Outremer - BGG How to Play

0:08 The year is 1099 and the first Crusade is in full swing, but not all the cities involved are on the same side and working together. You will pit your strategy against the other crusading cities, but you always have to watch out for the Saracens who are constantly invading. Who will come out on top and have the most influence in Outremer, which was designed by Stanislav Krosnov, Olga Ilchenko, and Mikhail Alexandrov, and published by Hobby World who helped sponsor this video. Hi everybody, my name is Nick Murphy of the Brothers Murph and we are here with Board Game Geek. Well, it's about time we gather our troops and move to the next city, so let's get this game down to the table and learn how to play Outremer. In Outremer, players will be battling to have the most influence in the land. You will each be taking control of a crusading city and you'll be spreading your bishops, constructing buildings, and conquering your neighbors. As you gain control of the cities, you'll be gaining influence and income, which will fuel your ongoing quest. You can play this game as a standalone game or as various scenarios, but before we get into all that, let's go into the setup.

1:08 We will be setting up and teaching the game as a four-player game. If you're playing with two or three players, there will be a few changes, which we will generally see in these light boxes. So, after this video, make sure to go and read those as well if playing with less than four. Place the main board on the table with the colored side up. The art in this game is hand-drawn and the opposite side shows the original drawing that was scanned and then the color was added digitally. This side, however, is not suitable for play, so make sure to have the color side face up. Each player chooses a city to play as. Take the appropriate player board and place it in front of you. Shuffle the big green event cards and place six random cards face down here. Return the rest to the box. Shuffle the green raid tokens and place one face down in each space to the right here. Return the rest to the box. Lastly, shuffle the green Saracen cards and place them face down below the event cards. Take the yellow building cards and separate them by their backs and shuffle each deck separately. Take the level zero cards and flip them face up and place them here. Take the level one and two cards and place the deck face down here. Turn up five cards and place them below the deck like this. Do the same with the level four building cards like this so that there are three level four cards turned up. Note that the level of card is denoted by how many goods that card costs, zero, one, two, or four. Take the blue tactic cards and separate them by the amount of goods on the bottom of the card. Take the cards with one or two goods, shuffle them, and place them face down here. Turn up five cards and place them in the market like this. Take the cards with four goods, shuffle them, and place them face down here. Turn up three cards and place them like this. The rest

2:39 of the tactics cards have shields on the bottom. These shields are the same shields as the ones on the player boards. Give each player their five level zero tactic cards. Shuffle the black spy cards and place them face down here. Take the red governor card with the shield that matches your player board and place it in your play area for now. Shuffle the rest of the governor cards and place the deck face down here. Flip up five cards into the market like this. Each player takes one of their wooden shields, which are units, and places it in the starting position on the sainthood track. Take the two decks of rescript cards, shuffle them, and place them on either side of the sainthood track like this. Gather up the wall tokens. First, place the green three wall token in Homs, covering up the shield symbol there. Next, place a level two shield token in every city other than the capital cities. Make sure that the good on the shield token matches the good on the city. For example, Tortosa has a blue pentagon, which is steel, so we need to put a level two shield token with a pentagon in Tortosa. The players' capital cities, Jerusalem, Edessa, Antioch, and Tripoli, all start at level one, which is just printed on the board. Place one goods token color side up in each matching city except for the players' capitals.

3:42 For example, Damascus is a blue city, so place a blue steel good face up here. This good will also match the shape on the shield icon. Place one Saracen unit in each city other than the four capitals. Then place one extra in the five central cities. Each player places units which are wooden shields in their capital equal to the amount shown here on their player board. So, this player places four in Jerusalem. Each player places one of their level one bishop tokens face down in their capital. Take the coins, influence tokens, remaining goods and Saracen tokens and the three-piece city counters nearby within reach of all the players. Rotate each city piece so that the lighter color area is the one that's showing. This represents the city's level. Place the battle board near the main board and place the blue battle token on the zero space on the track. Lastly, let's set up the player boards. Each player takes their starting coins shown here and puts them in their supply. Take the rest of your units and bishop tokens and keep them near your player board. Take four order tokens matching your color and your five starting tactic cards.

