Snowcrest - Official How to Play

lead your village towards Enlightenment manage resources cards placement in order to gain peace and prosperity in snow Crest and today we'll be teaching you how to play Snow Crest game designed by Philip debarry and published by growl games and hello everyone it's Stella and Taran here from me University all right let's get to the classroom in snow Crest each player controls a village up in the harsh snow covered mountains players will build up their villages with cards from their own and the common decks as well as buildings they'll construct however it's Enlightenment and the ancient knowledge of the Scrolls which players will seek using the resources their villagers create for offerings prayer and achievement the game will play until a limited pool of Scrolls is depleted and whoever scores the most Scrolls will be the winner to set up the game you'll lay out all of the common components in the center of the table Shuffle the white common villager cards and lay out a row of five face up prepare supplies of the different circular resource tokens for barley prayer Bells offering balls and gold place the supplies on these boards Juniper will work a little differently you'll place the forest board Shuffle and place the forest cards on top and place three Juniper per her player onto the top of the deck leave remaining Juniper in a supply to the side on this tile place stacks of the three types of buildings Farms forges and alars and on this tile Shuffle and place the brown Guardian cards Shuffle the gold achievement deck and deal face up a number of cards equal to one more than the number of players then return the rest to the Box these are ingame objectives which players will be racing to achieve make a separate Supply with all of the black Omen tokens and finally prepare the Scrolls in a two three or four player game you'll load this up with 20 25 or 30 Scrolls set all of the others off to the side Scrolls represent victory points throughout the game you'll always take them from this Central Tile if there are any present and once this tile is empty you'll trigger the end of the game and any further Scrolls that need to be taken come from the off to the side Supply give each player a player board their matching colored deck of 13 Village cards one of the smaller red Omen trackers which goes on the Zero space of the omen track and a Farm building placed face up along the building track find your four starting Village cards these are the ones which show a barley in the top right on the back or show this star icon on the top left on the front Shuffle the starters and place one face up into each corner of this 3x3 grid which is called your village Shuffle the rest of your deck and draw a hand of three cards choose a first player who takes this token and three barley your resources can be stored here second player takes four Bary third player takes five and fourth takes six finally in turn Order each player chooses any one card from hand plays it face up into the center of their Village grid and pays its barley cost as shown in the top left corner this cost may be paid only with barley tokens there are some other options for paying resources which we'll learn about soon which aren't available in setup you are allowed to choose a starting card with a higher barley cost than the barley you have but each shortfall is made up by gaining one Omen with setup complete you'll have five cards in this configuration in your village and two cards in hand you're now ready to play Snow Crest is played in turns starting from the first player and going clockwise around the table until the end of the game is triggered on your turn you must take one of three options first is activate choose one face up card in your village resolve the action printed at the bottom of the card and flip it face down second is ADD choose one card from your hand or one from the face up common villager display pay the card's printed cost in barley add it to your village and then immediately perform its printed action and flip it face down if you added a common villager replace it from the deck a newly added card may be added to an empty space or it may be added to the same space as a currently face up card that face up card is discarded either to your discard pile if it's a card in your color while if it's a white card it goes beneath the common villager deck you cannot add a new card in the place of one that's currently face down the third option is rest and this option must be taken if and only if you have three face down cards in a row column or diagonal first gain all resources visible in the top right corners of cards these will be on the backs of your starter cards and on the fronts of your nonstarter cards in this case it's 1 2 3 four barley and two pray Bells having gained the resources Now flip all of your cards back over to the face up sides now we'll have a look at the various actions a lot of the cards will give you more than one option for an action here you would choose either the left part or the right part an action which shows a circular resource simply means to gain that resource in Tokens The Herd is left action here for example would be to gain two barley the Pilgrim's left action is to gain an offering bowl while the blacksmiths is to gain two prayer bells and one gold The Peasants left action is to gain one Juniper and Juniper is the only resource which works a little bit differently to the others instead of taking from a single common Supply you'll take from among the tokens on top of the forest deck this represents disturbing the spirits of the forest by removing the wood when the last token is removed the player Who removed it flips over and resolves the top forest card in the top left is your curse this is resolved by the player who's flipped the card the player must either give up the resource shown in this case it would be discarding a card from hand or must take one Omen meaning to move the omen tracker to the right which will be worth Nega one point at the end of the game you may choose to take the omen even if you can afford the curse then all opponents must take the opponent's curse this is generally a lesser cost here it's a resource of your choice and likewise results in gaining an omen if the player cannot or does not want to give up the resource then whoever flipped the card gains the reward at the bottom the card is moved to the bottom of the forest deck and add three more Juniper per player to the new card if the active player hasn't yet gained all of their Juniper from the action they were taking they continue taking now as we just saw the forest curses are one way of gaining Omen and there are several ways to gain Omens in the game anytime you gain Omen you'll move your marker one step towards the right if you ever reach the far right of the track then any additional steps of omen you gain will instead give you one of these black omen markers you can accumulate any number of these all Omens you gain whether they're on the track or in the form of these tokens will be worth NE -1 point at the end of the game you can reduce your Omens by resolving this icon anytime you get this crossed Omen icon it allows you to move your Omen tracker one step to the left this will effectively gain you one point once you reach the far left of this track any further steps to the left are are wasted you do not gain any benefit and you do not gain any Scrolls you're also never allowed to discard these black Omen markers once you've gained them now we'll look at actions which involve spending resources and we've already