Florence Board Game - How to Play

hi it's tyrone and stella from maple university today we'll be teaching you how to play florence and so hopefully by the end of this video you'll be ready to play the game coming up [Music] let's learn to play florence game designed by dean morris and published by brain crack games and if you find value from this video later please hit the like button subscribe to us and hit the bell and leave your feedback in the comments for others to find for now let's get to the table florence is a euro style tactical area control game set in the time of the medicis in florence italy through the game you'll spend the limited action points you have available to curry favor with the medici who will be riding around in these three carriages you'll try to get your best family members to follow the medicis around the city lavish them with gifts and brag about your successes all in the aim of gaining victory points the player who earns the most victory points over nine rounds of play will gain the most favor with the medicis and win the game in this video we are using a two-player prototype copy of the game and so the art of rules may not be final to set up place the main board in the center of the table shuffle up the nine brag tiles and then place one into each of these nine spaces on the board separate and shuffle the three scandal decks and then place them on the appropriate coloured spaces draw and reveal three random location tiles these will give you a number between one and nine then randomly place a noble carriage onto each of those three numbered spaces then shuffle those three tiles back into a stack and shuffle the remaining six and place the six on top of the three for a stack of nine also shuffle up the eight time tokens then set up the noble dial rotate it so that this arrow is pointing at the number one wedge then deal the first two time tokens onto these spaces here and the first three location markers onto these spaces each wedge of this wheel represents one round of the game and it shows you how much time you will gain in that round and where the corresponding colored noble is going to move to at the end of that round as a visual reminder for this you will take these three colored noble rings and place them onto their corresponding locations like so each player then takes a player board and the following components in their player colors five debutant maples three donna meeples and one maestro meeple these are all collectively referred to as family members six goblet shaped brag markers six guards who are not considered family members three gifts and a pass ring the only player color pieces you don't keep are three gifts which should be placed on or near the noble dial and your score marker which starts at zero each player has also dealt a random scheme card which the player may look at but should keep secret from other players and sets the time dial of their player board to 12 for the start of the game choose a first player and then in reverse turn order each player places one debutant meeple onto the purple prime location of a location somewhere on the board each player must choose a different location finally if you're playing with fewer than four players you can use these location blocking tokens to block out spaces that aren't used in your play account you're now ready to play florence is played in nine rounds which are tracked by the wedges on the noble dial each round is played in five phases first there is gain time where the players will gain a certain amount of time according to the round second is the actions phase where players will spend that time in order to take the different actions available to them next is noble movement where this rounds noble will move to its next destination and trigger bonuses for players with family members spies or brags in all of those locations fourth is q scoring where all of the family members in the noble's final destination score according to this round's q scoring table which is where a lot of the points in the game will come from finally comes clean up where you will rotate the dial and remove old tokens before setting up for the next round after all nine rounds are complete you'll proceed to final scoring and the player with the most points wins so now let's look at each step in detail the first step is to gain time and each player gains time equal to this printed value or this token for the current round of the game in round one this will be your starting value of 12 time and in each subsequent round it will be a random number between 2 and 9 time each of these tokens is used once during the game and you'll be able to see a couple rounds ahead whether you've got a rich or lean round players mark this increase on their time dial and if they ever go above 12 they reset back to 12.

