Rolling Seas - Official How to Play. Complete, Concise, Clear Board Game Tutorial

Dodge sea monsters, out with pirates, and try not to get sucked into a werepool. Just another day writing your legendary memoir in Rolling Seas. And today we'll be teaching you how to play Rolling Seas game designed by George Yos and published by Nuts Publishing. Do check out the link to the project page in the video description below.

And hi everyone, it's Stella and Tarant. Welcome to Me University. And hey, if you enjoy this video after watching, like, subscribe, and comments. You know what to do. All right, grab some snacks and let's get to the classroom. Rolling Seas is a roll and write pen and paper game in which seafaring adventurers will sail forth in search of renown.

Round by round, the players choices and adventures will be driven by a common set of cards and dice as players will lay out their encounters, collect and spend different kinds of loot, upgrade their ships, and plot a course across the seas. The aim of the game is to become the most renowned adventurer.

And with every great encounter along your journey, you'll gain stories to tell. Every time you stop to visit a port, you'll tell your tales and build your renown. And by the end of the game, whoever has scored the most renown by telling their stories and through other star points unlocked on their boards will be the winner.

To set up, give each player a shipboard, a matching numbered adventure map board, a compass, and a pen. Do note the game's final versions will be smaller than you see here. We've blown them up so we can show you the details for this video. In the central area, you'll have the exploration board and its die, a standard D6, and the central compass with its three direction dice.

These are D12s with two sides each for north, south, east, and west, and one side each for the other points. Components shown here are still prototype. Set up the adventure deck. Separate the cards into two types, the smooth sailing cards and the adventure cards. And if it's your first game, you may choose to leave the two ambush cards in the box, but we'll leave them in for this teach and show you how they work.

Shuffle each deck separately. From the adventure deck, set aside two cards for setup and prepare a preliminary adventure deck by dealing 15 adventure cards and 15 smooth sailing cards, shuffling the result together. Then remove five cards from this deck and add them to the leftover adventure cards and leftover smooth sailing cards, returning them to the box unseen.

This gives you an adventure deck of 25 cards, which will count the game's 25 rounds. Now, take the two set aside adventure cards and reveal them face up in the central play area. All players must draw the shapes showing on these cards onto their adventure boards, following all of the game's normal placement rules, which I'll explain shortly.

In some cases, this will include handing your board over to an opponent and drawing the shape on theirs. Finally, once both shapes are legally drawn on all players maps, discard the two starting cards and all players choose a home port. Pick any one of the eight lighthouse spaces on your board. Circle it to indicate that it's your home port.

And draw a dot on one space which is orthogonally adjacent. This is the starting location for your ship. You're now ready to play. Rolling Seas is played in 25 rounds and each round is played in three phases. The adventure phase, dice phase, and actions phase. In the adventure phase, one card is drawn from the adventure deck and simultaneously all players make marks on their playerboards based on what is drawn.

If it's smooth sailing, players will make a specific mark on their shipboards. And if it's an adventure card, players will be drawing that shape on their map boards. Second is the dice phase. The exploration and win dice are all rolled and placed in the matching spaces of their boards. Third is the actions phase and simultaneously each player resolves one of three possible actions which could be sail in which the players choose a wind direction and use it to move their ship on the waves.

Explore in which they explore adjacent dry land to gain the riches from the exploration die. or visit a port in which they visit an adjacent port, tell their tales to convert their story points to renown, and have the chance to buy upgrades for their ships. Once each player has taken one action, reset the dice and proceed to the next adventure phase.

You'll spend much of the game making marks on your shipboard, and there are several different areas on this board. These two tracks are the main resources you'll be gaining and spending through the game. Provisions and gold. When you gain either one of these resources, circle or square around the next one, going from bottom to top, left to right.

And anytime you spend or lose them, cross them out. Another resource which can be gained or spent is called wind in your sales. And that's this track here. This is a way of banking up and later spending free movement points. The track down the bottom of your board is called your story track. And every time you gain a feather icon circled the next number on that track.

