Baghdad: The City of Peace | How to Play
Transcript
Hi everyone, I'm Tom and today I'm going to be showing you how to play Baghdad, the city of peace, designed by Fabio Lafiano and Neesto Manon and published by Alicat Games. This game takes place in the 8th and 9th centuries when Baghdad rose to prominence as one of the world's foremost centers of learning and intellectual exchange. In Baghdad's golden age, players take on the role of vizers vying for the attention of the stream of poets, philosophers, doctors, scientists, mathematicians, authors, artists, and inventors visiting the great city of peace. Grow your family's reputation and compete to become the califf's most eminent quartier. So, before we start learning how to play, we need to see how we got to this stage. So, let's take a look at the setup for the game. Assemble the main board in the center of the play area out of its five pieces.
We've got the circular city area in the middle. The wisdom area goes on top here. Then the building area, the river area, and finally the palace area. Making sure to use the right side for your player count. This side is three or more players. This side for one or two. I'm going to be setting up for a two-player game here, so I'm going to put it on the one to two side. Find the 14 palace pieces and put them in the matching slot of the player area. If you are playing on the one to two side of the board, place the dome on top of the base piece. See, on the other side, there are separate spaces for each. On the other side, the base goes here and the dome goes here. And three architects of an unused player color go into these spaces. The rest of the pieces you can place in their matching shaped slots. If playing with one or two players, add a boat in an unused color to the two point slot on each port. These neutral pieces just block spaces at lower player counts and are otherwise ignored. If you're playing at three or four players, you don't need to place any of these unused color pieces. Find the eight scoring tiles, shuffle them up, place four face up in the slots of the palace area, and then the other four face up in the slots in the river area. Separate the building tiles by their level printed on the back and also a little number in the top right of the front if you prefer.
Shuffle all of the level one tiles and place them in a face up stack on the top one space on the building area. Slide the top tile from the stack down to the bottom space so you can see two tiles. And then repeat this process for the buildings of levels two to five. Place the four skill tiles in their matching spaces in the wisdom area. Then we need the starting city tiles. They have a little S on the back. You can see the difference in the one and two tiles. They've got a one and two on them. So, we need just the starting 24 city tiles, and they will go into the tile bag. And draw tiles randomly to fill all of the spaces of the city. They should be placed with their S side down.
So students will have their skill icon visible, patients with their goods icon visible, artifacts with the crate side facing down, and then books are the same on both sides. Then you can add the one tiles to the tile bag, and place the two city tiles off to one side for now. Place the coins, wild tokens, step tokens, and shame tokens in piles. This is the general supply. Place the goods tiles next to the river area. Then we need character chords. The starting character chords, they have a letter then a number here. So A1 2 3 a set for each player. Put those to one side for now. And then of the day and night cards, look through for any with a player count symbol on. Depending on your player count, remove some cards. So if you're playing four players, keep them all in. If you're playing three players, leave in the three plus symbol, but remove any fours. And if you're playing at one or two players, remove any of the cards with symbols that you see. Again, I'm setting up for two players, so I can put all of these back in the box. Shuffle the remaining day character cards into a faceown deck and reveal six day characters, one on every slot in the wisdom area. Place the remaining cards in a deck on the left hand side of the wisdom area. Then shuffle the remaining knight cards and place that deck on the right side of the wisdom area. You don't deal any out from
there yet. Now I'm going to do player setup. I'm just going to set up for one player here. We just repeat this for everyone in the game. Randomly assign each player a player board and give each player a reference card. From the starting character cards, find the set that matches the letter on your playerboard. I've got the A playerboard here. So, I need cards A1, A2, and A3. They go into your hand and any unused starting character cards go back to the box. Then, choose a color and take all of the components of that color. Your vazier goes next to your playerboard. Each player has five boats. One of them goes into the starting space of the river area, the rest into slots on your playerboard. Four library tokens in your color. Four library tokens in your color that go in your personal supply. Five architects to go on these spaces of your board. Five houses to go in these spots.
And a favor token will place in a minute. Each player gets three coins and randomly select the starting player. Player will go clockwise from them. Your favor marker starts in the middle space of the favor track and then you will gain favor depending on your position and turn order. Starting player stays in the middle. Second player gains one favor. Third player gains two favor and fourth player gains three favor. And with that, we're all set up. The game is played in turns, beginning with the start player and proceeding clockwise. Every turn, we will carry out the six steps. The game will end when players have drawn all of the character cards available and played all of the character cards in their hands. We'll then proceed to endame scoring and the player with the most points will win the game.
