shown by a water drop on certain cards and some spaces are train stations which will show a red circle and some rail tracks blue spaces like this one and this one here are known as airports and air spaces are also represented by a cloud on some cards like we see here when you play a card like this motorbike you must move the exact number of spaces it shows here along the type of path it uses which will be represented by the symbol in the top left hand corner so i could use this card to move exactly two spaces along roads perhaps like this now it's important to understand when moving you cannot double back or retrace the same path when using one card if you play another card after then you can retrace the same steps if you want to you can also enter or go through a space that you've already entered this turn as long as you go into or through it using a different path when moving you can go through another player's piece but you can't end your turn on their space and with that understood let's now look at all the different types of transport cards you might collect these three cards let you travel on roads going either one two or three spaces these two cards only let you travel on trails going either one or two spaces notice this 4x4 vehicle shows both the trails and road symbol in its corner so you can travel on any combination of those two paths when moving the three spaces this vehicle provides these two cards let you travel either one or two spaces on water paths the seaplane lets you move from any space marked with a water symbol to any airport space located near the shore these are airport spaces that also have a water path connected to them like this one does so for example i could use this car to travel from a water space to this airport on the shore or maybe over to this airport on the shore but i couldn't fly to this airport because it does not have a water path connected to it and keep in mind although this lets you go from a water space to a shore airport you can't go the other direction in other words you couldn't go from a shore airport back to a water space here we have the hot air balloon which causes you to fly over a location following road paths for example if we were here we could move right to here because we flew over a single location and only followed road paths the plane lets you fly from any one airport space to any other airport space so for example from this airport we could move directly to here the rocket lets you fly from any airport space to any other space of the board but keep in mind you cannot use this in the reverse you can't fly from a non-airport space back to an airport finally we have the train this lets you travel from any train station to any other train station so perhaps from here over to here with that we now know how all of the movement works but why are we moving and what are we trying to do well that's a good question what we're trying to do is pick up and deliver mail mail is represented by cubes on the board and in order to pick up a cube you must end your move exactly on its spot for example if we were here we played this move to card we could move through this space but we wouldn't get the delivery cube instead if we were here and we played mail jump which lets us move exactly one space across a water path then we would end here and then we can choose to add this cube to our van if we want to in this case we'll say we will and we put it into one of the spots on top of the van as soon as you've picked up a cube find the matching colored mailbox standee and place it in the location showing on its card in this case in zap this tells us the location that we need to deliver this cube to you also collect the card from the space you moved the mailbox from and set it in front of yourself that will leave the space here empty and you leave it that way for now delivery cards will be labeled as letters like we see here or as parcels like this one and some parcels may also be labeled as fragile after picking up a cube and taking its delivery card you can play cards to continue moving if you have more actions left to take at most a player can carry two cubes at a time and if a player would ever move into a space with another cube when their van is full then you cannot pick up that new cube if you ever move your van to a space with a mailbox standee that matches the color of a cube in your van you can deliver that cube however the card you used must cause you to land exactly on that space you can't deliver mail as you just pass through a space to deliver mail remove the cube from your truck and examine the card you have that contains a stamp matching that cube's color if the delivery was a letter like it shows here use the ink stamp to mark the left most unmarked letter on your delivery slip like this if it was a parcel like we see here mark the leftmost unmarked parcel symbol instead now once all of the symbols in a row are marked you won't get the mark anymore for deliveries of that type also after marking a space for letters or parcels check to see what region the delivery came from which is shown within its stamp you then mark the matching symbol in this region's area here so we would mark this one and again at most you can only stamp each of the regions once with these stampings finished if any you now check to see if you fulfilled any of these bonuses for example if you picked up a delivery cube and then took it to its destination all in one turn you mark this same day delivery bonus also if any delivery you make was originally picked up in your hometown you gain this hometown bonus your hometown is the depot space matching the color of your van so as the blue player i would get this bonus if i delivered a blue cube which would have come from here if you ever deliver a parcel that's marked as fragile without using any form of air transport on the cards you've played then you mark this fragile bonus if you do it again later in the game you get to mark this second fragile bonus space after collecting any stamps that you're owed you've finished the delivery and you add the delivered cube back to the depot space matching its color and then you draw a new card from the top of its deck placing it face up here and adding its mailbox standee back to it i should mention it's possible for a cube to be added back to a space that already has a player's van in it and if so that player can pick up that cube but only at the start of their own turn before drawing cards in addition to deliveries we also have postcards which are a little different if you ever enter or even pass through a space with a postcard you don't add these to your van you just remove the token from the board and then stamp the leftmost empty postcard symbol on this row of your slip you then remove the related postcard card from the board and move the next one down setting the postcard token into the matching named space with that understood we now know most of the rules for moving and delivering mail except for one if when moving you pass over a location occupied by an opponent's van you can choose to assist them for example if i moved two spaces through here i could assist this player by taking a single cube from their van and adding it to mine assuming that i have room i would then collect the related delivery card from them and then i could make this delivery for myself or instead if i had a delivery cube as i do as i pass over them i could assist them by giving them my delivery cube again assuming they have room and then i would also pass them this delivery card now they would have to make the delivery this technique is called assisting a delivery but as you can imagine this is mostly used to assist yourself in taking an easy delivery from an opponent or sticking an opponent with a tricky one and those are all the rules to taking a turn once you've finished the three actions you've decided to take which again is some combination of drawing and playing cards with any drawing always happening first well then the next player in clockwise order takes their turns and turns will continue like this until the final transport card of the deck has been turned face up once this happens every player including the player who flipped this over gets one final turn then it's time for final scoring first earn the points showing on the furthest right space you've stamped for letters parcels and postcards so in this case i'd earn six points plus 18 plus two then you gain five points for each column here that is completely filled so in this case i'd earn five points for this column and this one then check how many regions you have stamped earn one point if you stamped just one two points for stamping two five for stamping any three and ten points if you stamped all four so in this case i'd earn five points then add any points showing on the bonus spaces you stamp so i'd earn two plus two plus four finally lose three points for each cube remaining in your van at the end of the game and the player with the most points wins and in the case of a tie the tight players share the victory and that's how you play usps the great american mail race 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 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Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 9,653

Keywords: How To Play, Watch It Played, Instructions, Board Games, Card Games, Tabletop, Miniatures, Play Throughs, Board Game, Tutorial, Tutorials, Rules, Learn, Learn How To Play, Game Rules, Learn To Play, USPS: The Great American Mail Race, Big Potato Games, instructional

Id: sk3ztkd2jss

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2022