Every time you visit a port, your current number of story points will convert into renown points, and they never reset. That means that story points you gain early in the game could score up to nine times. So, if you can chase them early and score them often, many locations on your board will show either a blue or a yellow square.

Blue squares are immediate bonuses, and the first time you mark the corresponding square, you gain that bonus. So, here by gaining this coin, I also gain one wind in my sales. Yellow squares give you a number of renown points which are scored at the end of the game. And if you can get towards the ends of the various tracks on your board, you can score a lot of points in this way.

The top section of the board shows your upgrades, and this will be the ships. You begin with the leftmost ship, but can upgrade as you go along to stronger ships, and also your cannon track. You begin the game with no cannons, but as you cross these off, you'll increase your cannons. Right now, I'd be considered to have a basic ship with two cannons.

Upgrading your cannons will help you fight sea monsters and pirates, while upgrading your ship will give you extra movement points and a higher hold capacity. To begin the game, your hold capacity is five. Meaning that at the end of each of your turns, if you are holding more than five unspent provisions, you must cross out down to five.

Each turn begins with the adventure phase. Flip the top card from the adventure deck and all players resolve the card. Many smooth sailing cards will give you some extra resources here. for example, gain one gold, gain two provisions, or gain one wind in your sales. The other possible effect is that your enemies get stronger, and you have two enemies, either the sea monsters or the pirates.

When one of these is drawn, cross the next matching icon out on your strength track. It is entirely possible for one of the enemy types to get much stronger than the other. And in some cases, you're given the choice of which one you want to strengthen. The way these are laid out helps you determine whether you have enough cannons to defeat that type of enemy.

If the card is an adventure card, then this shape must now be drawn onto all players maps. Three common rules apply to all shapes. It must be drawn such that one or more of its squares is either in the column of the matching letter or in the row of the matching number or both. The shape can be rotated into any orientation.

Although if it's an asymmetrical shape, it cannot be flipped or mirrored. And it may occupy only fully empty sea spaces. So, not land, not pirates, no previous adventure squares, and no squares containing a line where your ship has visited. So, here are a few legal options for my sirens. Here are some illegal ones, which cross either existing adventures, places you've traveled, or aren't in the correct rows or columns.

There are five types of adventure. Sea monsters follow only the normal rules, and these are creatures which your ship will battle on its journey. Currents offer a quicker way to move around the map. Draw it following the normal rules, including the dashed box as part of the shape. This would be legal, but this would not because the dashed box overlaps with a previous adventure.

Perils of the sea are dangerous weather conditions which your ship will encounter. These are likewise drawn following the normal rules with one exception being that you cannot block off a port. In other words, every port space must always have at least one sea space in front of it, which is not blocked by Perils of the Sea.

All three of these adventure types offer impediments to your sailing, but also great stories. And so, these are not features to be avoided. These are features to place in your ship's path and tackle head on. Since as long as you can navigate them successfully, they'll build your story points and your renown.

If the adventure card is rocks, then it will show a left or a right arrow. Hand your map to the player sitting in that direction and receive one from the opposite neighbor. You now draw the shape on your neighbor's map following the normal rules. And as for Perils on the Sea, you cannot fully block off access to a port using rocks.

Unlike the current cards, any empty spaces on rocks are not considered part of the shape. So, the rocks could straddle but not cover a previous adventure. Now, hand the maps back. Rocks are bad. They will block the movement of your ship, and there's no storytelling benefit in them. You'll simply need to deal with whatever obstacle your opponent has put in place.

The final adventure type is an ambush. Again, you'll hand your map to the player on your left or right and receive one from your other neighbor. The main part of the ambush occupies a single square, and there are no coordinate restrictions. Instead, it must be placed in any square which is out of the line of sight of that player's current ship location.

line of sight is blocked by land. So here for example, these parts of the border off limits and I would choose any other square. The neighbor who drew the ambush must be identifiable. So if you're using differently colored pens, simply draw the ambush icon or perhaps otherwise mark it with your name or initial.

