The Ludarium · Teach sheet
Teach The Castles of Burgundy in ten minutes
1 to 4 players · 90 to 120 minutes · Ages 12 and up
The goal: Score the most victory points by filling your duchy, completing regions, raising livestock, and selling goods.
On your turn
- Each phase: clear leftover hex tiles, refill the depots, lay out 5 goods.
- Everyone rolls. The start player rolls white and puts a goods tile on that depot.
- In bridge order, each player uses each die for one action.
- Take a tile from the depot matching the die, into a storage space.
- Place a stored tile on an empty space of its color and number, touching your tiles.
- Or sell all goods of the type the die shows, or take 2 workers with any die.
- Workers change a die by 1 each. 1 and 6 wrap around.
- Once per turn: buy one black depot tile for 2 silver.
Three tips for your first game
- Keep a worker or two in hand so no roll is ever wasted.
- Close small regions early. The phase bonus shrinks every phase.
- Ships pay twice: goods to sell, and an earlier turn next round.
Setup
- Board in the middle. Silver, workers, white die, and hex piles sorted by back color beside it.
- Shuffle the goods: 5 face-down stacks of 5 on phases A to E.
- Bonus tiles on their spaces, large on top of small.
- Everyone uses the same duchy number. Castle on the center dark green space.
- Each player: 3 random goods, 1 silver, 2 dice, an overview board, score marker on 0.
- Roll for start player. Workers go 1, 2, 3, 4 in clockwise order.
- Turn pieces on bridge space 1, start player on top. Start player takes the white die.
Scoring
- Livestock: points for its animals, plus same-type animals on that pasture.
- Completed region by size: 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, or 36.
- Plus a phase bonus per region: 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 in phases A to E.
- First to fill a color: large bonus tile. Second: small bonus tile.
- Selling goods: 1 silver, plus 2, 3, or 4 points per tile by player count.
- Watchtower: 4 points. Some monasteries score at the end.
- End: 1 point per unsold good and per silver, 1 per 2 workers.
Game end: The game ends after phase E, 25 rounds in all. Most points wins; a tie goes to the most empty duchy spaces.