World Wonders - How To Play

[Music] hi and welcome to watch it played my name is Rodney Smith and in this video we're going to learn the one to five player game world wonders designed by Z menz and published by Arcane wonders who helped sponsor this video in a competition to build the most illustrious city you'll not only be constructing districts of temples farms and markets but also glorious monuments that are sure to make the leaders of the other cities exceedingly jealous it's a race to outshine your Rivals so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up put this main board in the center of the play area with this fourth player expansion board to the left if you have four or more players and this fifth player board here if you have five players we'll assume we have three players in this video next find and place these first and second player turn order pedestals onto the spaces for them here on the main board Bo then find the building tiles which come in a variety of shapes and colors and flip them all face down organizing them into matching shaped piles which you'll Shuffle separately put each stack onto the matching outline spaces of the main board so it looks like this when you're done and don't forget with more players you might have these boards with tiles as well since we have three players they aren't used and can be returned to the Box Now flip the top tile from each stack face up so they're in a row below the board here are the various Road tiles which you organize into a supply these here are the double-sided long roads and just be aware when you have two roads of this size with a single smaller one together they're known as a short road set based on your number of players as shown here in the rule book you'll add a certain number of long road and short road sets from the supply into an area below the reveal building tiles in a three-player game you put two long roads and one short road set there also create a supply of what are known as the wooden towers and no matter the player count set a single one into the area below the main board next Shuffle the monument cards which have this back into a face down deck and then reveal three of them each Monument will show its picture in this corner matching one or more wooden monuments found in the game there are 21 of these in the game which you'll keep in a supply however when monuments are revealed from the deck you can set their pieces beside their cards and be aware that some will show more than one piece also set a number of these loone tiles equal to the number of players beside the main board returning any extras back to the box now find these double-sided map boards and give one to each player you can use either side but all players must use the same side each player also chooses a color and takes the matching Resource Board and marker showing in its corner here these have an A and A B side and this will adjust where certain symbols on these tracks are located again you can use either side for your game but just make sure everyone is on the same side all players now gain a gold population food Ceramics and a gear token placing each on the matching space for them on their board here then collect everyone's player marker and set them randomly on this turn order track filling in the leftmost spaces finally give each player one of these long road pieces from the main Supply to set beside their boards and distribute the double-sided player AIDS around the table for easy reference these two decks you won't need for your first game so you can return them to the box and that's the setup in world wonders you and the other players will be constructing roads buildings towers and monuments all in an effort to earn the most points both from what and how you build your city have the most points by the end of the game and you win the game is played over a series of rounds during a round players take turns following the order of their pieces on this track in this case first blue then green yellow then blue again and so on on your turn you must perform a single action which will always involve buying one item to play on your board when you buy an item you pay its cost by moving your gold marker here that number of spaces to the right so if something costs three gold I'd move my marker three spaces in other words this track is showing how much gold I've spent after you buy an item the next player goes and buys an item and then the next and so on but this is very important on your turn if you have money to spend and there's something you could buy then you must take a turn and buy something you can't choose to pass your gold marker is not allowed to cross this line after the number seven so that means you have seven total gold you can spend during a round if your marker is at this line after a purchase or if you have gold remaining to spend but there's nothing left you can afford then you'll take no more turns during the current round other players with gold left to spend will continue taking their turns in the usual order skipping over you to show this you can move your marker to just above the space you were on as a reminder that you're done for this round while the remaining players continue taking their turns as normal once everyone has run out of gold to spend the round ends and we'll explain what happens at that point a little later however with the flow of the game understood let's explain how taking a turn Works remember on your turn you must perform a single action to buy one item and there are variety of different items you have to choose from you'll find all of these listed on player AIDS included in the game so let let's go through each one starting with the buy a road option there's actually two different types of Roads you can buy either a single long road or a set of short roads as shown here and whichever you choose both require you spending one gold the only roads you can buy during a round will be displayed below the main board you can't buy roads directly from the supply so right now I could buy either of these long roads or a set of short roads short roads are always bought as a set that