When you ambush, you're lying in weight to attack your opponent's ship. And the power of your ambush depends on your current cannons. So, count up your current cannons and draw dots representing your cannonballs in up to that many of the adjacent eight empty sea spaces. Later on, when your opponent moves a ship into any of these spaces, you'll start a battle, which while it favors the player with the most cannon strength, will still result in good story points for both.

Second is the dice phase. Roll the four dice and set them. The three wind dice will go on the corresponding spaces of the central compass, and the exploration die will go on its matching number on the exploration board. If there are two matching dice on the compass board, that's fine. But if all three match, reroll until they don't.

The results of the dice phase will set your options for the next phase, actions. In the actions phase, simultaneously each player chooses one of the three available actions and resolves it. These are sail, explore, or visit a port. When you sail, choose one of the three wind dice and set your personal compass to match that direction.

Multiple players may choose the same direction. You now gain movement points equal to the basic number of movement points on your current ship, and you may increase it by spending provisions. One movement point per provision here. By spending two, I would end up with five movement points. You now spend up to your maximum number of movement points moving around the board with it being cheapest to move in the direction of your chosen wind and most expensive to move against it.

The movement point cost for a single space is shown on your compass. So here it would be one movement point to move west because that's my chosen direction, two to move either northwest or southwest, three for north or south, and so on. Indicate your ship's movement by drawing a line. Your line can go on any occupied or unoccupied sea space, but not on land and not on rocks.

You can visit the same space multiple times. With my five movement points, valid movements here would be 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 and more. The first time you enter each of your adventure squares, resolve it and cross it off. Perils of the sea are dangerous weather conditions which make for good stories.

When you enter one, gain one story point. However, you cannot end your turn in a Perils of the Sea space. That means you must have enough movement points to continue moving, possibly encountering more. But if you don't have enough movement points to get out of the Perils of the Sea by the end of your turn, then you cannot move in.

Currents move your ship swiftly and provide a small but not terribly interesting story. The first time you enter a current square, immediately follow the arrows to its destination without spending further movement points. And if you crossed both spaces of a current, gain one story point. You can continue moving for the normal movement cost after you finished riding the current.

The first time you enter a space with a sea monster, you must fight that sea monster. There are two ways to win. The first is to have at least as many cannons built as the strength of the sea monsters. So, this would be enough to win, but this would not. And the second way is to spend one provisions.

And this cost doesn't change regardless of how short you are on cannons. Fighting sea monsters is a great tale. And winning the fight always scores you two story points. Each individual square of the adventure shape is its own sea monster, letting you efficiently fight several on the same turn, and you can end your movement with a sea monster.

However, you cannot enter a sea monster square if you're unable to defeat it. Pre-printed on the board are three pirate spaces. When you enter one, your movement ends. Even if you have excess movement points, you're not allowed to move again on this turn. Then, like the sea monsters, you must be able to fight and defeat these pirates.

This can be done by having at least as many cannons as the current pirate strength, or if not, by spending three provisions. In both of these cases, you gain a reward of three gold and two story points. But for the pirates, if you win on cannons, then you also gain an exploration reward. To do this, count up your current number of cannons and choose a reward from the exploration board associated with that die number or one of the lower ones.

The last type of adventure is the ambush if you're playing with it. on a turn when you enter either the ambush's main square or one of the ones marked with a dot. Then after you've completely finished your movement, resolve the ambush with that player. The ambush is resolved with dice. First, the player who drew the ambush rolls the dieice.

On a six, they win. On a one, they lose. And on any other number, the battle continues. Then the player who sailed into the ambush does the same. A roll of six would be a win. A roll of one would be a lose. And on any other number, tally your scores. Players add their roll to their current cannons and the highest total wins.

The winner gains three story points and then either two gold or fills their cargo. This is the first time we've seen this effect. It's also represented by this icon, and it means to check your current ship's hold capacity and then gain as many provisions as you need to to be holding that many. If you lose, you still gain one story point, but you must lose one gold or two provisions or as much as you can if neither is possible.