4:39 Each player takes one random papal bull card. These are end game scoring cards and experienced players may gain two and choose one. Take a good token that matches your capital and place it face up to your supply. For example, Tripoli takes a yellow wood token. Take your capital city piece and place it in the leftmost space on your player board like this. Again, make sure the light colored area is the one showing. Place your starting governor on your city piece here. Experienced players may instead shuffle the whole governor deck and take two cards and choose one as their starting governor card. Give each player four of their crest tokens and one crest token of each other player. Finally, give everyone a player aid and we're ready to begin. As stated earlier, you can play a standalone one-off scenario or you can play a set of linked together scenarios. We will just be teaching the standalone game today, but all the information for the various scenarios is found in the scenario book. Outremer is played over a series of rounds until one of the end game triggers happens. Each round of the game consists of four phases. The event phase, the planning phase, the order phase and the income phase. Let's begin with the event phase. The first player will flip over and read the top card part event deck. Note that turn order is always determined by the sainthood track. So, Jerusalem is the first player at the start of the game. The event phase has two parts, the event and then Saracen raids. The first player will read out the event, which is the top part of the event card. These may be things that happen immediately like Byzantine diplomacy or something that is ongoing for the whole round like the city upon a hill. Once the event card is resolved, you will move to the Saracen raid. Note that in the first round, the

6:10 raid is skipped. The only thing you'll do in the first round is flip over the topmost raid token. This represents the color of cities that will get raided during the event phase of the next round. If it is the second round and onward, we will have a raid. The face of raid token shows which Crusader cities the Saracens will raid. So, in this case, all blue Crusader cities will get raided. First, you will place one Saracen unit in each city matching the raid color. A city is a Saracen city if it has Saracen units in it, and a Crusader city is one that has player units in it. There will never be a case where a city will have more than one type of unit in it. This round, the raid token shows blue, and so the Saracens will invade Edessa as it's a blue Crusader city. If multiple players are getting invaded, resolve the invasions in turn order, which is always determined by the sainthood track. Each Saracen city adjacent to the target city will move one non-last unit into the city. Non-last means it can't be the last unit in the city. Saracens and Crusaders may never move their last unit from a city. So, in this case, this Saracen would not invade as it's the only unit in its city. When you move the units, you may keep them on the board to remind you from where they came. For each city raided, you will find the raid outcome. This will be what the bottom of the event card is for. You will take the Saracen strength and subtract it from the city strength. The Saracen strength is the number of units invading, in this case three, plus any bonuses from the Saracen track. As tokens get removed from this track, the Saracens get stronger. This symbol means the overall Saracen strength is now plus one, and these symbols mean that each Saracen city will now commit two or three

7:42 non-last units to invasions instead of just one. The city strength is the number of player units in this case four, plus the strength of the wall in this case one. Subtract the Saracen strength, which is three here, from the city strength, which is five, take this value, which is two in this case, and look at the table at the bottom of the event card to get your outcome. Since our outcome's value is two, and that is in the one to three range, the player will have to lose one bishop. Once this is resolved, the Saracens move back to their original city unless they capture the Crusader city. If the Saracens have equal to or greater strength than the city, they will capture the city. The player will move their units to an adjacent city they control. If they can't, their units are destroyed and return to their supply. The Saracen units that invaded the city will now stay in the city. The player returns the city piece back to the supply and places the governor card face up on the bottom of the governor deck.

8:32 They will also lose the good associated with that city. This is shown here, so this player will have to get rid of one steel good. At the end of the event phase, the Saracens will gain a new target. Discard the top face-up raid token and flip over the next one down. These cities will now be the target of the Saracens raid in the next event phase. The next phase is the planning phase. This is where the players will choose what actions they will do in the round during the next phase, the order phase. In turn order, players will choose one of their order tokens and place it on the matching quadrant of the order cross. The game has four main actions that will resolve in this order: build, pray, muster, and march. Players each have one token that matches these actions. So, if a player would like to build, they will take their build token and place it on the build action. There can be multiple players taking the same action. So, if there's a token already there, you will place yours on top after paying one coin to the owner of each order token beneath yours in the stack.

9:26 In turn order, each player will place their first token, and then in turn order, they will place a second. When placing an order token, you must decide to place it in the inner slot or an outer slot. The inner slots are the basic actions and the outer slots are the enhanced actions. When placing in the enhanced action slot, make sure to place this side with the arrow face up, which denotes it as an enhanced action. The enhanced actions are stronger, but they won't activate this round. They will activate next round, which means you'll be doing less this round. When you place your token in an outer slot, you will immediately take the top card from the spy deck. This symbol here is a reminder of that. Note that you may only place one of your tokens on an enhanced spot each round. And each enhanced spot can only have one token, no stacking. The moment you get the spy card or during the order phase, you may activate one of your spy cards by placing it face up to the side of your board here. You will choose a target and place that player's crest on the card.