includes cludes two roads of this length and a single shorter one I'll buy a set of short roads just keep in mind anything you buy is not replaced so no one else will be able to buy a set of short roads this round and remember when you buy something spend the gold by moving your marker the required number of spaces to the right collect what you bought and then place it immediately onto your mapboard what you buy can't be saved to place on a future turn that said there's one unique rule for your very first turn of the game remember each player starts with one free long road taken from the supply that they're given during the setup with their very first buy action they must also place this long road on their board at the same time with whatever else they bought and you can place all the pieces you have for this first turn in any order so let's learn how you place roads one option is to place a road adjacent to the sidewalk of your board which is the printed border along its bottom for example I might place this road here or maybe over here and I can rotate it as I like as long as its edges fit perfectly within the squares printed on the map and as long as all spaces under it are empty a tile is not allowed to overlap other pieces or to go off the map the map itself is divided into several squares and most are green representing land spaces blue space are water and these spaces are known as natural resources which are a special kind of land space we'll learn more about in a moment these edges around the rest of your map aren't sidewalks so you can't just place a new road along one of their edges or out here in the middle of the map remember your road spaces must go adjacent to a sidewalk or instead they can also be placed adjacent to any other Road you already have on your board and just to be clear to be adjacent some part of a tile's side must touch some part of another tiles side tiles that only touch on the corners are not considered adjacent also roads are not allowed to be placed over spaces with water with one exception a long road can cross over water as long as its furthest ends are both on land spaces in that case flip it over to its Bridge side but it's otherwise still treated as a road also note any piece can cover one of these natural resource spaces but we'll see later why you may not want to so roads can always be placed adjacent to your sidewalk or other roads you already have in play and there is one other way roads can be placed but I first want to explain another item you can instead Buy on your turn a building the only buildings you can buy are the ones displayed in a row below the main board you can't buy buildings directly from the stacks instead the cost for a building is shown on the back of the matching tiles found above it for example this piece costs four gold again to pay a cost move your gold marker that number of spaces to the right and remember if you don't have enough gold you can't buy the piece just like anything else you buy after you pay the cost collect the item and place it on your map but don't forget items purchased during the round are not placed so no one else can buy a building with this shape for the rest of the round I should point out after you have some experience with the game it's okay if the next player starts their turn while the previous player is deciding how they want to add the piece they just purchased to their board when adding a building you have two options you can either place it adjacent to any of your roads or adjacent to any building you already have on the board that shares the same type A building's type is based on its color and there are five different types libraries Farms habitations markets and temples and within each stack of building shapes you'll find two of each building type so again when you buy a building it goes adjacent to one of your road pieces or another building of the same type so if we' had this Temple here from a previous action we might choose to place this new temple building here and don't forget you can also rotate pieces as you like either way after placing a building you just purchased check to see how many of each type of resource symbols it shows within the icons here you now gain that many Resources by moving your related markers a number of spaces to the right equal to how many icons the building had so in this case two food and One ceramic if a marker reaches the end of its track then it can't Advance further also anytime one of your resource markers lands on a space showing this population symbol you also Advance your population marker here one space to the right advancing your population marker is one of the ways you'll be able to earn points as we'll see let me show you one more example but be aware from now on in this video I'll be creating several custom layouts that you might see later on in a game just to help explain different situations let's say I had just bought this building it can go adjacent to any of my roads or adjacent to this building since they share the same color however if I had bought this building instead it has to go adjacent to a road since there are no buildings already in its color on my map and that's how you buy and place buildings next let me show you how you instead buy a tower on your turn this is a tower each round begins with exactly one available for purchase and these always cost two gold after paying the cost collect the tower and place it on your map it must go on a land space adjacent to at least one other item of any type you already have on your map so I might put it for example here and that's how towers are placed with the tower understood I now want to go back to the rules for placing roads remember when you add a road it must go adjacent to your sidewalk or another of your roads but it can also be placed adjacent to Towers let's say I wanted to add a temple up in this area a building has to be set adjacent to a road or a building of its color and there aren't any up here we can't just add a road up in this area on its own because again roads can only go adjacent to the sidewalk a road or a tower since a tower can be built