If the battle is a tie, both players gain two story points. Whatever the result, an entire ambush shape resolves only once. Cross out the central space as soon as you've resolved it. The second option on your turn is explore, and this is a way of gaining resources. To take this option, your ship must be orthogonally adjacent to a land space which has not yet been crossed off.

This could include a mainland space printed along the left or right of the board, but not these empty sea spaces at the top or bottom. Cross off the land space. This means you can't explore there again. And unless you happen to be in a sea space adjacent to two or more lands, you'll have to move again before your next exploration.

Now gain exactly the reward from the current position of the exploration die. You cannot explore at a port space. So if I were here, this would be the only land I could explore. But if your ship is adjacent to an ancient monolith, you can explore that. And when you do, you may choose the exploration reward, which is either one number higher or lower than the number rolled, including wrapping round between six and one.

and you cross the next monolith on your shipboard, gaining the reward. When you cross out your third, the first player to do so gains the highest reward of five story points, three gold, and 20 endgame renown. Second player to visit all three gets the middle reward, and all subsequent players gain the lower.

At the end of an explore turn only, you can also choose to use your provisions to build more cannons. This costs four provisions. So, cross off four of your provisions boxes and then cross off the next cost box on your cannon track. This is a good way to utilize your excess provisions if you have over your hold capacity on an explore turn.

Your third option is to visit a port. And you can do this if you're adjacent to any port on the board, including your circled home port. Cross out the port and take the port actions, which are to tell your story, converting your story points into renown points, and optionally spend gold in the port to do various upgrades.

You can visit a port multiple times, even if you've crossed it out. However, you can only do the tell your story action the first time you visit that port. To tell your story, determine how many story points you currently have and write that number in the next box from bottom to top. In this case, this would be the second port I visited.

After writing this number, gain an additional story point representing the stories from your visit to the port. Now, you may make any number of purchases with gold. And there are three types. You can build the next ship upgrade on your track. So here, for example, it would cost me four gold to upgrade to the next ship.

You can build the next cannon on your cannon track for the printed gold cost. This one would also give me a story point. And you can spend one gold to fill your cargo hold. So here I now have a capacity of seven and I'm holding two. So I would gain an extra five. You may make multiple purchases of the same or different kinds as long as you go in order and have enough gold to pay.

Also, do be clear that visiting the developed port is all about spending gold. You cannot take the action to build a cannon using provisions at a port. That occurs when you explore because in that action, you're exploring undeveloped land and therefore building for yourself. Likewise, you can't make gold purchases when you're exploring undeveloped land.

Through the game, you may collect some wind in your sails, and you can spend this for extra movement, but it differs from normal movement. You can spend one or more wind in your sails before or after your action and on any turn, whether you've chosen to sail, explore, or visit a port. Wind in your sails movement is one step in any one of the eight directions regardless of the current wind dice.

And so it can be a great way to move against the wind. Here, for example, my action phase turn could be to choose visit a port first spending wind in my sails to move one step south and thus be in a valid position to visit that port. When you move using wind in your sails, you resolve any adventures you encounter in full.

Two standard movement rules still apply. You cannot end your turn on Perils of the Sea. So, you must be able to leave that space either through normal movement or through wind in your sails. And if you encounter pirates, then you cannot move again this turn. Not even by spending the wind in your sails.

After the 25th round, the adventure deck will be empty and the game is over. By this time, you may have visited up to eight ports, but if you didn't get to them all, then simply cross out the boxes you failed to reach. Now, determine your final scores. You score your total story points one more time, writing the number here.

For these two boxes, check the map. For each of the three pirates which you did not encounter, lose five points. Then if your ship ended next to a port, gain five points. And if it ended next to your home port, increase that to 10. Finally, add up all the yellow renown points that you've unlocked on different tracks, writing it here.

The player with the highest score wins. If tied, most leftover gold breaks the tie. If still tied, most leftover provisions. And if still tied, victory is shared. Thanks for watching. And if you like this video, maybe you'd like to watch this next one. Have a great day. Bye.