Batavia
Batavia Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Game Materials
- 1 game board, showing Asia as the destination of the East India Companies, with a row of hexes along which the companies' trading posts are placed
- 35 trading post counters, each printed with a company flag and a commodity
- 1 target counter, marked with the flags of all five companies
- 1 die
- 75 promissory notes, used as bidding currency during auctions; each note has a face value of 1
- 60 commodity crates — 12 in each of the five player colors
- 5 merchant figures, one per player color
- 5 counting pieces, used to track each player's gold coins on the gold coin strip
- 110 ship cards, each bearing the flag of one of the five East India Companies (from Britain, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden)
- 1 ship piece, used as the starting player marker
- 1 cannon marker, tracking the running total of ship cards laid out on the table
- 5 ship cubes, one per company, each tracking how many of that company's ship cards are currently laid out
- 5 company seals, one per company, marking which player currently holds the majority of that company's laid-out ship cards
- 1 rulebook
Preparing the Game
Game Board and Trading Post Counters
Lay out the game board and place the target counter on its designated hex.
Sort the 35 trading post counters into five stacks by company flag, shuffle each stack separately, and stack each face down.
Take the top counter from each of the five stacks, shuffle these five together, and place them face down on the first five trading post hexes (1–5). Repeat with the next five counters from each stack for hexes 6–10, and so on, until every trading post hex on the board holds a counter.
Once all hexes are filled, turn the counters on the first ten hexes (1–10) face up.
Tip: for a clear table, keep every counter oriented with its flag toward the bottom edge, whether face up or face down.
Ship Cards and Other Material
Shuffle the 110 ship cards and deal 10 face down to each player. Place the remaining cards in a face-down draw stack.
Give each player, in a color of their choice: 1 merchant figure, 12 commodity crates, 1 counting piece, and 15 promissory notes.
Each player sets their counting piece on the starting space of the gold coin strip and places their merchant figure on the start space, just in front of the first trading post hex.
Place the cannon marker and all five ship cubes on space "0" of the ship scale. Keep the five company seals and the ship piece (starting player marker) beside the board, ready to be claimed during play.
The oldest player is the first auctioneer for the game and takes the die to conduct the opening auction.
Note: in games with fewer than five players, set aside any leftover figures, crates, counting pieces, and promissory notes — they are not used.
Alternative Setup for a Quick Start
To shorten the setup, you may play with all trading post counters face up: lay every counter face up on its numbered hex (1–35) from the start, instead of stacking and revealing them gradually. No counters need to be turned over during play under this variant. All other rules are unchanged.
Object of the Game
Playing as merchants, you travel to the trading posts of the five East India Companies scattered across Asia. Each company's trading posts yield a particular commodity, awarded to whichever merchant reaches that post. Reaching a trading post requires holding enough of that company's ship cards.
At game's end, the player who has gathered the most valuable commodities into their warehouse — and reached the most rewarding trading posts along the way — is rewarded with gold coins. Whoever ends the game with the most gold coins is the richest merchant and wins.
The seven commodities are: tea, cotton, china, silk, ginger, nutmeg, and pepper.
Game Sequence
The game proceeds in rounds. Each round has the same two-part structure:
- A. Ship card auction
- B. Player moves, taken in clockwise order starting with the new starting player — on your turn you either draw 2 ship cards, or play ship cards.
A. Ship Card Auction
The auctioneer rolls the die and reveals that many ship cards from the top of the draw stack. These revealed cards are auctioned off together as a single package; whoever wins the auction becomes the new starting player for the round.
Example: the auctioneer rolls a 3 and reveals 2 British cards and 1 Swedish card. All three cards go up for auction as one package.
The player seated to the auctioneer's left opens the bidding — the opening bid may be any amount. Bidding then proceeds clockwise, and each new bid must exceed the previous one. A player unwilling or unable to raise the bid passes and drops out of that auction. Bidding continues until only one bidder remains.
Bids are made using promissory notes (each worth 1), and a player may only offer notes they actually hold — no one is required to reveal how many notes they have in reserve.