beside any piece you've already placed we might first add a tower here then a road could be build adjacent to it later and then we could add the temple up here on a future action this makes Towers valuable as they can quickly open up brand new options for roads Elsewhere on your map and note the player Aid has item costs on one side and the rules for where items can be placed on the other for example here it shows roads can go adjacent to roads the sidewalk or towers with that understood I'll just mention again to take an item you have to be able to pay its gold cost and be able to place it on your turn all right next let's learn how to buy and place monuments there will always be three monuments in the display but these don't have a printed cost that's because the cost of a monument is all of the gold you currently have left to spend so buying a monument at this point would cost me three gold if my marker had been here it would only cost me one gold you can't buy a monument if your marker is already in this position because remember once your marker is at this yellow line you can't take any more actions now I know some of you might be curious about these two spaces beyond the line and don't worry we'll discuss them soon after spending all your remaining gold pick any Monument you can legally place and collect its card and related piece any placement requirements will be shown in this area then this section shows you the number and type of spaces the monument must cover on your map Green squares represent lands spaces below you'll find Icons and when you see a dashed line beside one that refers to adjacency so this Monument must be placed adjacent to at least one road and one temple building for example we couldn't place it here since it's only adjacent to a road but not a temple as well so maybe we'd put it here where it's now adjacent to both a temple and a road as required and it's okay if it's also adjacent to other items that aren't listed in its placement requirements the placement symbols on this Monument show this icon which means it must be placed adjacent to a water space so putting it right here would satisfy both of its requirements to be adjacent to water and a market building just be aware you only have to satisfy these requirements when the monument is built if later this water space was covered by another piece like this that's okay it's also important to realize that once a space is covered it no longer counts as that type of space let's say for a moment we hadn't built this Monument yet but we were about to this Monument needs to be placed adjacent to a water space But the Water underneath of this road or Bridge wouldn't count because once a space is covered by another piece its type is ignored so this means we no longer meet these requirements and couldn't purchase this Monument since we don't have a way of placing it on our mapboard this Monument has two pieces and these icons mean each piece must be placed on a land space the icon between them stands for any space any piece in other words there has to be a single space between the two pieces but it can be a space of any type or there can even be an item in the space between those two pieces also notice the icons in this area these let you know that you can place this horizontally as we've done here or vertically and don't forget you still have to satisfy these adjacency rules when a monument has more than one piece you still think of it as a single Monument so even if only one of its pieces touches the required elements that satisfies the placement requirements for the entire Monument be careful though placing this Monument like this isn't valid although there's technically one space between them these have to be placed in a line as it shows this Monument is similar to the previous one except it has three pieces and you'll notice one adjustment to the options here it shows that you can place these in a row or they can be placed at an angle the angle can be in any orientation but be careful although this Arrangement here technically still has only one space between each piece it doesn't conform to one of the shown options so this wouldn't be allowed notice this Monument has three pieces but it's Arrangement icons shows angled adjacency symbols between them when you see this it just means the pieces can actually be placed in any way adjacent to each other for example in a t-shape like this or I might even mash them together like this these Arrangements work because each piece is adjacent to at least one other of its pieces of course don't forget you still have to satisfy these conditions remembering that each piece doesn't have to be adjacent to all of them they just have to satisfy these conditions as a group which is the case in this example this Monument has icons that show that three of the spaces it covers can be either land or water but then a fourth space must cover water as with any piece you can rotate it as you like so this full water space could be under any one of its corners for example we could place it here and say that it's actually under this corner the asterisk symbol is here to remind you that one of these spaces is unique compared to the others but it doesn't mean the water space has to be in this specific corner with that you should now be able to resolve any of the monument placement rules you encounter when playing when gaining a monument you collect its card because you also gain the benefits in the area here when you see a ring symbol that represents victory points you'll earn at the end of the game while a resource advances that marker on your track right away unlike other items you build on your turn after a monument is built you do replace the card that was taken from the display with a new one from the deck putting its piece or pieces beside it and that's how you buy a monument on your turn and remember you must spend all the remaining gold you have to buy one as this symbol reminds you so after you won't be able to take any more turns that round that brings us to the last type of purchase you can make gaining a turn order pedestal which costs one gold after you then