In Canals of Amsterdam, players take turns placing influence in the markets of Amsterdam and dividing the city with canals in order to take advantage of that influence and gain wealth.
Each player starts with a number of influence tokens valued 1-4, with the exact numbers dependent on the number of players. Twelve market tokens worth 4-8 are placed at random on the empty rectangular area representing Amsterdam. A single canal rings the city.
On a turn, the active player draws one of their influence tokens at random, then either:
Places it on an empty space on the board, or
Discards it, then places as many canals (wooden sticks) on the board as the number on that token.
When an area is enclosed that contains one or two market tokens, whoever has the most influence in this area gains all of the tokens as well as wealth (VP tokens) equal to the number of spaces in this area. If players are tied for influence, then they sum the market tokens and area wealth and split this, rounding down.
When all markets are controlled, or all players are out of tiles, or all canals have been placed, the game ends and the wealthiest player wins.
Canals of Amsterdam includes two variants, one in which each player starts with a single canal in reserve that can be used at any time on their turn and another in which players each have a hand of three influence tokens.
Publisher's summary:
世界遺産アムステルダムの運河を建築し、街を分割して支配するゲーム。分割されたエリア内で市場マスが１～２マスになればエリアが確定し、その段階でより大きな影響力をエリア内に及ぼしていればエリア内市場と土地を支配できる。