10:18 Now, when the target player fulfills the action on the card, you will gain a bonus. For example, this card denotes that when Jerusalem gains a bishop, you will also gain a bishop. Each spy may only be used once per round, so once it has been used, flip the crest over to show that it's been fulfilled. Once all players have placed their two order tokens, we will move into the order phase. In this phase, we will resolve all of the order tokens in the inner slots, starting with build and ending with march. If there are multiple tokens stacked, you will resolve them from top to bottom. Once an order from an inner slot is resolved, it is then returned to the owner and once all basic orders are resolved, the enhanced tokens move to the inner slots. Note that you will not flip them over. Players need to remember that these are enhanced actions which come with bonuses, so leave the side with the arrow face up. Let's begin with the build action. This action deals with the yellow building cards here and the levels of your cities. During this activation, you may do two things. You may upgrade a city under your control.

11:12 To do so, you will pay an amount of wood goods, in this case one wood. The amount you have to pay is shown here on the city dial. Two notes about paying with goods. Firstly, whenever in the game you need to pay a good for any action, you can always pay one coin instead. So, instead of one wood, you can discard one coin. Secondly, when you spend a good, you will simply flip it over to its gray side in your supply. You do not discard it. At the end of the round, this will flip back up to its color side ready to be used again. Or, if you ever get this bonus, you may flip a good back to its color side. When you increase a city's level, you will turn the dial to the next sector. The city piece shows what goods the city gives you. This should already be in your supply and how many coins you will generate during income. Some cities give you an extra good once they reach level three. Make sure to take this good token when you upgrade to level three. The second action you may take during the build order is to construct one of the building cards. You may construct a level zero to two building, which are these ones here. Though, instead of choosing from the market, you may always construct a random building from the top of the corresponding deck. You will pay the build cost in the top banner. Note that level zero cards have no cost and may be built for free. This level two card, Pilgrim Shelters, takes two candles to be built, but as always, you can substitute paying goods by paying coins. After you pay for the building, you will place it in your building spaces on your player board here. Note that you will never refill the market in the middle of a round, no matter the action. The markets will refill at the end of the round, so leave this space empty. If there's already a building card on your state board, you will stack this one on top, making sure that the bottom of each card is showing.

12:43 Each state board has space for four buildings. If you build a fifth, you will need to discard one of your choosing to make room for the new one. When you're taking the build action with an enhanced order token, you will gain two things. One, you can discount your purchases by a total of two goods. So, that Pilgrim Shelters we built could have been free, or we could have discounted it by one and upgraded a city for one less as well. And two, you may build one more building card of any level, including the level four buildings. An enhanced action is the only way to build these powerful level four cards. Note that the two goods discount that you get for an enhanced action cannot be applied to this extra building card purchase, no matter what level it is. The building cards grant you bonuses or whole actions, usually if you meet their conditions. For example, the Leper House allows us to restore two goods after we complete a pray action.

13:31 You may only use each building once per round, so once you have used it, place a spent marker on it to remind that it cannot be used again this round. The next action that will resolve is the pray action. This is how you will move up the sainthood track. When you resolve the basic action, you will move up two spaces on the sainthood track plus one for every candle you spend up to four for a maximum of six moves up the track. Two shields cannot occupy the same space, will skip over these spaces as you move up the track. You will gain any bonuses your shield moves over or lands on. These spaces will give you a rescript card, and these allow you to train or move a bishop. When you gain a rescript card, you will draw the top one from the deck on the left. You may have a maximum of three rescript cards, and you will need to discard down to three if you draw more. Rescript cards can be used in one of two ways. You may use the card as a good of the type shown at the top of the building card. So, if we are buying a building card that needed horses, we could discard this rescript card to pay for it. Or you may use the rescript card when it states on the card. For instance, this card allows you to discard a spy card from another player's board. The other action is to train a bishop or move a bishop. To train a bishop, you will take any bishop from your supply and place it into a city where you have another bishop. Make sure to keep your bishops face down as they can be either level one or level two, and you want to keep that secret.

