Die Fugger Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup
• Sequence of Play
  • Action 1: Draw a card from the draw pile (replenish your stock of goods)
  • Action 2: Play a card face up in front of you (determine demand)
  • Action 3: Play a card face down in front of you (determine the shipments to be scored at the end of the game)
• End of Round Evaluation
• New Round
• End of the Game and Final Scoring
• Rules for Two Players

Components

• 9 price cards, showing the prices 1 to 9 guldens
• 1 "Rich Jakob" card
• 5 goods-value marker cards
• 45 goods cards: copper, cloth, wine, spice and jewelry, 9 of each; 2 of each type bear a royal seal
• 4 merchant cards
• These rules

Setup

• Have paper and a pencil ready.
• Lay the 9 price cards out in a circle, numbered 1 to 9 in order. (See the picture on one of the supplementary cards.)
• Place the 5 goods-value marker cards next to the 5-guilder price card. These cards may be folded in half and stood up.
• Place the "Rich Jakob" card beside the circle, face up.
• Shuffle the 45 goods cards and the 4 merchant cards together and place them face down in the centre of the circle. This is the draw pile.
• Each player draws 4 cards from the draw pile and takes them into hand.
• "Rich Jakob" also receives 2 cards from the draw pile. Place them face up beside the "Rich Jakob" card. If a merchant is drawn, place it face down beside the draw pile; this forms the discard pile. Then draw a replacement card in place of the merchant.
• Decide who starts the game.

Sequence of Play

• The game is played over several rounds.
• The starting player is followed by the others in clockwise order.
• On his turn, the active player chooses one of the following three actions:

Action 1: Draw a card from the draw pile (replenish your stock of goods)

• A player may draw a card only if he has at most four cards in hand.
• If the draw pile runs out, shuffle the discard pile and draw from it.

Action 2: Play a card face up in front of you (determine demand)

• Only one card may be played from hand, face up in front of the player. He may choose to play a goods card (either a royal-seal card or a plain card) or a merchant card.
• No player may have more than two merchants in front of him.

Action 3: Play a card face down in front of you (determine the shipments to be scored at the end of the game)

• This action may be chosen only in the first two rounds, and at most once per round. So at the end of the second round, each player may have at most two face-down cards in front of him, and this number cannot increase during the game.
• Note: this action can be used to earn extra points at the end of the game (see "End of the Game and Final Scoring").
• To make it easy to tell in which round a face-down card was played, it is advisable to place the card played in the first round upright (vertically) and the card played in the second round turned 90 degrees (horizontally).
• Each time a player places a card face down in front of himself, draw a card from the draw pile and place it beside "Rich Jakob". (If it is a merchant, draw another card instead.) The exception is a four-player game, in which "Rich Jakob" receives no card.

End of Round Evaluation

• A round ends when there are 5 cards of any one kind of goods on the table. The cards that count are the goods cards lying face up in front of the players and the cards placed beside "Rich Jakob". The evaluation then begins.
• First, the prices are adjusted. The three kinds of goods with the most cards on the table each rise in price by the number of their cards lying below (these include the cards beside "Rich Jakob"). [Translator's note: the source says "lent lévő" ("lying below") and does not define the area precisely; the worked example below does not clearly match this counting. The text is kept as printed; check the original German rules if in doubt.]
• If two kinds of goods tie for second place in terms of the number of cards lying below, the price of each of the tied kinds rises. In this case it does not matter which kind had the third-highest number, because that kind does not rise in price.
• If a tie occurs for third place in terms of the number of cards lying below, the price of each of the tied kinds rises. It is therefore possible for more than three kinds of goods to rise in price in one round.
• Important: if the price of a kind of goods would exceed nine ducats, the value marker card for that kind stops at one ducat [translator's note: the source says "one ducat" here, which conflicts with the nine-guilder maximum stated by the price cards; the printed text is kept as it stands]. The value of that kind does not rise again until the next round.
• Every kind of goods whose price did not rise this round falls by one. A price can never fall below one gulden.

Example: on the table there are 5 spice, 4 cloth, 4 wine, 2 copper and 1 jewelry card, all face up. Spice, cloth and wine are the most common. The price of spice rises from five to nine, then falls back gradually. The price of cloth and wine rises from five to nine. The price of copper and jewelry falls by one, to four.

• Each player then sells his goods. Each face-up goods card in front of a player is worth the price shown by the value marker of its kind. Record the money each player receives on the paper.
• If there are 3 or fewer cards of a kind on the table at evaluation, the cards with a royal seal are worth double to the player who owns them. Cards without a seal keep their value. If there are more than 3 cards of that kind on the table, the royal-seal cards are not doubled.
• The money of "Rich Jakob" does not need to be calculated.

New Round

• After the evaluation, all the goods cards lying face up on the table are placed on the discard pile.
• Each player draws two cards from the draw pile.
• In addition, each player who has one merchant face up in front of him draws 2 more cards, and each player who has two merchants face up in front of him draws 5 more cards.
• Important: at the start of a new round, players who hold more than four cards in hand also draw.
• Then the merchants on the table are placed on the discard pile.
• Two goods cards are again turned face up beside "Rich Jakob".
• The new round is started by the left-hand neighbour of the player who played the goods card that triggered the evaluation in the previous round.

End of the Game and Final Scoring

• If at the end of an evaluation any player has 100 or more guldens, the game ends.
• Final scoring then takes place. In final scoring only the cards played face down in the first two rounds (the shipments) are counted.
• Players receive double the current price for their shipments (royal seals do not count).
• The player with the most money is the winner. He becomes the Fuggers' trading partner.

Rules for Two Players

• The basic game rules apply, with the following differences.
• As soon as both players have finished their turns, one card is drawn from the draw pile and placed beside "Rich Jakob". If it is a merchant, another card is drawn instead. So after both players have each taken one action, a card is turned up beside "Rich Jakob". Then the two players take their turns again, and another card is placed beside "Rich Jakob" from the draw pile. This continues until the evaluation at the end of the round.