Ringyō | How to Play | Learn to Play in 16 Minutes! | Simulatenous Worker Placement Strategy Game
Transcript
Hello everybody, my name is Zoya.
And my name is Tyler.
Together we make up Calvert, a couple that loves to play board games. And today we'll be teaching you how to play Ringyo.
Ringyo is a one to four player game designed by Charlie Bigham and is published by Paverson Games who helped sponsor this video.
As a note, what you see in this video is still a prototype of the game and the final game may be subject to change. But with that said, let's go to the table and let's learn how to play. As always, you'll begin by setting up. Place the Edo board in the center of the table and the round marker on the first position on the round track. Shuffle the bonus land tiles and place them in a face down stack near the board. Then shuffle the Shogun's favorite cards, deal two to each player and place the remaining deck in its space. Shuffle the forestry cards, deal one to each player and place the remaining cards in a deck face down in its designated space. Next, you'll shuffle the Shogun's gift cards and place them face down next to the board. You'll then reveal one card from the deck per player and place them face up in the display area. If the card shows bonus land tiles, a forestry card, or a Shogun's favorite card, draw these from the relevant decks and place them face up on the Shogun's gift card.
You'll then prepare the Shogun's demats by shuffling them face down, placing them in a stack next to the board, and revealing the top two tiles into the display. Next, you'll prepare the forecast and weather cards. Shuffle the forecast cards and place them in a face up deck on the board. And then shuffle the weather cards and place three face down onto the board in their designated space without looking at them. You'll take a priority marker for each player and randomly determine the start of game priority order. Finally, you'll create a general supply within reach of all players. This will include villagers, artisans, samurai, research tokens, military tokens, flood paddy tokens, farm fortress tokens, and the tree segments split by color. You're now ready for player setup. Each player will receive a random province board with a matching province setup card, a forestry track board, and a structure board in their color, two yellow samurai, a set of six diplomat cards, 12 structure tokens, two standard player aids, two track markers, and a set of demand cubes. You'll place your province board A side face up in the middle of your play area. Place a forestry track on the left side of your province board and the structure board to the right.
Next, place a track marker on the bottom most space of the forestry track, and another track marker on the fifth space of your rice track. Then, place your set of demand cubes near your play area. On your structure board, you'll place a structure token on each of the 12 structure spaces. Next, you'll use the province card to populate your province with matching tree segments and flood paddy tiles from the general supply based on the icon shown on the card. You can return the province setup card back to the box after doing so. Lastly, you'll choose one of the two shogun's favor cards to keep and return the other to the box. These are personal goals which will reward you with honor points at the end of the game based on how well you've achieved them. The chosen card, along with a forestry card and six diplomat cards, can be kept in your hand or placed face down in your play area. You're now ready to play. In Ryo, you'll play as a daimyo, a feudal lord overseeing your personal province.
You'll use skilled samurai alongside local artisans and villagers to shape the land. In addition, you'll be aiming to impress the shogun who resides in Edo, the capital city now known as Tokyo. The shogun will bestow you with gifts, but also has demands that resources from your province will help meet. The goal in this game is to earn the most honor points. You'll do this by building structures in your province, studying trees and managing sustainability of your forests, fulfilling shogun's demands, and achieving shogun's favors. You'll do all of this while managing the fluctuating weather, with rain having both positive effects of growth of your trees and negative effects of destructive floods in your lands. Now, this game is played over a course of five rounds with each round containing four phases. An Edo Council phase where you'll send diplomats to determine priority order, gain diplomat bonuses, and gifts from the Shogun. A province phase where you'll simultaneously place samurai, artisans, and villagers on your province to take variety of actions and special actions.
A weather phase where you'll gain military tokens from fortresses and resolve the effects of the weather. And finally, the Shogun demands phase where you'll contribute to the Shogun by fulfilling his demands. Let's go through all of these in detail starting with the Edo Council phase. Here, you'll simultaneously and secretly choose one of your diplomat cards from your hand and place it face down onto the table. Once everyone has chosen their diplomat card, you'll reveal them and work out the priority order. Higher value diplomats will take priority. If there are ties, the relative priority order of tied players is the reverse order from the previous round. Next, after setting the priority order, you'll resolve any bonus or cost from your diplomat card. These are listed in the top right corner. Let's go through what these mean. The diplomat with the number one will allow you to draw three bonus land tiles. Choose one to add to your province and discard the others. Only eight tiles may be added to your province board throughout the game as they must be placed that each new tile touches two areas on your province board as so.
