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SAI GON — RULE SUMMARY (1–5 PLAYERS)

Objective

Develop the highest-scoring city block through buildings, street activities, vendors and landmarks. Play six rounds with 2–4 players, or five rounds with 5 players. Solo rules follow below.

Setup (2–5 players)

1. Give each player a random seal and its matching board.
2. Mix all 100 square tiles in the bag. Set out all six landmarks and two tokens of each of the five vendor types.
3. Each player draws four secret tiles.
4. Randomly deal permits 1–N, where N is the player count: #1 takes the police marker and starts. Return the numbered permits to the supply.
5. Start with an empty central market.

1. Draft

Take turns clockwise, starting with the police holder. Either:

• Add one tile from your hand to the market, touching an existing tile along an edge. The first tile can go anywhere.
• Once everyone has offered at least one tile, take the lowest available permit and place it at an empty corner between market tiles. Commit only once per round.

A permit reaches the four tile spaces around its corner. Each tile belongs to the lowest-numbered permit touching it, including tiles added later. Keep offering your remaining hand after committing.

After all hands are empty and all permits are placed, collect in ascending permit order. Take your locked tiles, then choose unclaimed tiles until you have four. You cannot take tiles locked by any other permit, even a later one. Add collected tiles to your face-up reserve.

Two-player early finish: as soon as either permit owns four tiles, end the draft. Its owner takes those four; the other player receives all four remaining tiles, including those still in either hand. If necessary, assign the other player permit #2 automatically. Permit #2 holds the police.

The last player to commit a permit holds the police marker.

2. Build

Use drafted tiles and saved reserve tiles. Ordinary construction may be simultaneous, but shared vendors and landmarks are claimed in ascending permit order: #1 first, then #2, and so on. Each player finishes ALL eligible vendor and landmark selections before the next player chooses. Normal costs and placement rules still apply.

• Buildings: build continuously upward from the ground, without gaps. Coloured floors and roofs in a column must share a style. Neglected floors and roofs are wild; they do not change the style required by other tiles. Ordinary buildings may reach six floors including ground and roof. Street and sky do not count toward height.
• Ground upgrades cover the printed ground and allow a new building style, provided the whole column remains legal. A roof closes its building; only a sky tile can go above it. Place sky immediately above a roof or an exposed landmark top.
• Place street tiles below the ground row. Their top-right circles identify five activities: Food stalls, Music, Street market, Dragon dance and Performance.
• Placed tiles cannot move. A legal replacement discards the covered tile and its icons. You cannot cover a neglected ground, middle or roof tile with another neglected tile. Other replacements must leave the entire building legal. Landmarks cannot be covered. You may save unused tiles face up in your reserve.

Vendors: newly placed vendor icons grant available tokens of types you do not already own. Keep at most one of each type. If no new type is available, gain nothing. You may keep more vendors than supporting icons between inspections; capacity is checked ONLY when police inspect you. Removing an icon does not immediately return a token.

Landmarks: choose an available landmark and a legal footprint anchored on the ground. Spend enough construction icons from one edge-connected chain of tiles that touches or lies under the footprint. Spend whole tiles; excess icons are lost. A spent neglected ground tile must be covered by the landmark. Discard paid tiles and all replaced tiles. The footprint must cover the entire old building, including roof and sky. Remove the landmark from the shared supply.

Landmark benefits (construction cost)

• Hat Boi Theater (2): 2 points per activity circle on all your tiles, including its own.
• Neighbourhood Park (2): +1 population to each ordinary building, including printed buildings. No population is added to landmarks. Its food activity circle also counts.
• School (3): doubles flat positive AND negative point values, including sky and the Pagoda. It does not double other scoring formulas or completion bonuses.
• Office Building (3): 1 point per total population, including the Park's bonus to ordinary buildings.
• Pagoda (4): 20 points; 40 with the School.
• Ben Thanh Market (4): 4 points per vendor token you own. Its separate vendor icon also grants one available new vendor type and supports one token.

Use each landmark's printed footprint. Each printed activity circle counts once, regardless of footprint size.

3. Inspect

Only the police holder is inspected, after everyone finishes building:

1. Return vendors of your choice until their number does not exceed your visible vendor icons.
2. For every repeated activity circle in your street, discard tiles of your choice until only one of that type remains. Match circles, not illustrations. Landmark circles are not removed.
3. Recheck vendor capacity after every street discard; return excess tokens to the shared supply.
4. Discard every unplaced tile in your reserve. Other players keep theirs.

Returned vendors become available; they are not automatically claimed.

Next round

The police holder starts the next draft. Return numbered permits, keep seals, empty the market and draw four new tiles each.

Final scoring

After the last inspection, add:

• Buildings: for each ordinary building, height × population in its column. Count visible ground, street and roof population plus any Park bonus. Subtract red population; a column's population cannot be negative. Roofs count toward height; sky and street do not. Landmarks have no ordinary building score.
• Rows: 6 points for each full horizontal row of six placed spaces.
• Columns: 6 points for each unbroken vertical run of six or more placed spaces. A longer run still earns only 6.
• Flat points: printed bonuses minus penalties, doubled by the School if owned.
• Landmarks: their scoring benefits, counting the Pagoda only once.
• Vendors: number of vendor tokens × total activity circles on all your tiles, including landmark circles.

For completion bonuses, sky and landmark footprint spaces count; printed ground does not. Gaps and printed ground break vertical runs. Covered, discarded and unplaced tiles score nothing.

Highest total wins. Break ties by tallest ordinary building, then total population; otherwise share the win.

Optional: two-player Vendor Rivalry

Use only one token of each vendor type in the shared supply. Claim available types in permit order; no stealing. All other rules stay the same.

Solo — The Vendor Route

Play six deliveries using normal building, landmark and scoring rules.

Setup: deal a market four tiles wide and three high. Keep its four corner tiles face down and its other eight tiles face up. Put police on the top-left hidden tile. After seeing the layout, choose any four different travelling vendors and place them on any four of the six INSIDE intersections (each touches four tiles), leaving two empty. Keep the unused traveller aside. Set out a board, all six landmarks and a separate scoring token of each vendor type. Travellers never score. No numbered permits are used.

The inside route runs clockwise around the six intersections: top-left → top-middle → top-right → bottom-right → bottom-middle → bottom-left.

Each delivery:

1. Move one traveller 1–3 intersections clockwise. Count every intersection passed. You may pass occupied intersections but must land on an empty one.
2. Collect only the four tiles touching the destination, revealing hidden tiles collected. Add them to your reserve.
3. If you collected the tile currently holding police, take police too: they do not patrol or discard market tiles this delivery. Otherwise, move police one hidden corner clockwise per traveller step. Discard face-up outer-edge tiles they pass, except collected tiles. Never discard hidden tiles; the two interior tiles are outside the patrol route.
4. Build, claim scoring vendors and construct landmarks at normal costs. If you collected police, complete the normal inspection after building. Otherwise keep excess vendors and reserves.
5. Refill empty market spaces left to right, top to bottom; the four corner tiles stay hidden. If police were collected, place them on any refreshed hidden corner. Otherwise they remain at their patrol destination. Travellers stay where they landed.

After delivery six, finish building and any collected-police inspection, refresh and return police, then score normally. There is no automatic final inspection.

Solo ranks

• Below 70: New Neighbour
• 70–84: Street Trader
• 85–94: Block Builder
• 95–108: City Planner
• 109+: Sai Gon Legend