Nayakas - How to Play. Complete, Clear, Concise Board Game Tutorial

Hire artisans, wrangle resources, and rebuild a fractured empire into your own shining dynasty in Nayakas. And today we'll be teaching you how to play Nayakas, game designed by Andy Desa and published by Going India Games. >> And hey everyone, it's Stella. And Tarrant, welcome to Meeple University. And hey, if you enjoy this video after watching, like, subscribe, and comments.

You know what to do. Now, let's get to the classroom. In Nayakas, it's 16th century in Southern India, and the Vijayanagara Empire has fallen at the Battle of Talikota. In the aftermath, players, as rulers of their own asymmetrical kingdoms, now fight for prosperity and control. Round by round, players will send their laborers and diplomats to work within their kingdoms, [music] trade at the borderlands, or travel further abroad to gain resources, engage in events, hire artisans, and construct different buildings, all in the aim of gaining prosperity.

Whoever has the most prosperity by the time a total of three buildings per player have been built, or by the end of the ninth round when three events will have been resolved, will be the winner. To set up, each player chooses a color and takes its player board, five event tokens, and its set of handcrafted player pawns.

There will be three laborers and two diplomats in each color, and you begin with two laborers and one diplomat, the rest going in a general supply until you earn them later. This set of tokens tracks your resources. There are two main building resources, stone and clay, as well as gold, which can be spent as either stone or clay for any action.

There is also culture. This is not used for building, it has a different function. Throughout play, you'll use these tokens on this track to track how many of each resource you have, and you can never have more than 15 of any one type. Also take a set of artisan cards. These track how many architects, sculptors, and masons you have in your employ.

These begin on the dim side, meaning you have zero, and as you gain and spend these artisans through the game, you'll flip and rotate these cards to a maximum of three. Be warned, the game is played in rounds, and while you can carry over your resources between rounds, your artisans will reset to zero at the end of each round.

Now, set up the main board. In the bottom right, set up the bonus market by making shuffled face down decks of the section tiles, facility tiles, and borderland tiles, and then showing a face up market of three of each type. Set up the temples, which are the square tiles. Find all the temples and go through them, removing any colored ones, so you're left only with the ones with this back.

Shuffle them and deal face up a number into the temple market equal to one more than the number of players. Return unused temples to the box. Then take the colored temple matching each player in play, flip it over to its faded side, and place it on one of these empty squares within that matching player's kingdom.

If you're playing with fewer than four players, return leftovers to the box. In the bottom left, place the building tracker at zero. Shuffle and place a deck of all merchant tiles, and of three of the six event tiles, returning leftovers to the box. Then deal an event to slot one, and a merchant tile to each of slots two and three.

Shuffle and place the deck of development cards, and deal one to each player. You can look at your own card, but keep it hidden from the other players. Make a general supply of prosperity tokens. Prosperity are your victory points in the game, and you'll want to collect these tokens or other components showing that icon throughout the game to win.

Choose a starting first player who takes the conch, and you're now ready to play. Nayakas plays in rounds, and each round plays in three phases. The worker phase, in which players do worker placement. The build phase, in which players construct buildings, and the cleanup phase. First is the worker phase, and this is played in turns, beginning with the player who starts this round with the conch, and going clockwise around the table.

On your turn, you will take a single action by placing one pawn from your supply, either a laborer or a diplomat, onto a valid action space and immediately resolving the effect, which will usually be some combination of gaining resources or artisans. You have two types of pawns, laborers and diplomats, and there are three types of action space.

Homelands, which are fully bordered in a single player's color and belong exclusively to that player. Borderlands, these are bordered only on the corners and in most cases show the colors of two different players. And note that while most borderlands are physically depicted between those two players' kingdoms, there are also these three borderlands down here, and they behave exactly like the others do.

And there are empire spaces. These, like borderlands, are also bordered only on their corners, but in gray instead of player colors. Additionally, for your homeland spaces, at the start of the game only the pre-printed spaces are available. The other two slots are for temples. The one in your color becomes available later when you flip it over, and the other becomes available when you fill it with a temple from the market.

Once that's done, they behave as normal homeland spaces, but until that time, you can treat them as if they don't exist. Laborers are your more basic workers, and they can only take actions within your own kingdom. That means one of your homeland spaces, or a borderlands edged in your color. A laborer may never be placed where another pawn is already present.