any excess is wasted then discard the time token from the dial and proceed to actions in the actions phase players will spend their time in order to take the various different actions available to them players will take their actions one action at a time starting with the first player and going clockwise around the table once a player is out of time or no longer wishes to take actions that player will pass and once all players have passed the actions phase is over so now let's look at all of the different actions the first action is to dispatch and this will cost you four time and allows you to take one of your debutant meeples from your board and place it onto an empty cue space of any location on the main board a dispatch debutant will always go to the rear of the queue so that will be the purple prime position in an empty location or the rearmost open space at a field one the second action which costs five time is to promote and this allows you to turn one of your dispatched debutants into the next level of maple up which is a donna or convert a donna into a maestro to do this take the upgraded meeple put it in the place of the weaker meeple on the board and then return the weaker meeple to your player board then update the queuing order at that location such that maestros are always ahead of donners and donners are always ahead of debutants the queueing order is always first based on order of seniority then on order of arrival so if this blue debutant were upgraded the order would shift like so and if the donner were then promoted the maestro would take the lead like so the next three actions are all different variations on the move action for one time you may move one family member by one space or for three time you can take a rush where you'll move one family member two spaces or two family members one space each movement occurs along these 12 streets each marked with the cosimo's red shield this pathway through the park is not available for player movement to move simply take the meeple of whichever type and then move it along one of those streets to its correct position in the new locations queue once again family members queue first by seniority then by order of arrival so if this debutant were to move over here it would take its position at the back of the queue while if this donner were to move over here she would take her position second in the queue according to seniority family members left at the previous location shuffle forward to occupy the front of the queue if a location is completely full for your play account no more family members may move there the next action is to brag and this is one of the major ways you'll gain points in the game for completing objectives out on the main board to take the action you must spend one time you must have at least one of your six brag markers remaining to use and you must choose a valid brag card which doesn't already have one of your brag markers and which is at a location containing at least one of your family members of those you can see here location 2 is the only valid place for orange to brag now determine how many points you score based on that objective as the board is currently laid out here for example it's three points for each of the purple prime locations occupied by one of your family members so from what you can see here it's six points add that many points on the scoring track and then place your brag marker onto whichever of these three goblets matches your score so 13 or more 7 to 12 or 6 to 0.

here it was a score of 6 points so it would go in the 0 to 6 section if your scoring range is filled you may place in a lower open scoring range without impacting the amount of points you score so for example if the blue player scored 9 points from this objective that player could place the brag marker here in the 0 to 6 range and still score 9 points however if there is no open space in your scoring range or lower then you cannot take the brag so in this case blue would not be able to take a six point brag at all that would be an invalid action blue would have to score seven or more off this brag to even legally be allowed to take that brag action do note that if the zero to six space is open it is legal to take a brag action and score zero points from it this has the effect of blocking out that space for other players i'll take you through all the brag cards a little later in the video once we've seen every mechanic the next action is to give a gift to a noble and to take this action you must have at least one gift in your supply and at least one family member at the current carriage location of the noble you wish to give the gift to the time cost to take this action is equal to two plus one for each gift that you've previously given that noble which you can be reminded by this two asterisk cost as a reward for giving the gift you now get to place one of your guard pieces onto one of that noble's shields somewhere out on the board each of these three nobles has a different type of effect for your guards for cosimo the red noble you may place one of your guards onto one of his shields on the different streets around the map from now on when you move one of your family members along that street you do so at a time cost which is reduced by one and when an opponent moves along that street they do so at normal cost and with a two victory point bonus for you the purple contest cena allows you to place a guard as a spy onto any one brag card on the board this gives you a bonus in the noble movement phase of the round which we'll get to shortly the blue giovanni allows you to place a guard as a bouncer at any one location from this point forward whenever one of your family members is deployed there or moves there you will advance that family member all the way to the head of the queue according to its seniority this does not apply to family members who are already there nor does it apply when one is promoted the next action is not printed on your player board and it concerns the scandal cards which we haven't actually spoken about how to gain yet however once you have at least one of these in your hand you can spend your action to play it flipping it face up spending the time cost shown in the top right corner and then resolving the action after you've resolved it you'll place it in the discard pile specific to that noble you can also discard scandals from your hand at any time without resolving the effect to gain one time per discarded card a reminder for this is shown on the main board near location 5.

the final option is to pass this cost you no time and the first player to pass each round gains to time passing does not completely end your actions phase when you pass you take your pass ring and place it on any location on the board which doesn't already have a pass ring every subsequent time that play passes to you during this actions phase you may advance your rear most family member at the pass ring location one step forward in the queue while still respecting seniority rules so orange's first turn after passing results in that debutant advancing and the second turn after passing would result in this donna advancing if your turn comes around and you can no longer advance any further then you instead gain one time and if your turn comes around and you're at maximum time then instead you gain one victory point in this way strategically passing early can gain your number of good tactical benefits once all players have passed the actions phase ends immediately and you'll proceed to the noble movement phase when the noble moves only the current rounds noble will move to the predetermined location that was dealt out earlier in the game the nobles will always follow this clockwise path around the board using the special path carved out through the park [Music] so here the red noble will move through locations 1 5 and 2 before finishing at 3.

