Movers & Shakers - How To Play
Transcript
It's the late 19th century and you're a powerful railway magnet in the Bengal region of India. You'll compete to fulfill contracts and transport essential goods across the region using your own trains and those of your rivals. If you think you're ready to shake the foundations and move the future of Bengal's railways, let's learn Movers and Shakers, a one to four player game from Quinned Games, who helped sponsor this video. This is a strategic game that unfolds over two rounds where money talks and every decision counts. At the end of the game, the player who's built the greatest wealth through clever planning and bold investments will be crowned the winner. But before anyone can win, we need to get the game set up and ready to play. Start by placing the game board in the center of the table and be sure to use the appropriate side for your player count. We'll be setting up for a four-player game. And note, for a three-player game, position the investment grid overlay right here.
Shuffle the load cards and the movement cards separately and place them face down next to the game board. Next, sort the agencies by type and stack them in four separate face up stacks nearby along with the two types of deal tiles and a general supply of investment tokens. This is the performance section of the board. Shuffle the white and red performance bonus tiles separately and randomly add them to the indicated spaces. Now it's time for each player to set up their play space, starting with the company board. Place the company board in front of you and take the two matching starting contracts as noted by these icons and slide them into the corresponding slots on the right side of your board. Each player chooses a color and takes all of those components along with four asset value tiles and one cash flow marker.
Place two of your crates on each of your starting contracts. Your asset value markers go above the zero space of the asset value track across the top of your company board and your cash flow marker below the zero space of the cash flow track at the bottom of your board. Each player should separate their contracts by seal color and form two faceown stacks to the right of their company board. Next, place your Bernarez and Kolkata markers and your financial advisor on the bottom row of the designated column of the market track and your performance marker on the zero space of the performance track. Finally, each player draws four cards from the load deck and four cards from the movement deck, keeping them hidden from other players.
Next, players will complete their personal setup by choosing a unique setup card along with an asset or deal tile. Lay out the five setup cards in alphabetical order. Then, take one deal tile and the four asset tiles, shuffle them, and randomly assign one to each setup card. Randomly determine which player will draft first. They receive two rupees on their cash flow track, and then each player going clockwise receives one more rupee than the last. So, three, four, and five rupees for the other players, respectively. In draft order, each player will select one pairing of setup card and tile. You can save the tile for later use, but use the setup card to place your freight cars out on the map and collect your starting bonuses and marker advancements. For example, a player with setup card C would load a crate in a small freight car and place it in segment C on the map. their large freight car in Kolkata and their medium and remaining small freight car in Bernarez. Additionally, they would move either their Bernarez or Kolkata markers up the market track one space. Advance any two different asset markers along the asset value track and receive a northern agency tile, placing it to the far right on their company board's agency track. Then all players place their turn order markers on the turn order track in the alphabetical order of their setup cards. And with that, the game is all set up and ready to go.
Movers and Shakers plays over just two rounds. And each round is broken into two phases, the action phase and the administration phase. During the action phase, players in turn order play one card to their company board and carry out the actions on both the card and the slot where the card is placed. This continues until everyone has filled all six slots of their company board and then you move on to the administration phase, which I'll explain shortly after you have a better understanding of all the actions you can take in the game. On your turn, choose any card from your hand and play it to any unoccupied slot on your company board. Cards have a wide variety of actions, and the slot you play to gives you the choice of a company action. either the development at the top or logistics at the bottom.
You will always perform the action or actions on the card, but depending on how you position it, you will choose just one of the two slot actions. If you choose the development action at the top, you'll notice that it combines with the card to determine how many times you will perform the development icon in the top left of your card. If you play your card for the logistics action instead, just ignore this icon at the top as though you're doing it zero times. It's important to note that performing your actions is always mandatory. There is a slight exception that we'll go over in a bit, but you must typically perform all of your actions and you can perform your card action followed by your company action or the other way around. But you must resolve an action fully before going to the next. In the very rare case where you cannot perform any card action, you must place the card as usual, skip your card action, and receive three rupees instead.
There are 66 cards in the game, so we won't cover each one, but let's take a closer look at how they work and explain some common actions they involve. Aside from the actions themselves, you'll find some formatting on action cards you should understand. When you see a line with this icon, it means you must choose either the upper or the lower option, but not both. With this icon, you can perform both actions in any order, but you must complete one before starting the other. Finally, when you see a thin line like this, read the actions as if they were on a single line. For example, in this case, you would perform one move for each crate currently on one of your contracts, choosing which of your contracts to use.