Two and four give you an artisan and a villager, which are workers you'll be able to place the next phase. Three gains you three rice, which can be used in variety of ways. And to play the diplomat with six, you need to pay two rice. [snorts] Now, once you gain the bonus, you proceed to choose one of the available Shogun's gifts and claim the gift associated with the card. These can be workers to be utilized in next phase, forestry or Shogun's favor cards, the ability to grow trees, conversion of floods to rice paddies, conversions of yellow samurai to green samurai, increasing the amount of actions you can take, gaining bonus land tiles, or receiving additional diplomat cards, which will grant you permanent workers, or help you win priority in the future.
After everyone has claimed the Shogun's gifts, you'll proceed to the next phase. As a note, the diplomat you used for this round will stay near your play area. They cannot be used again in the future, meaning your choices of diplomats will dwindle as the game continues. Now, the province phase. Here, you'll place workers, take actions, take special actions, and utilize forestry cards to manage your province. This phase is completed simultaneously by all players. Let's start with a worker placement. To use a worker, you'll place them in an open intersection between three areas in your province. What this means is that you cannot place a worker on the intersections at the edge of your board. And only one worker can be placed in each intersection. Now, there are four types of workers.
Samurai are permanent workers you'll have round to round. The yellow samurai will grant you a total of two actions once placed, each in a different area. While the green samurai will be able to take one action in each of the three adjacent areas they're placed next to. Artisans and villagers are temporary workers, and will be discarded at the end of the round. Artisans will have as many actions as a yellow samurai, being able to take an action in two adjacent regions. And villagers may only take one action in one adjacent region. The different type of workers also matter for the actions each can take. You can see in your reference card which worker can take which action. Let's go through all the actions. There are four basic actions that can be performed by any worker. Number one, plant. You'll add a tree of the matching type from the supply to an adjacent empty or flooded area. If there was a flood token there, you'll return it to the supply.
Number two, grow. You'll add one segment from the supply on top of an adjacent tree in your province. The maximum height a tree can be is five segments. Number three, cut. You'll take all segments of a tree from one adjacent area of your province into your supply, keeping the tree connected. Number four, harvest. If adjacent to a rice paddy, you can take the harvest action to gain one rice or two rice if a paddy has a farm on top of it. Next, we have actions that can only be performed by an artisan or a samurai. Number one, create a rice paddy. Here, you'll turn an adjacent flood token into a rice paddy by flipping it. Rice paddies will provide you rice throughout the game. Number two, build. You'll pay the full tree cost from your storage area to build an available structure by returning the segments to the supply.
Now, at the start of the game, you'll only be able to build the structures at the bottom of your board by paying the exact cost of trees. When building a structure, you can choose for it to be a fortress or a farm. A fortress can only be built on an empty space and will provide military tokens through actions or in each weather phase. While farms can only be placed on top of rice paddies. They will double your rice production of that space. After building a structure, you may unlock bonuses if you've built all the structures in a row, column, or two adjacent spaces. You'll take the visible actions immediately. Additionally, in order to build in the higher spaces of your province, you'll need to pay food to do so as indicated on your province board. Also, once you've placed a structure, you'll be able to build any adjacent structures. This is how you'll be able to build structures higher up on your structure board.
Now, the last two actions can only be performed by the samurai. Number one, muster. If a samurai is adjacent to a fortress, you'll gain two military tokens. Number two, study. You'll examine an adjacent tree of a matching type and exact height of one tree of the next forestry track requirement. Then, you'll advance your cube up the forestry track and take the bonus covered. Moving through your forestry track is a primary way you'll obtain research tokens. And again, you only need to observe one of the two trees to take the study action and move up on the forestry track. With actions out of the way, now is a good time to mention forestry cards. Forestry cards can be used anytime during the province phase to gain some kind of bonus or to complete an action without using a worker.
Most of them are one-time use. However, some do stay in effect for the entire round. Additionally, you can discard forestry cards during the province phase to gain two rice instead of taking the ability on the cards. Now, we've gone over the actions, we've gone over the forestry cards. In addition to all of that, you can take special actions, which do not require a worker to use. Now, there are five special actions you can take. Let's go through them. Number one, split. [snorts] You can separate a tree in your storage into two segments. This does not cost you anything and can be done multiple times. Number two, join. You can pay one rice to join two trees of the same type together. This is useful for when you need a tree of a set height, but only have smaller trees. Number three, hire.
