Spanish Saint Augustine (2010)

A card game for 2-4 players based on survival and accomplishment in the Florida City of St. Augustine.

St. Augustine was founded in 1565 by Pedro Menendez. It is the oldest, continuously inhabited European settlement in North America. For the first 200 years of its existence, it was controlled by Spain. The town itself was always very small and poor, but it held an important strategic position. It helped defend the treasure fleets on their way back to Spain by preventing the English and French from building their own settlements along the Gulf stream.

In this game players actively recruit townsfolk, earn gold, gain military glory, and build structures while being mercilessly subjected to hurricanes, raids, disease, and hostile indians.

Each turn is equal to about a decade. The game ends after 20 turns, at which point, historically, the British take control of the city.

Each Player gets a player mat which is divided up into 7 boxes: Government, Churches, Forts, Population, Gold, Glory and Victory Points. Tokens are placed in the boxes on player mats to keep track of each players score in that category. Each player starts with 7 population, 5 gold, and 3 glory.

There are 2 Common Decks:
1. The Event Deck - one random event occurs each turn.
2. The Action Deck which comprises four suits:
- Economic (Types: Industry, Agriculture, Trade)
- Military (Types: Fight the French, Fight the English, Control)
- Population (Types: Indians, Blacks, Europeans)
- Buildings (Types: Government, Churches, Forts)
Each suit has 3 types of card with 4 cards for each type. In addition the deck has 4 leader (wild) cards.

Each turn is divided into 7 Phases:

1. Draw Phase
- Each Player fills their hand to 10 action cards.

2. Trade Phase
- Players may trade action cards with each other and may also trade tokens on their player mats.

3. Meld Phase
- Players may make melds. A meld consists of 1-4 cards of the same type. One card in a meld may be a leader. One card in a meld earns 1 token. Two cards in a meld earns 3 tokens. Three cards in a meld earns 6 tokens. Four cards in a meld earns 10 tokens.
- You can make a max of 4 melds, one from each suit.
- Tokens earned go into the relevant box on the player’s mat. (e.g. tokens from a population meld go into the population box, tokens from a military meld go into the glory box).

4. Building Phase
- Buildings provide bonus resources. Tokens are awarded for having the highest and second highest church, government and fort scores.

5. Event Phase
- Flip over the top card of the event deck. The event is resolved immediately and affects all players.

6. Score Phase
- Players gain Victory Points (VP) in based on their population, gold and glory scores.

7. End Phase
- Players may discard their action hands down to zero cards.
- Each player loses one half his gold rounding down.
- Each player loses all his Glory.

The game ends after 20 turns. The player with the most VP at the end of the game wins.

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