Many of the actions in the game involve a variety of icons, and understanding those better will help make any action you encounter in the game more self-explanatory. Whenever you see the coin icon with either a white or red number, this means you will either receive or pay the indicated amount, respectively. You manage your finances by sliding your cash flow marker along the cash track at the bottom of your company board. Keep in mind that every time your marker reaches the 10 space, you immediately gain one investment token and reset your marker to zero. We'll explain these later during the administration phase, but just remember that managing your cash track can be a delicate balance. You'll definitely want investment tokens, but you'll also want to make sure you have rupes to pay for many in-game actions. There are three types of market markers in the game. Bernarez, Kolkata, and the financial adviser.
Whenever you trigger the matching icon, advance the corresponding marker, the indicated steps on the market track. For example, this effect would move your financial adviser up one step. As your financial adviser climbs the market track, instant bonuses will be granted along the way in the form of agency and deal tiles. Agency tiles are immediately placed on your agency track, filling right to left, and deal tiles are simply kept next to your company board. There are no immediate bonuses when moving your Bonarez and Kolkata markers, but these will determine the value of your crates when collecting money during the administration phase. When you trigger the generic market icon, you may choose any one of these three markers to advance. For example, when triggering this development action, you could advance any one of these markers twice or any two markers once.
You'll want to increase the value of your assets throughout the game. And there are four different assets: bonds, valuables, resources, and infrastructure. And their values are tracked across the top of your company board. When you see one of these icons, advance the corresponding marker up the track by the indicated amount. When activating the generic icon, you may choose which marker to increase. Some logistics actions look like this for both the asset value and market markers. In these cases, you may choose which to advance by one and which to advance by two. For example, this logistics action could increase the asset value of my bonds by one and my valuables by two or the other way around. Just under that track is your agency track, which advances in the opposite direction. When you activate any of the agency icons like these, just take the corresponding agency tile and add it to the track from right to left.
Three of these will award an amount of VP at the end of the game for each deal tile you've collected with this one also providing an immediate four rupees when placed. The west agency tile provides no effects, but it accelerates progress on the track. The asset value track and the agency track are related to each other and eventually might trigger a concession bonus. The moment the markers on each track meet, a concession bonus is triggered based on the asset value marker involved. For example, the moment the resources value marker meets the leftmost agency marker. You would trigger this bonus and move another marker twice or two markers once. This could include advancing the bonds marker again or moving another marker such that it also triggers its corresponding bonus. And with some of those more straightforward actions out of the way, it's time to move on to two of the core actions and really the heart of the game. Loading crates and moving trains.
One of the main objectives of the game is to load your crates onto your trains or those of your rivals and then move those trains from one city to another to deliver goods. To load a crate, remove one or more goods from your active contracts and place them onto a freight car with available space that is currently in a loading zone. These are indicated by this icon and include both cities and the two central junction segments. And remember, it doesn't matter who owns the freight car. You can load crates onto any freight car, not just your own. Also, unless stated otherwise on the action card, you cannot load more than one crate into the same freight car during a single turn. You may take goods from either or both of your active contracts, but each crate must go into a different freight car. And this is probably a good time to talk about contracts in a little more detail. Each player has a personal set of 16 contracts plus two starting contracts.
These are divided into two distinct types, commercial and strategic. Commercial contracts focus more on short-term economic benefits, while strategic contracts are geared toward long-term company growth. Each contract shows the asset type it represents in the center. the contract type in the lower right. The number of crates placed on the contract when selected is in the upper right and the reward received once the contract is completed is in the lower left. This is a commercial contract representing a bonds asset. It would have four crates placed on it when selected and when completed rewards the player with an increase of two for their bonds asset value marker and an increase of one for the asset value marker of their choice. At the end of a turn, if one or both of your contracts have been fully completed, emptied of crates, follow these steps for each completed contract.
First, gain the reward shown at the bottom left of the completed contract. Place the completed contract to the left side of your company board. Draw two new contracts of the same type you completed, choosing one to keep and returning the other to the top or bottom of the stack. Finally, place the required number of crates at the top of the new contract onto it immediately. And now that you know how to load crates onto those freight cars, it's time to get them moving across the map. One of the primary ways of earning money and ultimately victory points is delivering goods to Bernarez and Kolkata. But before we start talking about moving trains, there's some things you should understand. The railway on the board is divided into rail segments which appear in two forms. Single track segments and junction segments. Each rail segment contains one or more rows and each row is made up of three spaces, each fitting one small freight car. So, a single row could hold a combination of up to three small freight cars, one medium and one small freight car, or one large freight car. You may always place fewer freight cars, but may never exceed the space in a single segment row. A train is defined by any group of freight cars that share a single segment row. And these freight cars may belong to one or more players.
