Red Lanterns | How to Play | Learn to Play in 7 Minutes! | Reclaim Stolen Treasures Card Game
Transcript
Hello, everybody. My name is Ilya.
And my name is Siler. Together we make up Calavera, a couple that loves to play board games. And today we'll be teaching you how to play Red Lanterns. Red Lanterns is a two to four player game designed by Grant Rodiek and published by MoonGate Design, who helped sponsor this video. Let's go to the table and let's learn how to play. As always, you'll begin by setting up. Shuffle the treasure cards based on your player count to form a face-down deck and place the British pound cards face up beside it. Each player will then choose a color and take the corresponding player board, four emblems of the elders, and nine matching lantern cards. Place your four emblems onto their designated spaces on your player board and shuffle and place your lantern deck to the left of your player board. Next, you'll randomly determine a first player and give them the round tracker, which also serves as the first player token.
Finally, place the initiative token in the middle of the table and you're now ready to play. In this game, you'll step into the role of the legendary Red Lanterns. Through across five rounds, you'll play lantern cards to manipulate the treasures in play, gather information about their value, and compete to reclaim them before your rivals. As the game progresses, you'll build your collection aiming to secure the most valuable treasures and score the most points by the end of the game. Before we dive into the flow of the game, let's run through your cards. Your nine lantern cards are numbered from one through nine and each can be used in one of two ways. You can play a lantern card face up to use its face up power or play it face down to compete for a treasure and utilize its face down power. Generally, the more powerful the face down ability, the lower that card's value is when competing for treasures.
So, deciding how and when to use each lantern card is key. Now, let's get into the structure of the game. This game is played in five rounds, with each round consisting of four phases. Let's go through them. Each round begins with preparation. Here, the first player draws one treasure per player, placing the first one face down and all the others face-up in the center of your play area. Then, each player draws four cards from their personal deck. Now, as you reclaim treasures, they'll generally enter your discard pile and eventually get shuffled into your deck alongside your lantern cards. If you ever draw a hand of four treasures, shuffle your hand back into the deck and draw four new cards. And if your deck ever runs out, simply shuffle the discard pile to create a new one.
The next phase is the play lantern card phase. Starting with the first player and continuing clockwise, you'll take turns playing one lantern card or passing. When playing a lantern card, you have two options. You can play it face-up above your player board and immediately resolve its ability, or you can play it face-down into your elders area. But if you do, you're finished playing cards for the round. Playing a lantern card face-up allows you to manipulate the available treasures, gain information, improve your hand, secure treasures inside your vault, and more. Once you've resolved its ability, leave the lantern card face-up above your board, and the next player will take their turn. Once the turn comes back around to you, you can play another lantern card face-up and resolve its ability in the same way.
You can continue playing lantern cards face-up until you decide to play one face-down into your elders area. Once you do, you're finished for this phase, and you'll now be able to reclaim a treasure later in the round. The first player to play a lantern card face-down also takes the initiative token. Now, instead of playing a lantern card, you can also choose to pass. However, if you finish the phase without playing a lantern card face-down, you won't be eligible to reclaim a treasure in the next phase. Now, you'll continue playing lantern cards until everyone has either played a lantern card face-down or passed. You're now ready for the next phase, reclaim the treasures. Here, all players will reveal their face-down lantern cards and reclaim their treasures. The number on your lantern is a reclaiming power, and you'll resolve these from highest to lowest, starting with nine and working down towards one.
When it's your turn, first resolve the face-down ability of your lantern card, if it has one, and then choose a treasure to reclaim. Unless an ability tells you otherwise, place your reclaimed treasure into your discard pile, where it could eventually become a part of your deck. Your revealed lantern however stays face up in your elders area instead of being discarded. Now, if there's ever a tie between reclaiming powers, the initiative token breaks the tie. If one of the tied players has initiative token, they'll go first. Otherwise, priority begins at the player to the initiative holder's left and continues clockwise. Now, there's one other important benefit to committing certain lantern cards face down, your emblems of the elders. When you play lanterns 1, 2, 3, or 4 face down, you permanently activate its corresponding emblem. Once activated, each emblem gives you a new ability for the rest of the game, allowing you to gain information, manipulate treasures, and earn additional points at the end of the game.
These remain active once unlocked, even if the corresponding lantern is later moved out of your elders area. Additionally, you'll notice that several cards and abilities reference your vault. Your vault is a special area where certain abilities allow you to permanently secure treasures. This is particularly important for fragile treasures marked with this icon, because these treasures will not score at all unless you've safely placed them inside your vault. Some [snorts] treasures can also be locked, meaning they can no longer be targeted or modified by lantern card effects, which will happen in the play lanterns card phase. Otherwise, each treasure shows how it scores at the end of the game. Some have a fixed value, while others reward you for collecting particular sets. So, keep these scoring conditions in mind when deciding what to reclaim.
Once everyone has reclaimed their treasure, you'll finish the round. You'll discard any cards remaining in your hand along with any lantern cards you placed face up above your player board. If any treasures remain in the play area, reveal them. Then, the first player places them on the bottom of the treasure deck in any order that they choose. Then, return the initiative token to the middle of the table. The player who reclaimed the final treasure will take the round tracker and becomes the first player for the next round. Advance the tracker one space and begin again with preparation. After completing the fifth round, the game ends and you'll calculate your final scores. First, you'll score one point for each of your activated emblems, one, two, and three. If you activated emblem four and have at least three treasures in your vault, score an additional three points. Then, score all the treasures you reclaimed according to their individual scoring conditions, including treasures in your deck, discard pile, and vault, as well as any British power cards you collected. Just remember that any fragile treasures only score if they're safely inside your vault.
You'll tally the scores and the player with the most points wins. If there is a tie, add together the reclaiming power of all of your elders. Of the tied players, whoever has the lowest total wins the game. And if there's still a tie, you'll share the victory. And that's Red Lanterns.
Do you have any questions? Leave them in the comments down below. We'll get back to you as soon as we can.
And of course, 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.
And hit that little bell cuz you don't know when our next video is coming out and we can all partake in the joy of board gaming.
Now, for our question of the day today, what is your favorite red board game?
Ooh.
In your collection. It has to be in your collection.
Ah, okay. Well, let us know your answers down in the comments below. Until next time though, we'll see you later. Bye.