14:46 If you decide to move a bishop, you may move one into an adjacent city. You do not need to control this city. It can be controlled by another player or the Saracens. We will talk about why bishop levels are important in a bit. When you do an enhanced pray action, you will gain an extra bishop action, and you may take a level two rescript card from here. These are much more powerful, but the only way to gain one is to do an enhanced pray action. If your shield reaches the end of the sainthood track and needs to move more, it will loop back around to the beginning. Note that this will send you farther back in the turn order. The next action is the muster action, and here you may do two things in either order. You may recruit two units plus one for every steel good you spend up to four for a maximum of six, and you may distribute these units into your cities however you like. The second action you may take is to gain new tactic cards. The tactic cards are used in battles, which we'll talk about during the next action. The basic action allows you to gain up to two level one and two tactic cards, which are these ones, though you may instead gain a random one off the top of the tactics deck. You will pay the price shown at the bottom of the card, and then we'll take the card into hand. You will start the game with your five level zero tactic cards, which have your crest on the bottom of them. You can have a maximum of five cards in hand, so when you gain a new tactic card, you will need to discard a card. If you discard a level zero card, place it in your own discard pile face down under your board.

16:04 If you discard another level of card, place it face up at the bottom of its respective deck. If you do an enhanced muster action, you will gain a two good discount on your basic action of recruiting or gaining a tactic card. You may also purchase another tactic card of any level, including level four. And per usual, this is the only way to get the powerful level four cards. Note that, as with the build action, you may not use the two good discount on this bonus purchase, no matter the level or the card you're buying. And remember to not refill the market after you take a card. The last action to get resolved is the march order. The basic march order allows you to move four units plus one for every horse you spend up to four for a total maximum of eight movement. When you move, you will choose a target city adjacent to at least one city you control. You may move units into this city from any adjacent territory that you control. So, with six movement, I can move these six units in. Note that you must always leave at least one unit behind in the city you are moving from.

17:01 You may never voluntarily abandon a city. With an enhanced march order, you get two more free movements. And if you end up in a battle, you will gain two extra strength, and you may replace the governor in one of your cities with one from the market. Governors will activate at the end of the round, so we'll talk about them a bit later. If you move your units into a city controlled by another player or the Saracens, then a battle will commence. You know some fighting had to happen. If another player controls the city, you'll be battling them. If it's the Saracens, the player with the closest city will control the Saracens. In the latter case, they will draw five cards from the Saracen tactic deck here. The battle will carry out the same way regardless of whether you're fighting a player or the Saracens. Place the battle board in between the fighting players. Battles will take place over four stages. The first stage is calculating the initial power difference between the attacker and the defender. The base strength of each side is how many units they have in the fight. The defender will then add the wall bonus to their strength, and the Saracens will also receive any plus one bonuses from the Saracen track. And the attacker will gain a plus two strength if they're taking an enhanced action. You will move the token to the difference in the strength of the two sides. So, if the attacker has a total of seven strength and the defender has a total of six strength, the token will be on the plus one side of the attacker. The second stage is maneuvering. This is where players will play out their tactic cards. Each player will get to play two cards, always starting with the defender. The active player will choose one of their tactic cards or one of the Saracens tactic cards if the player is controlling them, and they will place this card face up in the one spot of the battle board. The

18:31 other player will then choose which half of the card they want to cover up and cancel. Each tactic cards has a top half and a bottom half. Let's say the player wants to cover up the bottom half as they think that will be worse. They will then announce this, and then the active player will pluck a card at random from their hand and place it face down sideways over the half the player wants covered up. The active player must choose this card at random and cannot look at the card before placing it on the battle board. Hopefully, they don't pick the card that you were just about to play. You will then resolve the half of the tactic card that's still showing. Unless it's an ability with an hourglass that will activate at the end of the battle. Once this half is resolved, the attacker becomes the active player and will now choose one of their tactic cards to play face up. Now, the defender decides which half they want to cover up, announces it, and the attacker chooses a card at random from their hand and covers up the half they chose. Then the card will resolve. Each side will get to do this one more time, and at the end of those four maneuvers, that battle is over. Though, if one side ever has no units left in the fight, the battle immediately ends. There are five symbols that you will generally see on tactic cards. This symbol gains the player strength and moves the battle token towards their side that many spaces. The shattered shield destroys your enemies units. The running man is the route action, which forces your opponent to move their units to an adjacent city they control. If there is no adjacent city they control, those units are destroyed instead. The boot symbol allows you to move in non-last units from adjacent cities mid-battle and allows you to recruit units directly into the battle. Whenever you lose or gain units, make sure to update the