The first thing you do each turn is slide character cards. So, let's imagine we're a turn in and I've played a card. You move every previously played card one space to the right. If we were a few turns in, and doing so would push a card off the edge of your board, you would resolve its effect. If it's a starting character, you simply gain the reward shown, in this case, a step token, and the card then goes into your faceown discard pile. If it was a day character card, you need to check if you meet the requirements on the card first before you can gain the rewards. In this case, I would need to have at least two boats in the river area, and that would get me a step token and any goods token. It's important to note that the skill icons on the cards still count at the moment they slide off. This can be important for when you're resolving the effects of the cards. When the effect has been resolved, the card goes into your discard pile. If it was a night card, you again need to check the requirement.
if you've met the requirement. So, at the point the card slid off, if I had three boats in the river area, I would meet the requirement and I would be able to add the character face down to my discard pile as normal. If you didn't meet the requirements, the card goes back to the box. The knight characters are worth points at the end of the game. There's a reference at the back of the rule book telling you details on all of the character cards. An important part of the game is planning ahead to make sure you can meet the requirements of your characters in the turn that they're going to slide off the board. When a card's placed into your discard pile, its skill and boat icons are no longer counted. But the whole time the cards are visible on your board, they are counted. The second step is to play a character card. Play any character from your hand face up to the leftmost slot of your playerboard. So you're thinking about the requirements and also the icons that the card provides you. The boats will help you in the move boats section. The skill icons will help you in the move vizier section. So let's say I played this card.
Then we go to the move boat step. If the character card you played this turn does not have a boat icon, you skip this step. But if the character did have a boat icon, you check the number of boat icons across all of the characters on your playerboard, not just the one you played this turn. For each of those boat icons, you can move your boats in the river area. A boat in the starting space can move left or right. But once a boat starts to move in a direction, it has to keep going in the same direction until it reaches a port. If you finish your movement on a space with a goods icon, you gain the corresponding token from the general supply. You don't get goods tiles for passing through the space, only the space you end your movement on. If it arrived in a port, you move it to the furthest available space. Players are allowed to have more than one boat in the same port. In fact, it can be beneficial because you qualify for the scoring tile every time you have a boat in the port. We'll talk about those in a second. If there's an icon printed on the slot, gain that now. So, it could be a wild token. It could be some favor.
Then you can optionally resolve one of these port actions. You can spend any number of different types of goods tokens to take that many coins plus one. You may spend two coins to take any one goods token or you can spend five coins to take any two goods tokens. Selling goods is an important way of earning money which is very tight in the game. The boats in ports will score you points at the end of the game. according to the condition on the scoring tile multiplied by the number in the port space they ended up in at any time on your turn as a bonus action. You can buy a new boat as long as you don't already have one in the starting space of the river area. If your boat would arrive in a port where all of the slots are already occupied, instead immediately return it to the starting space and you can continue moving as normal.
The next step is to move your vazier. In the first turn of the game, your vizier is by your playerboard and you can place them on any city tile slot, building site, or palace site. These are all collectively called locations. If it's not your first turn of the game, you need to choose any location in the next quadrant clockwise from the one your vizier is currently in and move your vizier to it. You can't choose a location with an opponent vizier in it. You can't choose a building site with a building already in it. If you're playing with three players, you can't place into any of the four player building sites. And if you're playing with two or one players, you can't place into the three plus spaces either. The move vizier step is where these step tokens come into play. You can spend up to three of them. And for each one that you spent, you can instead move your vizier to a location one additional quadrant clockwise.
So, normally I'm restricted to this quadrant, the next one along, but I could spend one step token to look here, two to look here, or three to come all the way back around and pick something from the same quadrant I'm already in. After moving your vizier, in either order, you take the action of the space you move to and resolve building effects. You must completely finish one part before you resolve the other. For taking the action, it depends on where your vizier is. If they are on a city tile action, you're going to try and take that city tile. Each spot requires a number of skill icons according to the space on your board where you want to place it. You'll need anvils to place artifacts.
So, in this case, based on the card that I played, I would be able to take this artifact and place in either of these two spaces. I wouldn't be able to choose the others yet, but if I could play more cards with anvils on in the future, you count all of the icons of all the character cards you can still see on your board. So, anvils get you artifacts. They'll be worth points at the end of the game. If you take a duplicate, one that you've already got, then you place it face down on its crate side. Only face up artifacts will score the points next to them at the end of the game. There's also a scoring tile you might be eligible for that rewards different types. So, it's always better to collect different types of artifacts if you can. Patients require medical icons. If you placed a patient, you immediately gain the goods token indicated and then flip the patient to the side without the goods icon.