That means right now, a black laborer could be placed in any one of these spaces. Diplomats, on the other hand, have much greater flexibility, since their diplomatic prowess allows them to take action outside of your own kingdom and where there are laborers present. However, to place outside your kingdom, you must spend one culture, and to place where there is already another laborer, you must have more culture than the player who owns that laborer.

You cannot place in an opponent's homelands, you cannot place where you already have a pawn, whether laborer or diplomat, and you cannot place where an opponent has a diplomat. So, right now, blue could place a diplomat in one of these spaces for free. These three slots are empty non-blue borderlands, and so blue could place a diplomat there by paying one culture.

This is a blue-bordered borderlands containing a red laborer. So, blue could place there without paying culture, but only if blue's culture was higher than red's at the start of the action. In the event of a tie, the tie is broken by whichever player is holding the conch, with that player, or the nearest player clockwise to that player, breaking the tie.

This space is a non-blue borderland already containing the black laborer, and so blue could go there, but must be holding more culture than black at the start of the action in order to place with the laborer, and then spend one culture in order to place outside their own color. These two spaces already containing blue pawns, or this one already containing a diplomat, are not valid spaces for the blue diplomat to be placed.

And finally, there are special rules for placing in the empire. There are two different groups of actions in the empire, with the action marked first being slightly stronger than the action marked second. To place in the empire, you must pay a culture, exactly as you would with a foreign borderlands, and then place in the first slot of your chosen group, or in the second slot if the first is full.

Once both are full, the group cannot be chosen again. The same player could choose both halves of the same block. Continue taking turns clockwise in this way until either all players have placed all of their pawns, or have chosen to pass with unplaced pawns in their supplies. On your turn, if you choose to pass without placing, then your worker phase is over, and all of your subsequent turns are skipped until the end of the phase.

As you can see, navigating culture and diplomacy are critical to getting ahead in the troubled time of the era. But now, let's have a look at the types of actions that you'll be taking. The six standard borderlands spaces give you ways of gaining the building resources, culture, and hiring artisans.

Simply track them on your boards to a maximum of 15 resources or three artisans. Any excess is lost. Empire spaces are similar. For this one, the player gains an architect and either a mason or sculptor with second gaining an architect and whichever of a mason or sculptor wasn't taken by the first. These ones grant an architect, a culture, and whoever places in the first box takes the conch from whoever currently has it.

Doing this does not change the current round's turn order. You'll still take turns clockwise from whoever was currently acting. But, it immediately changes the tiebreaker for culture comparisons and anything else which is broken by the conch. The gray tiles on this track are merchant tiles and they behave similarly.

They're generally going to give you some number of resources and artisans and they're usually stronger than the printed borderlands. Some also allow you to take the conch. This means the conch can change hands multiple times during a round. There's also some which let you make exchanges. Here, for example, it's exchanging clay for gold.

And for any of these actions, you can make the exchange as many times as you want. The red tile is the event and when you place there, you'll be trying to place event tokens into this section. The event tile shows you how you'll do this. Here, for example, you can spend any number of stone or clay to place one token per resource spent.

This would let you place a token for each worker you've already placed on the board. This lets you place a token if you hold the conch and so on. You have at most five event tokens to place. This part of the board will evolve. In each cleanup phase, each tile will slide down with a new one placed. And players will score prosperity for their event tokens when the event tile drops down into the discard.

So, keep your eyes on these actions as they evolve, especially as the best ones cycle through your borderlands. Finally, each player has a unique set of actions within their homeland, often giving them ways of gaining gold or with the upgraded temple exchanging resources for prosperity. Black can activate a discount for the subsequent building phase, can gain gold for each artisan currently held to a maximum of eight, or can exchange four gold for prosperity.

And again, remember any exchange action can be taken multiple times at once. Red can also unlock a building discount this round and has a special space where the first worker placed gains two gold and where a subsequent worker placed gains four gold. This is the only space in the entire game where a player can place two of their own workers together and this may be done in any combination of diplomats and laborers.

Blue can simply gain two gold or can use this to reactivate an action that was previously placed upon. While yellow can exchange culture for gold, could use a laborer to retrieve a diplomat from elsewhere on the board, or could gain two gold for each of their own diplomats currently on the same space as an opponent's laborer.