20:03 battle track as these increase or decrease your strength. Note that all symbols and terms are in the back of the rule book here. After each player has taken their two maneuvers, the battle will end. Whoever has the most strength at the end of the battle wins. If it's a tie at zero, the attacker wins. The fourth stage is the end of battle. First, do any end of battle actions shown with the hourglass. A common end of battle ability is to force your opponent to discard tactic cards. Normally, you would gain these back at the end of a battle. When you discard tactic cards, you will take all the cards you played face up in this battle, shuffle them, and discard one at random. If it's a level zero card, you will gain it back into your hand. If it's a level one through four card, it gets discarded to the bottom of its respective deck face up. When this happens, you will take one of your level zero cards of your choice from your personal discard pile back into your hand, so you're back up to five tactic cards. Now, the losing side must retreat. You will immediately destroy one of these units, and then any remaining units move to an adjacent city they control. If there's no such city, the units are all destroyed. Then both players will take back all the tactic cards they played in this battle. Next comes devastation. Regardless of the outcome of the battle, the city is downgraded a level. Make sure to lose the good of the indicated type if the amount goes from two to one good.

21:15 Lastly, the winning player takes control of the city. If it's the defender, nothing changes. If the attacker wins, they take the city piece from the defender or the supply if it was a Saracen city, and the defender has to give them the corresponding good. In this case, a candle. If the city has a governor, you may keep or replace that governor with one from the market. Remember to not refill the market. Once all tokens on the march action have been resolved and the enhanced orders have been moved to the inner slots, the order phase is over and we move on to the income phase. This income phase has four stages. First is taxation. Players will gain coins from the supply equal to what is showing on their city pieces, in this case three plus one for their capital. You will then restore all of your spent goods and remove any spent tokens from things like buildings and spy cards. Now, we will gain influence from our governors and our holy lands. Each governor will gain you influence based on its condition. For example, this one here gives you one influence per steel good you have, and this one gains you an influence per every five units you have on the board. Next, we will need to check for holy lands. This is where the bishops come into play. Whoever has the highest total value of bishops in a city will have that city as one of their holy lands. Though in the case of a tie, no one claims the holy land. To determine this, you will flip up all of the bishops in a city and see who has the highest value. In this case, Tripoli has two and Antioch has one, and so this is a holy land for Tripoli. This is why it's important that you don't show what value of bishop you are placing when you do the pray order. If only one player has bishops in a city, then you do not flip these face up as they automatically

22:45 win it as a holy land. Players will now gain one influence for each of their holy lands. All bishops that are face up are now turned back face down. Note that there are rescript cards and tactic cards that also deal with holy lands, so you will do the same process if one of those cards is played during a round. The last stage of a round is to check whether or not the game ends. If one of the end game triggers has happened, you will proceed to end game scoring. If not, you will go back to the event phase and play another round. The end game can be triggered in one of four ways. Note that these triggers are only valid if they're true at the end of a round. It doesn't matter if they're true mid-round. The game will end at the end of a round if a player has supremacy, which is control of four cities, if a player has sanctity, which is having five holy lands, if a player does not control a single city, i.e. all their units are off the board, or if it's at the end of the sixth round. Now, players will score their influence, which is points. First, you will count the influence token you earned mid-game.

23:44 Then, you will check your papal bull card. You will choose one half of this to score. Note that the symbols on the left side are only for scenario play, so they can be ignored. Next, you will score eight points if you met either the supremacy or sanctity end game conditions, and you'll gain 16 influence if you met both. Lastly, you will gain one influence for every four coins you have rounded down. At the end of all that, the player with the most influence will win. If there's a tie, whoever met the most end game conditions, like supremacy and sanctity, will win. If there's still a tie, whoever's farthest to the right on the sainthood track breaks the tie and is the winner. And that is how to play Outremer. Outremer is all about careful planning. As you're planning out your actions, you have to take special care to look at your supplies, your goals, and what the other players are doing. Do you do an enhanced action and forego a precious action this turn, or do you keep both of your orders basic? You've got to keep an eye on the other players' units, bishops, and of course those pesky Saracens. And if the Outremer seems like a game you'd enjoy, make sure to check it out and learn more. Until next time, I've been Nick Murphy. We are here with Board Game Geek, and that is how to play Outremer. Have a great day.