Gamehelpmarcopolotwo

Summary

Marco Polo II - Wrath of Khan is dice-worker placement game with a heavy contract fulfillment component.

The game is played over 5 rounds. Each player will roll their own 5 dice at beginning of the round, then use 1 or more dice to activate various action spaces available on the board -- 1 action per turn, until their dice are all used. (Some black dice can be purchased to give extra actions for that round only.)

Players will accumulate and spend resources: coins, camels, black pepper, silk bundles, gold bars, and jade. The pepper, silk, and gold (in order of increasing value) are primarily used to fulfill contracts, while the other resources have multiple uses. For example, camels and coins are often spent to facilitate movement, and jade often used to get better resource income when using the books (market) actions. Jade can be used in place of a coin or a camel when you're desperate!

All players begin with their meeple(s) in Beijing, in the upper right-hand corner of the board, and move around (leaving a trading post in each new city) in order to gain access to more contracts (5 cities provide them), more action spaces (8 cities provide them), and collect shield icons (particularly those shown on your goal card!), which give you points at the end of the game. Travel along the paths costs coins, camels, and/or jade, as indicated -- and the blue paths require in addition that the player possess a guild seal of the indicated type.

Start

At the beginning of the game each player will choose a character card and a goal card. These are all unique. Each character has special rules, and the goal cards specify private goals you can achieve for extra points.

Actions

A player will choose a single action on their turn, placing one (or more, as necessary) of their dice to activate an action space.

Action spaces fit one or more dice, and either have a blue or tan background.

• - The blue background indicates that the space cannot be used more than once per round -- once any player has used it, it's no longer available for anyone.
• - The tan background, in contrast, means that "stacking" is permitted: once a die is placed there, another die (or 2 or 3, whatever is required at that space) may be played there if:
  • -- the color of the new die is NOT the same as any previous die played, or is black. That is, only black dice can be used in the same space multiple times, all other colors can only appear in the stack once.
  • -- the player pays coins equal to the (lowest) value of the new die (dice) being used.

Some action spaces require a minimum value. For spaces that require multiple dice, both dice must meet the value requirement.

Action spaces at the bottom of the board (clockwise, roughly) allow the players to spend dice in order to:

• - aquire a guild seal (2 dice)
• - Travel (move your meeple on the board) (1, 2, or 3 dice)
• - gain new contracts (from cities with your trading posts present)
• - Books: gain resources (along bottom center of board, for 1 die)
• - Khan's favor: gain 2 camels and 4 coins (a single die)
• - two special action spaces that change every round (1 die each)

Each of these will be covered in more detail, later.

Most of the randomized city action spaces allow you to convert one resource into another. The die value used on the action space indicates how many times you can do that conversion.

Bonus Actions

The player may also perform any number of these "bonus" actions on their turn, which do not require dice (except the money bag):

• - change value of one of their dice (1 camel to reroll, 2 camels to change its value by one)
• - purchase a black die for 3 camels
• - complete a contract
• - improve a guild seal
• - place any die in the money bag and take one of: 3 coins, 2 camels, 1 jade.
• - (caravans expansion) claim or complete a caravan

End Game Scoring

• Each improved guild seal shown on your personal scoring card awards points.
• Each different shield on cities with your trading posts, score as shown on the shields track.
• Every 2 remaining goods (pepper silk gold and jade) is worth 1 point. Camels are not goods!
• Every 10 coins is worth 1 point.
• Player who completed the most contracts gets 8 points, second most 4 points. (But no points for second in a 2-player game.)

If playing with Caravans expansion:

• For any caravan still on the game board, you may sell all remaining goods for half of the usual points: a gold bar is worth 3 points, a silk 2 points, and a pepper 1 point.

Tie breaker goes to player with most camels.