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 desparate!

All players begin 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) and more action spaces (8 cities provide them). Two other "small" cities provide a benefit immediately and ongoing at beginning of each round. 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.

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.

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

• gain a guild seal (usually two dice)
• move your meeple on the board (1, 2, or 3 dice)
• gain new contracts (from cities with your trading posts present)
• gain resources (the "books" along bottom center of board, for 1 die)
• 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.

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.