You can pay two rice to gain a villager from the supply. You can utilize the villager immediately upon purchase. Just remember, they can only perform one of the four basic actions. Number four, expand. You can pay three military to expand. You'll draw two bonus tiles, choose one to place, and discard the other. This will add more trees and/or rice paddies to your province, as well as open up more intersections for workers. And lastly, number five, foresee. You can discard one research token to pick up one of the weather cards for the current round. You can do this multiple times if you have the research tokens available. With that said, this is a great segue into the next phase, the weather phase. Once every player has completed all the actions and special actions they wish to take, you'll proceed to the weather phase. This phase is also completed simultaneously by all players. At the start of the weather phase, each player will gain one military token from the supply for each fortress in their province.
Next, you'll reveal and resolve each weather card one at a time from top to bottom. Each weather card will show a tree type or a letter, A, B, or C. When a letter is revealed, you'll check the forecast card to determine which area is affected. There are three A's, two B's, and one C in the deck, hence the odds on the forecast cards. Now, to resolve a rain card, you'll first check to see if the existing spaces of that type have trees. If they do, your trees on those spaces will grow by one segment. If you have a rice paddy in that space, each rice paddy will generate one rice. If a farmer is also present on that space, it will generate two rice instead of one. But, if the corresponding area is empty, you'll place a flood token on that space.
If there's already a flood token there, the flood will cascade one space down. When choosing how to cascade, if both areas below did not have flood tokens, you'll consult the forecast card to determine which space the flood token should occupy. If one space contains a flood token and the other doesn't, the flood will cascade into a space without the flood token. And if both spaces below have a flood token, nothing happens. Flooding does not chain. Now, if any trees, rice paddies, or structures are currently present in the space the flood cascades to, they will have been destroyed by the flood and are returned to the supply. Once all three weather cards have been resolved, you'll proceed to the Shogun's demands phase.
Here, in priority order, you'll take turns claiming an available spot on the Shogun's demand tiles by paying the required amount of resources. Once you do, you'll place your demand cube above the spot claimed. The honor points below will be scored at the end of the game. You can only claim one demand per turn, so timing what you do is crucial. If you do not wish to claim a tile or simply cannot, you'll pass. Now, there are four types of demands that you'll see throughout the game. Rice tax, which you'll pay with rice, forestry knowledge, which you'll pay by returning the research tokens back to the supply, bolster military, which you'll pay for with military tokens, and build an Edo, which you'll pay for by returning any trees of said height as indicated on the Shogun's favorite tile.
Once all players have passed in this phase, you'll clean up for the next round. You'll return any used artisans or villagers back to the general supply and take back the yellow and green samurai back to your own supply. Next, you'll reveal one new Shogun's gift card per player. If the deck runs out, shuffle the discarded cards and continue revealing. You continue by discarding the topmost forecast card and then taking all the weather cards, shuffling them, and placing three face down onto the board for the next round. Finally, you'll reveal two more Shogun's demand tiles and advance the round tracker one step. You're now ready for the next round. You continue playing following the same steps until the end of the fifth round, where you'll go through end game scoring. First, you'll score honor points for each structure you have built. It does not matter if the structure has been destroyed. You'll still score points for each of the structures built. Next, you'll score points in your province depending how far your forestry marker has reached the forestry track. If your marker is in the first level, you'll receive one honor point for every tree with a height of four or higher.
If it's in the second level, you'll receive an honor point for every tree with a height of three or higher. And finally, if you reach the top of the track, you'll score an honor point for each tree in your province with a height of two or higher. Next, you'll add up the points from the Shogun's demands based on where your tokens are. And finally, you'll add up points from the Shogun's favor cards based on how well you've met the listed condition. At this point, you'll compare the scores and the player with the most honor points wins. In case of a tie, the tied player who fulfilled the most Shogun's demands wins. And if still tied, you'll share the victory.
And that's Ryo. Do you have any questions? Leave them in the comments down below and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. And if you found this video helpful, make sure you hit that thumbs up button. Hit that subscribe button if you're new here cuz we love talking and teaching board games.
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Mhm.
Now, for our question of the day, we have explored the forestry industry. What industry would you love to see a game be depicted about?
Mhm.
Or sector or like something specific group.
Yeah.
Maybe even if it's historical or not.
Ooh.
Let us know your answers down in the comments below. But until next time, we will see you later.
Bye.