A train can consist of just one freight car or several as long as they fit in the row space. To be eligible for movement, a freight car must be loaded with at least half of its total capacity. A small one must be fully loaded. A medium freight car can move with one or two crates, and a large one must have at least two crates to move. Only freight cars that meet this minimum load threshold can be part of a train and move across the board. When you take the move trains action, you can either form a new train or move one already on the board. To form a new train, select any eligible freight cars, ones that meet the minimum load requirement, and group them together. This is only allowed in the two main cities, Bernarez and Kolkata, where trains begin their journey. Once the train is formed, slide it into the first single track segment leading out of the city. That entire process of grouping them together and placing them on the track is just one movement. And remember that even a single freight car placed on a track this way counts as forming a train.
Alternatively, you may move an existing train already on the board by advancing it one rail segment in its current direction. For each movement point you spend, you may choose any train on the board. You're not required to continue moving the same train. When positioning a train, slide it fully to the front of the row, as far as it can go within the segment to maintain clear positioning. Next, we'll talk about merging trains, splitting trains, and pushing trains. But before we do, there are some important rules to remember. Trains always move in a clockwise direction. A train starting in Bernarez must head toward Kolkata and vice versa. And you must use all movement steps granted by an action or bonus unless it's physically impossible. For example, if there are no eligible freight cars available. And any player may move any train regardless of who owns the freight cars or the crates they carry.
Merging trains happens when moving a train into a row with another train and their combined size does not exceed three freight car spaces. This applies in both single track and junction segments. So you may never leave a gap between freight cars in a track segment row. And of course, if there's not enough room to merge the incoming train due to space limitations, this is going to create a pushing situation, which we'll talk about shortly. But first, let's talk about splitting trains. When a train arrives at a junction segment, you're allowed to split the train across multiple rows depending on your needs and the available space. How you divide the freight cars is entirely up to you, but each car must be added in the order it arrived.
Whenever you move a train or split one upon entering a junction, and there's an existing train but insufficient space to merge, you'll need to push the train that's already ahead of you. When this happens, the train in front is pushed forward for free, moving one segment ahead without using any movement points. This, of course, can create a chain reaction with one push potentially leading to another across multiple segments. This is why it's important to fully resolve one movement step before triggering the next. If a train is pushed into a junction segment, you may choose to split it up, as we already explained. However, this may lead to an additional pushing situation depending on how the cars are arranged. If multiple pushes are triggered at once, you must respect the order in which the freight cars arrived, meaning the frontmost freight car would move first and so on. There are also some shortcuts around the railway. There's one located just before reaching each city. When moving trains, you may spend the indicated number of movement steps to bypass the final segments of the railroad. For example, you could spend four movement steps to move from here, bypassing these two segments to reach Bonaras. It's important to note though that trains may never get pushed over a shortcut. It must be pushed into the next available single track segment instead.
And when a train arrives in either Bernarez or Kolkata, it's time to unload its cargo and gain performance. Once a train reaches this space at either city, take all of the crates from the freight cars and place them in the warehouse adjacent to that city. These crates will earn their owner's rupees at the end of the round. Next, each freight car that arrives in the city will improve its owner's performance. Starting at the front of the train, freight car by freight car, move the performance marker of the owner of each car forward a number of steps equal to the car's size. For example, if this train just arrived and unloaded, the yellow player would first advance one on the performance track and then the green player would advance twice. Once everything is resolved, split up the freight cars and leave them available in the city area, ready to be loaded and moved again on a future turn. Before we move on, let's take a closer look at the performance track. In addition to being triggered when you arrive at a city, there are other actions that may trigger it as well. The performance track benefits players in two key ways. It grants bonuses during the game when a marker reaches certain spaces, and it awards victory points at the end of the game, depending on your final position.
