Gamehelpmusterraisethebanners

Muster: Raise the Banners is a two-player area-majority card duel. Five castles stand on a shared board; each player builds a column of cards under each castle on their own side, and the higher total strength under a castle takes it.

Official rulebook (EN, DE, FR, ES): playmonkeygames.com

Goal

Control the most castles. A castle is controlled by the player with more strength icons in their column under it. Cards lying on the castle spaces themselves count for nobody.

Tied on strength under a castle? Strength in Numbers: the player with more Banner cards in that column controls it. (Rainbow Wizards, Bridges and Castles are Rainbow cards, not Banner cards.)

The cards

47 cards in one shared deck:

• 40 Banner cards — five factions (Water/blue, Leaf/green, Cloud/yellow, Flame/red, Feather/purple), each with strengths 1 to 5. The banner icon in the corner is the faction; the row of pips along the top is the strength, and it is those icons you count. There is no 6-strength Banner card.
• 5 Rainbow Wizard / Bridge cards — one double-ended card. In hand it is neither; you decide which end is up when you play it, and it is then fixed.
• 2 Rainbow Castle cards — only ever played onto a castle space.

Every card in a column is overlapped so that all banner and strength icons stay visible.

Setup

Each player is dealt 5 cards. The remaining 37 form the face-down deck. All castle spaces and all columns start empty.

Your turn

Take exactly one action, then refill your hand back to 5 cards if you have fewer.

Each card you draw comes from either:

• the top face-down card of the deck, or
• the top face-up card on any castle space — never a Rainbow Castle card.

You may mix the two sources freely, but you may not draw back a card you placed on a castle space this same turn.

The deck is the clock. Drawing from the castle spaces instead of the deck makes the game last longer, so refilling is a real decision.

Two actions end the turn with no refill: Move a Rainbow Wizard (it has its own mandatory draw and place) and Make a Rainbow Swap (one card out, one card in).

The six actions

1. Play a Banner

Play one Banner card from your hand, face up, into one of your columns:

• Icon — the card's banner icon must match the castle space's icon, unless the top card currently on that castle space is a Rainbow Castle, in which case any icon may be played. This is judged when you play; the card stays legal after the Rainbow Castle is buried.
• Strength — equal to, or exactly one greater than, the card it is played on. A column whose top card is strength n accepts only n or n+1.
• An empty column accepts any strength (unless The Power of One is in play).

So a column climbs 1→2→3→4→5, or pads sideways (2→2→2). Play a strong card early and you cap the column.

2. Play a Rainbow Wizard

Play a Rainbow card from hand, wizard side up, into any of your columns. It is wild: no icon match, no strength limit, and it may go on an empty space or on top of anything, including another Wizard. It counts 6 strength — which also means no Banner card can ever be played on top of it.

3. Move a Rainbow Wizard

Move the top Rainbow Wizard from one of your columns to another of your columns, as if you had just played it there. Then draw the top card of the deck and place it face up on the castle space matching its banner icon (a Rainbow card goes to any space you choose). Your hand was never reduced, so there is no refill.

This is the main way cards reach the castle spaces from the deck.

4. Castle a Card

Play one card from hand face up on top of a castle space whose banner icon it matches (a Rainbow card goes to any space you choose). You may not draw it back this turn.

• Cards on castle spaces score for nobody.
• The top card of a castle space may later be drawn by either player — except Rainbow Castles, which can never be drawn.
• While a Rainbow Castle is the top card of a space, Banner cards played under it — on both sides of the board — may carry any banner icon.

5. Make a Rainbow Bridge

Play a Rainbow card from hand, bridge side up, into one of your columns. It substitutes the next card in the sequence, and you must immediately, in the same action, play the following Banner card on top of it.

• On an empty space a Bridge stands in for a 1 and must be followed by a 2.
• On a card of strength n it stands in for n+1 and must be followed by an n+2.
• A Bridge always counts 1 strength when scoring, whatever it substituted.
• The follow-up Banner card must satisfy the icon rule at that castle space.

Because there is no 6-strength Banner card, a Bridge can only be played on an empty space or on a card of strength 1, 2 or 3 — and you must already hold the follow-up card. A Bridge is never a play on its own.

6. Make a Rainbow Swap

Swap one Banner card from your hand for a Rainbow card already in a column on either side of the board, including your opponent's. The Rainbow card comes into your hand; your Banner card takes its exact place in the column. The turn ends without drawing.

• Swapping a Wizard — your Banner card must otherwise be a legal Play a Banner at that spot, checked against the cards both below and above it. Where one column holds several Rainbow cards, only the earliest-placed one may be swapped.
• Swapping a Bridge — your Banner card must be the card the Bridge was substituting.

This is the only way to reduce an opponent's strength, and it hands you a Rainbow card as well. A Wizard sitting on a 5-strength Banner card normally cannot be swapped, since the replacement would have to be a 6. Castle a Rainbow Castle onto that space first and the icon rule stops applying, so any faction's 5 will do.

End of the game

The game ends immediately when the final card is drawn from the deck. Compare the two columns under each castle, award each castle, and the player controlling the most castles wins.

If both players control the same number of castles, BGA ranks by total strength across all five castles.

Table options

• Simplified for new players — the rulebook's variant for first-time or under-8 players: a card may be played on top of any weaker card rather than only one step higher, and Rainbow Bridges are left out. Rainbow Wizards and swaps are unchanged.
• The Power of One — only 1-strength Banner cards may be played onto an empty space. Rainbow cards are unaffected.
• Somewhere Over the Rainbow — several Rainbow Bridges may be played under one castle in a single Bridge action, each substituting the next value in turn, so long as the action still ends with the next Banner card in the sequence.