Rainbow Blvd - How to Play. Complete, Clear, Concise Board Game Tutorial
Transcript
Architects complete the city with colorful masterpieces as your creation will be rewarded for the best one in Rainbow Boulevard.
And today we'll be teaching you how to play Rainbow Boulevard, game designed by Adam Weiss and published by Steel Wing Games. And check out the link to the project page in the video description below.
And hey everyone, it's Stella.
And Tarrant, welcome to Meeple University.
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In Rainbow Boulevard, players are architects in Hopewell Springs using the city's newly restored rainbow factory to bring as much color and beauty to the streets as they can. When it comes to rainbows, beauty can be its own reward, but players will also compete tactically to achieve their own aims to fulfill the requirements on their blueprints or to manipulate the fortunes of the different colors of rainbow company to achieve their business contracts. Whoever completes the highest scoring set of blueprints and contracts by the end of the game will be the winner. To set up, lay out the main board and place the 18 rainbow foundation clouds onto these spaces.
Do note, this is a prototype version of the game and at the moment these cloud bases obscure the icons underneath them. These icons do matter for gameplay and in the finished version these should have see-through bases which will allow you to see the icons. During this video, you'll sometimes see me move the clouds to the side when I need to show the printed icons. Gather the full supply of rainbow pieces. You will use them all at all player counts and components are limited. In each color, you'll have a large number of half arcs, five small, four medium, and three large, as well as arcs, one small, one medium, and one large per color.
The six small colored tokens are market tokens. These represent the relative market value of one rainbow color versus another as the players build up the city. Begin all of these tokens on the number six. The six larger tokens are the architect tokens. Each player picks one token, and then all chosen tokens should be stacked in a random order on the 7:00 a.m. space of the time track. Although your architect token will match one of the rainbow colors, it ultimately doesn't matter which color you pick since you'll be able to interact with all six different colors of rainbow equally. Find the game card which corresponds to your player count and place it beside the board, and place the round marker on round one.
Both the length of the game and the way final scoring works will change depending upon your player count. Next, seed the main board with some starting rainbow pieces. Shuffle the blueprint deck and draw the top four cards. What's important right now is this small section in the bottom right of each card. In each case, place a small rainbow half arc of the depicted color into the rainbow foundation of the depicted number. Then deal two more cards, this time placing small arcs instead of small half arcs, again into the matching foundations. In any case where you can't place the piece, for example, the small arc is already taken or there's already not enough room to accommodate it, discard the offending card and redraw until you have valid placements.
These placements will result in some or all of the market tokens moving away from their starting positions of six. And in general, that means colors which are placed will move up and colors which are covered will move down. Market changes like this are going to happen both through setup and throughout the game, and so I'll come back and explain this in detail later in the video. Now, return the startup cards to the blueprint deck and shuffle both the blueprint deck and the contract deck face down. Each player draws a starting hand of four blueprints and two contracts. Keep your hand nearby to a player aid in your color, and you're now ready to play.
In Rainbow Boulevard, players will take turns to build rainbow pieces around Hopewell Springs.
They'll be working side by side with everyone, collectively building rainbows onto the same map.
The key to winning is how well you can influence the build to match your own agenda.
But before we learn about how to score, let's learn about how to build. Baby steps.
Rainbow Boulevard plays over three, four, or six rounds, known as days, depending on your player count. During a round, each player will take several turns, and on your turn, you'll take a single action from among the 10 on your player aid. Each potential action has a time cost. Here, it's two time. And when you take the action, advance your architect token that many steps to the right along the time track. The game has no fixed turn order. Whosever token is furthest to the left on the time track is the one who'll take the next turn. Right now, it would be the red player's turn. If red took an action with a time cost of four, they would advance to here and it would become purple's turn.
If purple then took an action that cost only one time, it would still be purple's turn giving them multiple turns in a row. If your marker lands on the same space as another player, stack yours on top and whoever's on top of the stack is considered behind. So, here purple would be the next one to take a turn. When your action's time cost takes you beyond 6:00 p.m. into these gray spaces, that will be your last turn for the round. You may go as far into the gray spaces as you wish. Once all players are in the gray, the day is over and you'll set up for the next day. Now, we'll learn about the different actions.
There are 10 different actions, but they are simply only three main types.
These are to build a rainbow piece, destroy a rainbow piece, or take contracts.
First, let's learn how to build rainbows.
To build, choose any single rainbow piece of any color which is available in the supply and pay its time cost. This will be one, two, or three for a small, medium, or large half arc or two, four, or six for a small, medium, or large arc. Having chosen, now place it into any legal location on the board. The sole restriction is that a medium or large arc or half arc cannot be placed into a rainbow foundation unless all arcs below it are complete. Right now, for example, this medium half arc could not be placed here since even though it's free standing and fully supported, the small arc in that foundation is not complete.
Likewise, a large full arc could not yet be placed here until the medium arc is filled. After building, you must adjust the market values for the different colors. Even though you can always see every piece that's been added to a rainbow, what matters for a color's value is which pieces are on top. For any new piece that you've added, increase that color's value on the market by a number of steps equal to the time cost you spent to build that piece. Then reduce the market value of the color which was covered. When you build a small half arc or arc, that means the color that's printed on the board below the piece you placed.