The winning bidder pays by distributing their bid, one note at a time, starting with the player to their own left and moving around the table to every other player in turn, until the full amount has been paid out. The winning bidder does not pay themselves. In return, they take the ship piece (becoming starting player) and the auctioned ship cards, which are added openly to their hand — the size of every player's hand must stay visible to the whole table.
Note: the opening bidder may simply pass, removing themselves from that auction. If every player passes, the revealed cards stay face up and roll over into the next auction, to be combined with the next batch of revealed cards. In that case the starting player does not change; if this happens on the very first auction of the game, the auctioneer themselves becomes starting player. There is no ceiling on a bid other than how many notes the bidder actually holds.
B. Player Moves
Starting with the new starting player and proceeding clockwise, each player takes exactly one of the following two actions on their turn.
Draw Ship Cards
Take the top two cards from the ship card draw stack into your hand. This ends your turn.
Note: if the draw stack ever runs out, shuffle the discarded ship cards and turn them into a new face-down stack.
Play Ship Cards
Playing cards lets you advance your merchant figure to a trading post and claim its commodity. This action has three steps, taken in order: lay out ship cards, move your merchant figure, and — if you wish — convert trading post counters into gold coins.
1. Laying out ship cards
Choose at least one card from your hand — from as many different companies as you like — and lay them face up on the table, sorted and grouped by company so every player can see them clearly.
Your laid-out cards must give you the majority of at least one company's cards, either because you already held that majority before this move (Case 1) or because playing these cards creates it (Case 2). A tie is not a majority.
- Case 1: You already hold the majority for one or more companies before you play any cards. You may then lay out any cards you like, from any companies, and may use them to build additional majorities as well.
- Case 2: You do not hold any company's majority when your turn begins. You must play enough cards to create at least one majority, and may play further cards to build additional majorities beyond that.
If you have no majority and cannot create one, you may not play any cards this turn — you must draw 2 ship cards instead.
Every card you lay out moves the cannon marker forward one space on the ship scale (the cannon marker's position tracks the running total of every card laid out by anyone, and never moves past its final space, space 25, even if the true total exceeds it). At the same time, move that company's own ship cube forward on the scale by one space per card of that company you laid out — each cube's position always reflects the current total of that one company's laid-out cards.
Example: Hanna plays 4 Dutch cards and 2 French cards on her turn. The Dutch cube advances 4 spaces and the French cube advances 2 spaces; the cannon marker advances a total of 6 spaces.
Whenever laying out cards gives you a company's majority, take that company's seal — either from the board, or from whichever player held it before — and set it plainly beside your laid-out cards for that company. If your play instead ties the previous holder's total (so nobody now holds a clear majority), that seal returns to the board unclaimed.
2. Moving the Merchant Figure
Move your merchant figure forward to the next trading post counter belonging to a company whose seal you hold, removing that counter from the board and placing your figure on the now-empty hex. If you hold more than one seal, choose which company's post to head for.
Merchant figures only ever move forward, toward the target counter, never backward. Empty hexes, other companies' trading posts, and other players' figures along the way are simply passed over. A trading post counter that every player has already passed stays on the board for the rest of the game, but has no further effect.
Example: a player holds only the Danish seal, so they must advance to the next Danish trading post ahead of their figure.
The trading post counter you just claimed shows both a commodity and the company it came from. Place one of your own commodity crates into that commodity's warehouse space, in the column for that company.
Example: claiming a Danish trading post marked "silk," a player places one of their crates into the Silk warehouse, in the Danish column.
Whenever a merchant figure lands on one of the last five face-up counters remaining on the board, immediately turn the next five counters face up. (Under the quick-start variant, every counter is already face up, so this step never applies.)
3. Converting Trading Post Counters into Gold Coins
After claiming a trading post counter, decide whether to keep it in front of you, or to convert it — alone or together with other counters you're already holding — into gold coins.
You may only make this conversion if the new counter comes from a company you don't already hold a counter from. To convert, turn in exactly one counter from each different company you currently hold (the commodities printed on the counters make no difference here); the surrendered counters are removed from the game for good. Any counters left over stay with you and may be used in a future conversion.
Example: Hanna is holding trading post counters from four different companies, missing only the British one. If her new counter is British, she may convert all five; any other company, and she must hold on to everything, since it wouldn't add a new company to the set.