Students require the abacus icon and they may be spent as a bonus action in place of skill or boat icons. We'll talk about the bonus actions later. But you can see the symbol of what they will help you with on their front side. Books require these quill icons. If you placed your second, third, fourth, or fifth book, choose a reward from the relevant area. So here's for two, three, four, and five, and place the corresponding library token from your supply over the reward that you pick. Many of these are instant rewards, gaining favor tokens or boat movement. For placing three book tokens, you can choose one of the still available skill tiles and add it to this space in your playerboard. For the rest of the game, you count as having an additional skill icon of that type. For four books, you could choose any patient, student, or artifact tile in the city area and add it to your playerboard as if you were taking another city action. You still need to meet the skill icon requirements to be able to place it on your playerboard.
Here you can choose any empty building site and construct a building there as if you were doing the building action that we'll get to shortly. And then for five books, it's the same selection again, except you get a one discount of the icons you would normally require. If you place tiles in such a way that you now have one above and below a reward, you can gain that effect. Now, if you trigger two effects with the same placement, then you can resolve them in either order. If you placed in a building site, find the lowest level building that you have not yet constructed. Choose one visible building from that level and pay the coins indicated to place it onto the building site that your vizier chose. If you can't afford the coins, you can't take the action. Let's say I want to spend one of my coins to build these stables. You then need to take a house from your playerboard to indicate that that's your building, but the houses require one or more brick icons to be able to place them. You must have those skills available on your characters to be able to take the action. You can place any house that you meet the requirement for. You don't need to build them from top to bottom. So, let's say I had a brick icon available. I could place that down, put it on there, and everyone knows that that's my building.
Finally, if you took the building from the bottom area, you replace it with a tile from the stack. If you chose a palace site action, you choose one unbuilt piece in the palace area and spend the goods indicated. So, if I wanted to build this piece, it's just going to cost me one leather. You can't choose the base piece if one or more foundation pieces remain unbuilt. You can't choose the dome piece on the other side of the board when they're separate. If the base hasn't been built, so say I've come here, paid my leather, and I want to build this foundation piece. Take an architect from your player board. Again, these require brick skill icons in order to place them. You must have them available to take this action. And again, you don't have to build them in order. Anyone you like.
That architect goes out next to the piece that you just took. They will be worth points at the end of the game. This many points multiplied by the number of times you satisfied the scoring token in that column. So, I might really want to make curing patients my focus and get a lot of architects in this column to make the most out of that. After placing your architect, if you chose a foundation, a wall, or a tower, place the piece on one available space of that type and gain the reward shown. So, I could just get myself a wild token. If you chose the base piece, that goes on top of the four foundation blocks. And if you chose the dome, it goes on top of the base. Again, in a one or two player game, the dome and the base are one piece that goes out together. Now, for solo and two players, there's an additional rule at the palace. After the third foundation, wall or tower piece is built. Place one of the neutral architects that you placed in setup next to the remaining fourth space and put that piece out wherever it goes. This is just to make the palace more competitive at lower player counts.
They are just blocking spaces and they are ignored for endgame scoring. So, we have looked at taking your action. The other part of moving your vizier is resolving building effects. Remember, you can do the two in either order you like. You can do the building effects first if you want to. You resolve the effect of all your buildings in the quadrant your vizier is in. If you've got multiple, you can resolve them in any order. You do get to resolve building effects in the turn you built the building. You then need to pay tuition and gain shame. For each patient that's on a space connected to the location of your vazier, you lose one favor. If you're unable to lose any more favor, you gain a shame token for every favor you can't lose. You're a vazier. You should be looking after these people. For each student connected to the location of your vizier, you spend a coin. You are expected to help these students with their tuition. If you're unable to pay, you lose two favor for every unspent coin. If you're at the bottom of the favor track, each time you would lose favor, instead gain a shame token. We haven't looked at the bonus actions yet, but if you have positive favor, it's more efficient to take a bonus action to spend a favor to get a coin rather than lose two favor for not having one.
Finally, we draw character card and refill the city. Draw one character card from the wisdom area into your hand. If you choose a character in one of the leftmost three slots, you draw from the day deck to replace that card. If the day deck has run out, instead replace it with a night character. If there are no cards in either deck, the slot just stays empty. If you choose a card from the rightmost three slots, the opposite is true. You first try to replace from the night deck. If that deck is empty, replenish from the day deck. If both decks are empty, the slot stays empty. Finally, for each empty city tile slot that doesn't contain a vizier, you randomly draw a city tile to place there. So, at the start of the game, the bag is full of the one tiles. If you're refilling and the bag is completely empty, add all of the two tiles to it first and then draw from there.