And that's how to take actions during the worker phase. Next comes the build phase where you use all those hard earned resources you've got it to construct buildings for your kingdom. Like the worker phase, the build phase is resolved in turns, starting from whoever is holding the conch at this point and going clockwise.

On your turn, you may build a single section from any one of your four buildings. That means any one of these horizontal rows showing a cost. The cheapest costs are on the bottom levels, but you can build them in any order. Pay the cost, remembering you can always substitute gold for either clay or stone.

Here, for example, I pay three stone, one clay, two gold, and an architect. Choose any one section tile from the face-up bonus market, replenishing immediately from the top of the deck, and place it to cover the slot you've just paid for, either face-up or face-down. If face-up, it will give you an ongoing benefit or an end-of-game scoring objective, while if you place face-down, it simply counts as one prosperity point in end-of-game scoring.

Then, check for other bonuses. If your new section completely filled that building, then you've finished the building. Increment the building track one space. If you finished your water tank, then choose a facility tile from the market, replenishing immediately from the decks, and add it to your board.

It will give you an ongoing benefit for the rest of the game. You'll do likewise when you finish your fort, but you'll also place a borderland tile. Pick any one among the three available, replenishing immediately, and place it on any one of these six spaces. From now on, any player who takes an action there gains what's on that token as well as the printed bonuses.

Completing a temple will be worth two prosperity at the end of the game and allows you to place or flip a temple tile in your homelands. That is, you either flip this tile over or choose any one among the market tiles and place it in your empty slot. You can do these in either order, but either way from the next round onwards, those will be available for your workers to take actions.

Finally, these buildings are how you unlock the extra laborer and diplomat that you set aside during setup. Each of these brown icons is a half laborer and each of these gray ones is a half diplomat. And you gain the icons from all of your placed sections and from any of your completed buildings. Once you have two matching half icons, here I now have two half diplomats, you unlock that matching worker pawn to be used on subsequent rounds.

Similarly here, completing this building unlocks this half laborer, which along with this one on the section lets me unlock my laborer. Continue taking turns clockwise, building one section at a time. On your turn, if you can't or don't wish to build, then you pass and you take no further turns in this build phase.

Once everyone has passed, you'll move to cleanup. Any artisans that you hired but did not spend are lost. You've only hired them for this single round. You do, however, get to carry resources to the next round. Retrieve your worker pawns from the board, including any new ones you've unlocked. Now, refresh the trading posts.

Slide each of these tiles one step down and fill the top slot with the same type of tile discarded. If the tile being discarded is an event, then resolve that event. Whoever has the most event tokens present gains three prosperity tokens. Second place gains one. If tied, it's the player holding the conch or closest clockwise to the conch holder who breaks the tie.

Then players retrieve their event tokens ready for the next event. The trading posts are replenished as before and each player draws a new development card. Remember, you gained one of these in setup and it's this extra draw after every third round which is the other way to gain them. These cards have special game-breaking abilities and you can play one at any point on your turn during a worker phase or at a different specific time if listed on the card in order to resolve its effect and then discard it.

Cards you don't play will be worth prosperity at the end of the game. Finally, if the game is not over, proceed to the next round's worker phase with the first turn taken by whoever currently holds the conch. So, after all this diplomacy, building, and trading, it's time to find out which kingdom wins the game.

The game can end in one of two ways. Either at the end of the ninth round after the third event has been resolved and scored, or at the end of the round in which the building marker reaches or passes the player count position on this track. When the end triggers this way and the event is not in slot three of the trading posts, then the event is not resolved and any event markers placed are worth nothing.

Players now count up their final prosperity. There'll be any prosperity tokens that you've collected, two prosperity for each of your two temples which you've completed, one prosperity for each section tile you chose to place face-down, and one prosperity for each unplayed development card. Then for any purple section tiles which you placed face-up, you may be able to score an objective or cash in some resources for prosperity.

For example, here it's one, two, or three prosperity for six, nine, or 12 stone spent. So, I'd spend six stone including one gold as stone as usual for one prosperity. Likewise here, I could spend 12 clay for three prosperity and on this duplicate a further six gold as clay for one prosperity. The player with the most total prosperity wins.

If tied, most culture breaks the tie, and if still tied, most total resources. Thanks for watching, and if you like this video, maybe you'd like to watch this next one. Have a great day. Bye.