seen one way to spend resources which is simply to spend these tokens when you spend these you return them to their supplies which in the case of juniper means the offboard pile not the forest card there are many other ways to get the resources you need you may spend a gold Resource as if it were any one of the other four resources if the resources you need are in the top right corner of a card face up in your village you may flip that card face down to spend those resources immediately you cannot flip a face down start a card to gain its resource if there's a card in your hand containing the resources you need then you may discard that card to your discard pile to spend those resources and if you have buildings which produce the resources in question you can flip those buildings over to spend one of that resource Farms will produce barley so if I flipped this one over it would be worth one barley forges produce prayer bells and Alters produce offering balls do note in the final version these tiles will be different on each side so you'll flip it face down to show it's been used in this prototype I'm flipping it upside down each building is single use until it's refreshed using this action upon using this I would be able to flip all of my buildings back to their face up sides be clear in all of these cases when you're using cards buildings or gold you're spending it as part of the cost of the action you never exchange it for the tokens and you cannot stockpile those tokens also note that what I showed you during setup where you could gain an omen to make for a shortfall in resources does not apply during the game that is for setup only so now we'll look at the main actions you'll be spending those resources on actions like this allow you to construct buildings either a specific building or the building of your choice and this generally costs Juniper simply take the building from the supply as long as there's still one available and place it face up in the leftmost open slot of your building track these IC are endgame points you'll score one three or five endgame points if you have six seven or eight buildings when the game is over you can buy another building once your track is full but you must replace a building already present should you ever be forced to discard a building return it to the supply and slide all other buildings as far to the left as you can the green Helm icon represents the veneration action and it usually costs offering bowls first pay the cost then flip and resolve the top card from the guardian deck this works exactly the same way as the forest deck but the costs and rewards are greater here for example the active player giving up two resources and discarding two buildings to draw three cards from deck and gain two Scrolls opponents would discard both a card from hand and a face up card from the village as before gaining an omen is always is an option for each thing you don't meet then place the guardian on the bottom of its deck the blue icon is the meditation action and here you'll be bidding a number of prayer bells to try to gain Scrolls having chosen the action the active player now declares how many prayer Bells they will bid and demonstrates how they'll be paid for that is showing which buildings and which cards from hand might be used to make up the cost this for example was a bit of six each other player clockwise around the table now has one opportunity to beat that bid this is specifically an attempt to beat that player's bid for example if the second player bid seven prayer Bells the third could also bid seven as this would still be beating the active players's bid once each opponent has had the opportunity you'll resolve if the active player was not out bid that player gains one scroll or two if it's a two-player game and pays the bid but if any of the opponents outbid then it's each opponent who out bids who gains the one or two Scrolls depending on player count and the active player undo the full prayer bell cost of that action returning cards to hand re flipping buildings face up and so on the action is now complete this icon means to draw a card which means this action would be to draw two cards from your deck into your hand if your deck ever runs out and you need to draw a card shuffle your discard pile to form a new deck other actions include the merchant who can make an exchange of resources or Scrolls some common villagers who can produce a building without resources some who have the anti- curse icon I could flip this card over to ignore one of the offerings or curses on a Guardian card and other villages with a specific effect printed in text the other way to gain Scrolls is through achievements there'll be a limited number of these set up at the start of the game and each represents an objective which players will race to meet these cover a wide range of things in the game here for example having a certain combination of buildings being the first to empty the forest card of jun ER and so on as soon as you meet an achievement then as a free action at the time that you do it remove the card from the display and take two Scrolls when the final scroll is removed from the supply the end of the game is triggered you'll continue playing until all players have had the same number of turns and any other Scrolls you need to take between now and the end of the game come from the offboard supply now count up your final scores you'll have all of the Scrolls you collected through the game gain one three or five Scrolls if you have six seven or eight buildings gain or lose Scrolls based on the number of your position on the omen track and lose one scroll for each black Omen marker finally score for majorities of leftover resources firstly any face up cards you have in your village flip them over and gain the resources that they have on them again here you don't get barley from Face Down starters then discard all the cards in your hand and gain the resources printed on those then evaluate each of the five resources the player or players with the most of each resource gain one scroll so you could gain at most a total of five Scrolls if you led on each resource the player with the highest score wins if tied whoever has the most total remaining resource tokens breaks the tie and is still tied Victory is shared if you'd like a simpler and less variable version of the game you can play the basic rules in this version you won't use the guardian cards you won't use the deck of forest cards you'll simply Place one face down forest card you won't use the achievements and you'll reduce the number of Scrolls to 14 17 or 20 in a 2 three or four player game when you empty the Juniper you simply gain one scroll and all opponents gain one Omen before you replenish the forest as usual likewise when you venerate instead of drawing a Guardian card gain two Scrolls and likewise give all other players one Omen finally as a general tactical note for the standard game players should note that they can discard the starter cards from their board as part of an ad action but you should be careful about doing this because the starter cards do contain all of the basic actions if you're playing the basic rules you're not allowed to replace your starter cards and that's how to play Snow Crest we are using a prototype copy of the game so the rules and components may not be final and do check out the project page for the game we'll put a link to that in the description below and thanks so much for watching you like and comments are much appreciated subscribe to see what's coming and have a great day see you next time