Whenever your marker reaches one of these white or red icons, you may choose one of the corresponding performance bonus tiles and remove it from the board. White bonuses provide an immediate one-time effect and also reward you with an amount of money. After using the bonus, remove it from play. Red bonuses grant you a tile which counts as an asset for end ofame scoring, but to claim it, you must pay the amount of money shown. These tiles are kept until the end of the game. Note that once your marker reaches the end of the track, you earn one rupee for every step you would advance beyond it. The last action we should highlight is to ship crates. With this action, you may place the indicated number of crates from your contracts onto the different ships of the shipping zone. You may deliver them to different ships or the same one. However, some versions of this action will require you to ship crates to a specific ship. Every crate you load onto the ships gives you an immediate reward. Ship one advances your financial advisor one step. Ship two gives you three rupees, and ship three lets you advance one asset value marker of your choice. As I mentioned, these are some of the core actions you'll see throughout the game in a number of variations. If you come across one that you don't understand while playing, be sure to check the rule book, which has a detailed explanation of each card. Once players have played a card to
all of their slots on their company board, it's time to end the round with the administration phase. Start by evaluating that shipping zone. First, check which player has the most crates across all three ships. That player receives a double deal tile. All other players with at least one crate on any ship receives a single deal tile. If there's a tie for most crates, break it by comparing crates on ship one, then ship two, then ship three, and finally the current turn order. Then use these same steps and tie breakers to determine the new turn order for the next round. Next, you'll collect your money from all those deliveries. Each player receives rupees based on the number of crates they delivered to Bernarez and Kolkata.
Check each warehouse and multiply the number of your crates by the value of your matching market marker. For example, the blue player delivered five crates to Banaras and their corresponding marker is in this position on the market track. So this would earn them 25 rupees. They delivered three crates to Kolkata and their marker is here. So they would earn an additional 18 rupees. That's 43 rupees in total. So they would receive four investment tokens, one for each 10 rupees, and move up their cash by the remaining three rupees. Note that in this step during round two, players will also receive money for their crates still on trains at a rate of one, two, and three rupees depending on what junction segment it reached. At this point, players must adjust their market value markers by moving all three of your markers to the lowest value position among them. For example, the yellow player would set all of their markers to this position. Then all players receive the rupee bonus for their position on the track. In this case, yellow would gain three rupees and the other players wouldn't gain any.
And finally, players may now use their investment tokens. In the new turn order, each player may spend any number of investment tokens to play one investment marker per turn into the investment grid. Players continue taking turns until they're done investing. When placing your marker, choose a row and spend the number of tokens shown to the left of that row. Then immediately advance a number of asset value markers as indicated at the top of the column. And keep in mind, you may place your investment marker in a space that already contains other markers. However, for each marker already present, you must reduce your asset advancement by one. If this penalty were ever to take your advancement below zero, you may not place in that row. And remember that if advancing your asset value markers triggers one or more concession bonuses that grant you rupees, immediately advance your cash flow marker as usual.
And any investment tokens you gain this way may also be used during this same phase. And that is the first round complete. So it's time to prepare the board for the second and final round. Remove all cards from your company boards. Return all crates from both warehouses and ships to their respective owners supply. All trains and freight cars, whether empty or still loaded with crates, remain in their current positions. And finally, deal three load cards and three movement cards to each player. And play now resumes with the new start player and continues in the new turn order for round two. When round two finishes, the game ends and players will calculate their victory points using five steps. Each player starts by multiplying the number of each asset they acquired by the corresponding value their marker reached on the asset value track. Assets can come from completed contracts, starting asset tiles, or red performance bonus tiles. For example, this player has five infrastructure assets, each at a value of five. So, those are worth 25 victory points.
Next, each player counts the total number of deal tiles they acquired and multiplies it by the sum of VP across all of their agency tiles. This player has a total of five deals and a value of six VP on their agency track for a total of 30 victory points. Then look at the performance track and score the number of victory points based on their final position. In this case, 10 VP. On the investment track, you'll score your investments and your secret investor bonus. Each investment marker placed on the board grants a number of victory points shown in its slot. The red player in this case would score 78 points. And your secret investor bonus is calculated by multiplying the number of investment tokens you placed by the value of your lowest asset, which for the yellow player in this case would be nine victory points. And the player with the most points wins. In the case of a tie, it's going to go to the player with the most remaining rupees. And if there's still a tie, it goes to the player who's earliest in the current turn order. And that is how you play movers and shakers.
If you have any questions at all, please be sure to check the rule book or get down in the comments and ask me anything you'd like. I'll answer whatever I can. Until next time, make sure everyone has fun at the table and we'll see you then.