And when you cover one of these foundation spaces, the reduction in market value is one. Similarly, in this case, if I built a blue arc here for two time, blue would increase by two market value. And by covering two orange foundations, the orange market value reduces by two. This is the exact same process you'll follow when adjusting market values during setup. When a small half arc is covered by a medium half arc, the medium half arc's color gains two steps and the small half arc's color loses one. When adding a large half arc, the large color increases by three steps and the color covered reduces by two.
Do note that while it's best to update the market as you go, you can always recalculate what the market's supposed to be from scratch by adding up all of the pieces on tops of their rainbows, including on the foundations. So, don't worry. The game is not ruined if someone forgets to make this update or knocks the pieces off the track. Finally, if as the result of a build you complete a rainbow, meaning that your piece fills its large arc, then as a reward draw a new contract card into your hand. The second type of action is to remove a rainbow piece from the board. This may be used only on large half arcs or large arcs.
And so you're unlikely to see this action until late in the game. The cost of the action is three time whether you're removing a half arc or arc. The color removed loses three or six value for a half arc or arc. And the medium pieces revealed regain the value they lost when covered. The final type of action is to gain new contracts to hand. There are two ways to do this. Either spend three time to draw two new contracts into your hand, and then discard any one contract, or spend five time to draw three new contracts to hand, again before discarding one.
In each case, the discard could be a card you were already holding. It doesn't have to be one of the new ones you drew. And you cannot discard blueprints as part of this action. Blueprints and contracts are treated separately. Once everyone's architect tokens have reached 7:00 p.m. or later, you have earned a good night's sleep. Reset and prepare for the next day. Advance the round marker to the next day. Move each player's architect token 12 hours back on the time track. So if you finish the day at 8:00 p.m., you'll start the next day at 8:00 a.m. and so on. The union has strict fatigue management rules about having 12 hours off between shifts.
Then in the reverse current turn order, so here it would be red then purple then orange, you must draw new blueprint cards to hand. Declare how many between one and four and then draw the full amount face down. Once everyone has drawn, proceed to the next player's turn. All of the points you earn in Rainbow Boulevard will come from completing blueprints and contracts.
Let's now learn how to complete them.
Every blueprint and contract will describe a board state. That is some layout of rainbow pieces or market conditions that can be seen on the main board. Anytime you see the main board match the board state on one of your blueprints or contracts, reveal that card into a personal scoring pile. This could be during your own turn or another player's turn and it does not cost you any time to score a card. All blueprints have conditions based on the layout of rainbows on the board. They all score one point and you can only gain new blueprints at the start of the game or at the end of each round. A blueprint that you hold but fail to complete will lose you one point.
There are a few different types of blueprint. This type scores as soon as you see that pattern of rainbow pieces anywhere on the board. These ones are looking for rainbows containing a certain color, whether that color's on top or underneath, positioned consecutively either along a road or along a river. This one looks for rainbows containing a piece of a certain color anywhere in the space between the two rivers. And this one looks for rainbows containing a certain color within the districts, which are the eight locations with the black number. Contracts, on the other hand, all score based on the relative positions of the six market tokens.
Completing these scores between one and four points. You gain new contracts through actions or as reward for completing rainbows, and you don't lose points for incomplete contracts. A contract might score if a certain market token finishes a turn on 10. Or if two or even three market tokens are all on the same space. Some contracts also look for the market tokens to be in a specific order. This requires purple to be higher than blue, which is higher than orange. That's the case here, so this could be legally played. Such cards require a strict order, not a tie. So, this is okay, but this could not presently be played since blue and green are tied.
You may require four market tokens in a specific order. Or a card like this would require a certain market token to be strictly the highest, another one to be strictly the lowest, and everything else to be in between. All of these different types of sequence contracts can be played in two ways. Either right way up for more points, or they can be rotated to completely invert the order, but yield only one point. Holding this card, I have the choice on whether to play it now since the inverted condition meets the current market, or to hang on to the card and try to completely invert the market through the strategic building of rainbow pieces to later score it for more points.
Notice well, each contract has one of six colored seals in its corner. And an invertible card may have a different seal in each corner. These will contribute to set collection scoring at the end of the game. The third, fourth, or sixth round will be the final round depending on your player count. In that final round, place the no contract marker beside the 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. times. If your architect token begins the turn on either 5:00 or 6:00 p.m., then you are no longer allowed to choose one of the draw contract actions. Once all players have landed in the gray, no matter how far ahead of 7:00 they've landed, the game is over.
Now, count up your final scores. Score one point for each completed blueprint. And the single player with the most completed blueprints scores three points. If tied, all tied players score one. Then score the points in the top left corners of all of the contracts you've completed, remembering to score the appropriate side if you've inverted a card. Next, score sets of seals. Find your single largest set of different seals and score points according to how many cards are in the set. And then, find your single largest set of the same seal. And again, score points according to the size of the set. Here, it's five different seals and four matching seals.
How many points you score for these sets depends upon your player count. Lose one point for each incomplete blueprint. Incomplete contracts have no penalty. The player with the highest score wins. And if tied, furthest back on the time track and on top of any stacks, if in the same space, breaks the tie. And that's how to play Rainbow Boulevard. There are a couple of optional modules to further mix up the game.
This includes the bright ideas module, which will grant each player asymmetrical player power.
And the coffee breaks module where special bonus tokens will be placed along the end of the time track, and the first player who reaches them will claim those bonuses.
Thanks for watching. We're using prototype version of the game, so things are not final. And if you like this video, maybe you'd like to watch this next one. Have a great day. Bye.