Rialto
In the card-driven board game Rialto, the goal is to earn the most victory points (VPs), which are awarded for a variety of things. The game board displays the six districts of Venice, and players earn VPs for placing council members into these, for building bridges and placing gondolas to connect the districts with one another, and for building advantageous buildings.
The game is played over six rounds, with each round consisting of three phases:Acquire cards: Each player takes a set of cards.Play cards: Players use cards to perform certain actions.Activate buildings: Players may take advantage of their buildings and use their powers.
Players collect VPs both during the game – from special buildings and by building bridges between districts – and at the end of it – for majorities of council members in each district. The value of each district evolves during the game: Each district is adjacent to four other ones, and at the end of the game, they will be connected either via bridges or gondolas. A bridge increases the value of the adjacent districts by 3-6 victory points, whereas a gondola increases this value by 1 point. The player with the most council members in a district earns VPs equal to the district's total value, the player with the secondmost council members earns half this value, and so on. While it's important to establish majorities in the districts, it's also crucial to control their values by cleverly placing those bridges and gondolas.
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The goal is to collect victory points by controlling as many of the 6 districts of Venice. You can increase or lower the value of each region by placing bridges and gondolas. The playing order for each district is randomly assigned at the beginning of each game. This adds to the replay-ability.
The game is played over 6 rounds with each round consisting of 3 phases. In each such phase, buildings of a certain color may be activated for their special abilities. To activate a special ability, a player needs to put one coin from his supply on one of his available buildings (see buildings below for types of buildings).
Quick overview:
Phase I: Each player gets 8 cards and keeps 7 of them. Players can activate green buildings to get or keep more cards.
Phase II: The players play their cards over 6 stages to carry out actions A–F. They can activate yellow buildings to support these actions.
Phase III: Players can activate blue buildings to gain those buildings’ benefits.
Cards-Actions
A Doge – Move a space on Dodge track for each card played. Bonus: Move one more space.
B Gold – Take 1 gold coin for each card. Bonus: Take 1 more gold coin.
C Building – Take a building with a value equal to or lower to the number of cards played. Bonus Add 1 to the number of your cards.
D Bridge – One VP for each card played. If none played lose 1 VP. Bonus: Place bridge on any open connection.
E Gondola – Move councilmen from general supply to personal supply. Bonus: Place Gondola on any open connection.
F Councilman – Place councilman from personal supply into current district for each card played. Bonus: add an additional Councilman to current district.
G Joker – Wilde card can be used as any of the above
THE BONUS is for the most of any card type played including the joker cards added to each card type.
Buildings
A building can be activated by placing a coin on it during the appropriate phase. At the end of each round all coins are removed from buildings and returned to general supply.
Each player only has room for 7 buildings. The player can make room for a new building by returning a building to the general supply and receives the appropriate victory points for the returned building.
Each building is associated with a specific phase in which it can be activated, according to its color:
Green buildings for phase I
Yellow buildings for phase II
Blue buildings for phase III
The Doge Track
The Doge track indicates the players’ influence on the Doge.
The Doge track:
* breaks all ties
* defines the play order whenever it matters unless explicitly stated otherwise
When two or more counters occupy the same space on the Doge track, the order between them is from top to bottom.
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I love this worker placement, area control, city building game. It moves very quicklime once the players understand the flow. It takes about 2 round for this to happen. It is a little advanced for new players but they can get the flow if they watch it played before they try it themselves.