Shakespeare’s First Folio has players taking the role of printers in the early Seventeenth Century competing to print the first folio of Shakespeare’s plays.
The game includes a board, a deck of Plays, a deck of Personages, resource dice, a Bag of Fortune, fortune tokens, wood resource pieces, wood worker meeples, a wooden print house and plenty of historical documents (plus a rulebook!)
The deck of Plays is made up of three different suits - Comedies, Histories and Tragedies - and each Play corresponds to its suit and the order it was printed in Shakespeare's First Folio. The deck of Personages includes historical personages who can assist in your efforts.
The board features five spaces:
Office of the Revels (take first player)
Stationers Hall (which has a spot for a draw pile and then four spaces for face up cards - Plays)
Guild Hall (which has a spot for a draw pile and then four spaces for face up cards - Personages)
Gambling House (which is a bag that has tiles/tokens to draw from)
Marketplace (which is where the eight rolled dice resources are available for purchase)
A turn plays out over five Acts.
Act I: The Deal
Act II: The Tricks
Act III: The Collect
Act IV: The Workday
Act V: The Clean
A game ends immediately when the last Play is taken by a player.
The setup is the Prologue and final scoring is the Epilogue.
Final scoring is thus:
1 point for each play
X points for the longest run in each suit (so 2-3-4-5-6 of comedies would score 5 points)
X points for certain personage cards
3 points for each set (same number of all three suits)
3 points for most coins
The most points wins and will print Shakespeare's First Folio!