Example: a player who has no Danish counter claims a new Danish trading post counter and decides to convert. Combined with two other companies' counters already in hand, that's three different companies converted for 6 gold coins, leaving one Swedish counter still uncashed for a later conversion.
The number of gold coins awarded depends on how many different-company counters are converted at once:
| Counters converted (different companies) | Gold coins |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 3 |
| 3 | 6 |
| 4 | 10 |
| 5 | 15 |
Move your counting piece forward on the gold coin strip to record the coins earned.
Pirate Attacks
A pirate attack may occur immediately after any player finishes their move. The more ship cards that have been laid out across the table, the greater the danger.
Once the cannon marker reaches or passes space 21 (in a 3-player game) or space 25 (in a 4- or 5-player game), pirates strike the East India Company with the most cards currently laid out, sinking its ships. All of that company's laid-out cards — easy to identify from its cube's position on the ship scale — are gathered up and set aside as discards. If more than one company is tied for the most cards laid out, every tied company's cards are swept away together.
After an attack, recount whatever cards remain laid out and reset the cannon marker to match that new total. Reset the ship cube of each affected company back to space "0."
Play then passes to the next player. Once every player has taken a turn, a new round begins with a fresh ship card auction, conducted by whoever became starting player most recently.
Note: the ship cube and cannon positions are a bookkeeping aid, not a hard rule — if their count is ever in doubt, the actual number of cards laid out on the table is what counts, and the markers should be corrected to match.
End of the Game
If a player plays ship cards but has no matching trading post counter left to move to, they instead advance their merchant figure onto the target counter and take it. Play continues to finish out that round.
Once someone has claimed the target counter, remaining players who haven't yet taken their turn this round may still play cards, but only if doing so lets them reach a trading post counter matching a seal they hold; otherwise they must draw 2 ship cards instead.
Note: the player who claims the target counter forfeits the chance to convert any trading post counters they're still holding into gold coins.
Once the round in which the target counter was claimed finishes, scoring begins. (No pirate attack can occur during scoring, no matter how many cards end up laid out.)
Scoring
First, every player lays out any ship cards remaining in their hand, and company seals are reassigned according to the normal majority rules one final time.
Gold coins are then added to each player's total (on top of whatever they already banked from converting trading post counters), as follows:
- Warehouse majorities. Each commodity pays out to whoever placed the most crates in its warehouse:
| Commodity | Gold coins |
|---|---|
| Tea | 10 (5 if tied) |
| Cotton | 11 (5 if tied) |
| China | 12 (6 if tied) |
| Silk | 13 (6 if tied) |
| Ginger | 14 (7 if tied) |
| Nutmeg | 15 (7 if tied) |
| Pepper | 16 (8 if tied) |
If two or more players are tied for most crates in a given warehouse, each of them receives the lower, "tied" value shown in parentheses instead of the full amount; a player who isn't part of the tie in that warehouse receives nothing for it.
- Promissory notes. Whoever holds the most promissory notes gains 5 gold coins; if tied for the most, every tied player instead gains 2 gold coins.
- Target counter. Whoever holds the target counter gains 4 gold coins.
- Company seals. Each company seal a player holds at this point is worth 2 gold coins.
Whoever has the most gold coins after all of this is the richest merchant and wins the game. If players are tied for the most, they share the win.
Overview of One Round of Play
Ship card auction
- The starting player rolls the die and reveals that many cards from the draw stack.
- The cards are auctioned as one package; the winning bidder becomes starting player for the round and takes the cards into hand.
Player moves — starting with the starting player, clockwise, each player does one of the following:
- Draw 2 ship cards, or
- Play at least 1 ship card (a company seal must result), adjusting the cannon and ship cube markers accordingly, then:
- Move the merchant figure forward and take the trading post counter it lands on, placing a crate in the matching warehouse, and turning over the next 5 counters if needed;
- Optionally convert held trading post counters into gold coins.
A pirate attack may follow any move once 21 (3 players) or 25 (4–5 players) cards are laid out on the table.
The game ends in the round during which the target counter is claimed.