resolve movement scoring at each of those locations a player with a family member in the prime position at the head of one of those queues gains points according to this round's wedge on the scoring marker this will be one point for the first three rounds two for the second three and three for the last three rounds you'll then also resolve brag scoring at each location any player who either has a spy or has the single highest brag at that location and at least one family member in the queue gains one scandal card of the corresponding noble so as the red carriage makes its way here orange would receive no card because they have no family member there here there is no scoring here blue meets both of the conditions and gains one card and here blue meets the brag condition and orange meets the spy condition so each player gains one scandal players are not allowed to hold more than five scandal cards at any given time and so if the player already has five they either gain one time or must discard one to gain a time before taking the new card once you've resolved the movement scoring at the final destination you now resolve q scoring for this round the method of q scoring is different for each noble and is outlined on the noble dial cosimo grants points for position in the queue so here orange gets 11 for being in prime position and then blue would get seven plus four plus two for occupying the next three places the purple contesina does likewise and awards more points but only to maestros and donners so here orange would get 13 for being in prime position and blue would get 9 for this donner no points for either of these debutants the blue giovanni grants points in exchange for time to players based on the control order of this location the player with the most family members at a location controls that location regardless of seniority with ties broken by order in the queue so here blue controls the location while here it would be orange players are then given the option in control order to exchange the time for these points so here orange would have first opportunity to spend 4 time for 20 points if orange does this then blue has the opportunity to spend 2 time for 12 points if a player above you chooses not to take the opportunity then you get the opportunity of the higher ranked place and you may only choose the first reward which is offered to you so if orange deferred blue would have the chance to pay 4 time for 20 points but would not have the chance to pay 2 time for 12.

the nobles will score three times each during the game and their numbers of points will escalate as the game goes on once cue scoring is complete you will clean up for the next round the first player marker is rotated one step clockwise around the table if it is round three each player gains two of the gifts from the dials into their collections and in round six each player gains the remaining one which staggers the release of the gifts into the game get rid of any tokens on the current wedge and then rotate the dial one step clockwise unless you can already see round nine on the dial draw the next time token and the next location token and put the next destination ring onto the newly chosen location play now proceeds to the next round after the ninth round is finished the game is over and you'll proceed to final scoring first cash in any leftover scandal cards for time at the normal one-to-one rate and then gain one point for each leftover to time that you spend finally reveal and score your scheme card count up the total number of family members that you have at these circled locations on your card then score points according to the bottom table add up all of those points and the player with the highest score wins in the event of a tie whoever has the most family members on the board breaks the tyre is still tired whoever gave the most gifts and if still tied victory is shared before we finish we'll take you through the nine brag tiles in the game these ones all relate to the actions you've taken you'll gain three points for each gift you've given three points for each brag you've made including this one five points for each donna or maestro on the board and three points for each scandal card in hand these ones relate to your spread over locations you'll get three points for each location where you hold prime position two points for each location where you have at least one family member or four points for each location where you have at least two family members and these ones relate to the grid on the board here you would score three points for each family member in the column of the board where this brag is located and likewise here three for each in the row so for example orange has four family members in the three locations of this column and so could brag here for 12 points and that's how to play florence we hope that you enjoy the video we are using a prototype copy of this game and so the rules and components may not be final and do check out the project page for this game we will put a link to that in the description below if you find this video useful please help us by hitting the like button subscribe to us you can also hit the maple in the corner to do so and hit the bell icon so you'll be one of the first to know when we have new and exciting videos you can also follow me on instagram for my board games journey and if you have any questions comments or feedback please leave them in the comment section below see you next time