There are also bonus actions we can take. These can be taken at any point during your turn, including midway through resolving any given step. Some bonus actions might have specific restrictions, but you can take multiple bonus actions in the same turn. You can take the same bonus action multiple times. We've talked about buying a boat. You can only do this if you don't have a boat in the starting area. Spend the amount of coins indicated on the slot, take the boat from there, and place it in the starting space of the river area. If your favor is above the starting space, you may spend favor as a bonus action. You can do this even if the action will cause your favor marker to fall below the starting space. You can spend one favor to gain a coin, two favor to gain a goods token of any kind, and three favor to gain a wild token.
So, even if I just had two positive favor, I could still choose to spend one, two, three, putting me a negative to get that wild token if I really needed it. Anytime you gain favor, you move up the track. If you would move further up and you're already at four, it's time to take a bonus action and turn that favor into something so you don't waste it because you can't go beyond four. Anytime you spend favor, you move down. If you would need to lose favor, but you can't, then you take a shame token instead. Every time you would move down the favor track, they are minus three points. At the end of the game, you can spend a wild token as a bonus action. When you're taking any action that's got a skill requirement, you can spend a wild token and choose any type. If you do, you count as having that extra type during this action. So, if I really needed a student and really needed that third abacus, I've only got two out here on my characters, spend a wild token as the third one, and then it's spent and gone. And the last bonus action is spend a student. If you have a student on your playboard that hasn't already been used for this ability, when you're taking an action with a skill requirement, you can spend a student with a visible skill icon by flipping it to its non-icon side, and you count as having one more of that skill icon for this action. If you have a student with the move boats symbol on, you can spend them in the move boats step of the turn, and you count as having an extra boat icon for the purpose of determining how many times you move your boats. You can't spend a student with a boat to trigger boat movement.
You can only spend them to boost movement you already have. In other words, the character card you played this turn must have a boat on to even trigger the moveboat step. If there are no characters left in the wisdom area, you are near the end of the game. The game ends after players have played every card in their hand. The current player finishes their turn and once their turn is over, proceed to endame scoring. They move to endame scoring. So we have got a score pad here. We're going to look at these scoring tiles first. There are four in the river area and four in the palace area. In the river area, you add together the point values of the boats you have in each port. So let's say for books here, I would have three.
I would write three in the multiplier section. And then I would look at how many books I had on my playerboard, multiply the two together, and that is my score for that token. Repeat that for all the ports in the palace area. You add together the points values of the architects in each column. So let's say for the patient scoring token here, I would have four as my multiplier and I would count how many patients I had on my playerboard, multiply them together, that is my score for that token. So each of the eight is number of patients on your playerboard, number of students on your playerboard, the number of architects you have in the palace area, so the number of palace pieces you built, the number of boats you have in port, the number of books you have on your playerboard, the number of types of artifacts you have, so only different ones score for this. the number of buildings you constructed and the number of night character cards in your discard pile plus the number of knight character cards in slots on your playerboard that you meet the requirement for cuz at the end of the game you will still have characters in your slots. Next, if you built any level five buildings, you score the points that are printed on them. So, the architect's guild here, for example, would give me three points for every architect that I placed in the palace area. For the next row, if you built the dome piece or the base piece, remember in one or two players there is only one piece. You score the points indicated next to the thing you built.
Then you score night characters. Everyone that made it to your discard pile already scores cuz you met the requirements when you needed to. And you'd also score any knight characters still on your playerboard if you now meet the requirements of them. Next, you score points as shown on your playerboard for the artifacts that you collected, but only face up one score. So again, if you took a duplicate, it's face down. It doesn't count for the scoring token. It doesn't count for the points in its slot either. So those points go in that row. Then we score favor. Positive favor gives you the points indicated. Negative favor loses you the points indicated up to a loss of eight points. And then it's minus three for every shame token that you've got. and then add them up for your final score. The player with the highest score wins, becoming the most eminent courtier in the Great City of Peace. If there's a tie, the player who scored the most points for night cards wins. If there's still a tie, the player higher on their favor track wins. If there's still a tie, tied players share the victory. And that's everything you need to know to be able to play Baghdad, the city of peace.
There is a solo mode you can explore. I do have a playthrough for that. It is with a prototype, so things may have changed there, but it gives you an idea of how to play the solo mode. There are also modules you can include once you're used to the base games rules to add contracts, objectives, and public works to the game. If you have any questions, please leave me a comment below. There is also a link to the board game page in the description. Posting in the forums there is a fantastic way to get an answer to a rules question. If you'd like to see more from me, there are hundreds of videos on this channel. Maybe you'd be interested in taking a look at how to play Ada's Dream, the other latest release from Alicat Games. Thank you very much for watching this one, though, and I'll see you for the next game. Bye, everyone.