collect the first or second turn order pedestal from the main board and set your marker on top of it we'll see how these work later but if you have one of these already you can still buy the other on a future turn if you like so those are all the ways you can spend money on your turn and remember on your turn you must buy one item if you can afford it even if the only items left are ones you don't really want either way after buying a single item the next player in clockwise order takes their turn though I should mention there is one other thing you can do on your turn along with making a single purchase you can also take out a loan to take out a loan you must still have gold remaining and on the turn you take out a loan you must still buy something as usual to collect a loan take one of these tokens from the supply and set it beside your board for that round only you'll have access to the gold showing on these two spaces meaning you'll be able to spend up to to 9 Gold this round you then flip your loan token face down and while it's in front of you you can't take out another loan however during a future round when taking an action you can also choose to pay off your loan to do this pay the three gold showing here and then return this face up back to the supply once you no longer have a loan token in front of you you can take a loan not again during a future action and that's everything you can do on a turn and turns will continue going around and around the table until every player has run out of gold to spend you then set up a new round by discarding any remaining face up building tiles that weren't purchased in the previous round next reveal a single tile from each of the face down building Stacks so it looks something like this when you're done also replace any road tiles that were purchased until you have the required amount based on your number of players as shown in the rule book which we saw during setup be sure to also add a single new tower to this area if the previous one had been purchased if it hadn't just leave the one from the previous Round Here Now set up the new turn order by first moving any player who took the first player pedestal to the first position of the turn order track if a player had taken the second turn order pedestal they'd move into the second position you then return the pedestals to their spots over here the remaining players are arranged by the population values from their personal boards going from lowest to highest since this player has the lower population they'd go earlier in the turn order than this player now if there had been a tie for population players are arranged by the one with the fewest monuments built up to the highest if there's still a tie they stay in the same relative order that they had been in in the previous round with the turn order set players now each return their gold markers to the zero position and remember any player who had taken out alone only gains its benefits during the round it was claimed as they go into the next round they can only spend seven gold as normal now the new round begins with players taking turns based on the new turn order and rounds will continue like this until the game ends in one of two possible ways if any player's population marker reaches the end of its track then the game will be over at the end of the current round alternatively the game also ends after the 10th round which is the one where the final building tiles are revealed from the main board either way once the game is over flip the main board and then use each player's marker to help calculate their final scores on this track first each player earns a point for every ring icon they reached or passed on their population track so two points in this case as you gain points move your marker on the scoring board next earn points equal to whichever of the three resources you have the least of I have a tie for least so I can pick either of these and earn nine points now earn a point for every ring showing on the monument cards you collected when you built them so in this case a total of four points you then earn one point for every natural resource showing on your board that's adjacent to at least one piece you placed on your map so in this case we'd earn 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 nine points from our natural resources this one here wouldn't earn us anything next up earn one point for each of your buildings that are surrounded on all sides by any feature other than empty green land spaces this means that the edges of the board water natural resources or pieces you placed can help surround it the building we have here is completely surrounded so it's worth one point and remember it's okay if spaces on a diagonal to the building are not filled in because only its sides have to be surrounded that's why this building here isn't going to score us a point because it has a portion of its side here that is adjacent to a green land space finally as you're reminded of here you lose two points if you have an unpaid loan now the player with the most points wins if there's a tie for most points the tied player who constructed the most monuments wins WIS if there's still a tie the tied players share the victory the game also comes with cards for an advanced mode providing players with public objectives they can attempt to achieve for more points and there's also components and rules for solo play but those rules all leave for you to discover on your own otherwise that's everything you need to know to play world wonders if you have any questions about anything you saw here feel free to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance you'll also find forums for discussion pictures other videos and lots more over on the games page at Board Game Geek and I'll put a link to that in the description below and if you found this video helpful please consider giving it a like subscribing and clicking that little bell icon so you get notification anytime we post a new video and if you'd like to support us directly you can join our patreon team which I'll have linked below but until next time thanks for watching