Sencha Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup
• How to Play
  • Buy 1 House
  • Build 1 House
  • Recruit 1 Worker
  • Collect and Produce Tea
  • Sell in the Tea Market
• End of the Game
• Scoring

Components

• 39 large cubes:
  • Green 9
  • Pink 15
  • Black 15

Note: Each color represents a type of tea: Sencha, Sakura and Black Tea, respectively.

• 8 small gray cubes (2-player games: score and money)
• 20 houses in 4 colors (green, red, blue and yellow)
• 36 cards:
  • 4 temples
  • 4 plantations
  • 16 Workers
  • 10 Tea Markets
  • 1 field (Map)
  • 1 house reserve
• 1 cloth bag for the tea cubes
• 1 rulebook

Setup

• Each player receives a temple card, 1 house in the color of their choice, 1 initial worker card (marked with the symbol in the face and back of the card) and 2 money markers (gray cubes). Put one of these money markers on square 7 of the money track and the other one next to your temple for later use, to keep track of your Victory Points.
• Put all the tea cubes in the bag and leave it at the side of the table within reach of all players.
• Deploy as many plantation cards at the center of the table as shown in the chart, according to the number of players.
• Separate the worker cards by type and create 4 piles by placing them face up to form the worker supply, with one card less of each type than players.
• x2 (2-player games only): Shuffle the unused worker cards, draw one randomly and leave it face down on the table without looking at it, along with the rest of worker cards. Reveal this card once someone hires the first worker.
• Shuffle the Tea Market deck and play with as many cards as indicated by the chart, according to the number of players. Place the Tea Market deck at the center of the table and reveal the top card, which shows the starting demand.
• Put the field card at the center of the table within reach of all players.
• Also leave the house reserve card on the table within everyone's reach and deploy the houses of each player forming piles.
• x2 (2-player games only): In 2-player games, place a neutral house on any of the plantations (no matter which one) and one in the field.
• x3 (3-player games only): In 3-player games, place a neutral house on the field.
• Place on each plantation 2 cubes drawn at random from the tea bag.
• Return any unused components to the box.

No. of players	Plantations	Workers/Type	Tea Market
2	3	1 (+1)	7
3	3	2	8
4	4	3	9

The manual shows a 3-player setup diagram with the three player boards, plantations, workers and Tea Market cards laid out. The diagrams are not transcribed.

How to Play

In Sencha, there are no phases or rounds. The players take turns in clockwise order to perform a single action. The last player who drank tea will play first.

In your turn you can do 1 of the following actions:

• Buy 1 House
• Build 1 House
• Recruit 1 worker
• Collect and produce tea
• Sell in the Tea Market

Buy 1 House

With this action you get a house from the reserve to build in a later turn.

Pay 1 yen for each house of your color on the reserve and place it in your game area. The first house costs 4 yen, the second 3 yen, etc.

Example: Lara purchases her second house for 3 yen.

Note: Quantities in yen are usually written "¥1", but the designers decided to use the form "1¥" for iconography reasons. This transcription writes money as "yen".

Build 1 House

With this action, you can build a house on a plantation or in the field.

Choose a plantation or field to build on and pay 1 yen for each house already there before building your new one. Put a house from your game area on the chosen plantation/field (you may leave the houses next to the field cards instead of on them, if you like).

Examples (printed on the plantation cards): a plantation with no houses on it costs 0 yen to build on; a plantation with two houses already on it costs 2 yen.

• Building on a plantation: Each house allows you to collect 1 type of tea per plantation (see "Collect and produce tea"). There can be a maximum of 3 houses built on each plantation.

  Every time you build a house on a plantation, immediately draw 5 random resources out of the tea bag and put them on the plantation where you just built the house.

  Important: The limit of tea cubes that can be in a plantation card is 9 cubes.

• Building on the field: Each house you have in the field provides an additional +1 yen when you perform a Tea Market action (see "Sell in the Tea Market") and 1 Victory Point at the end of the game.

Recruit 1 Worker

With this action you can hire new workers to improve your tea collection.

Choose one of the available workers in the supply and pay the corresponding price to take it to your game area. You can have a maximum of 3 workers, including the initial one. You may replace one of your workers with a new one at any time, except for your initial worker.

• Peasant (3 yen): Collect 1 tea cube, of any kind.
• Donkey (5 yen): Collect 2 cubes of one type of tea. You cannot collect Sencha.
• Collector (8 yen): Collect 2 of the same or different types of tea. You cannot collect Sencha.
• Cart (+3 yen): Discard a donkey or a non-initial collector card + 3 yen: Collect 3 cubes of one type of tea. You cannot collect Sencha.

The manual shows the worker cards with their prices (3 yen, 5 yen, 8 yen, and +3 yen for the cart) and the tea-type symbols of each card.

Collect and Produce Tea

With this action you can produce and/or collect tea from any plantation where you have houses.

• Produce (optional): This is an optional extra action that you can do before you collect tea, to produce new tea cubes in a plantation. Pay 1 yen to draw 2 cubes at random from the tea bag and place them in a plantation of your choice. You can pay to produce as many times as you like in any plantation where you have a house.

• Collect: With this action you can collect tea from the plantations (to sell it later on). You can collect 1 type of tea for each house you own on each plantation. If you have 2 or more houses on a plantation, you can collect 2 or more different types of tea there. Each worker you send can collect from one plantation each time, the amount and types of tea indicated by their cards. Place the collected tea cubes on that worker's card.

  If a worker already carries the maximum possible amount of tea, it cannot collect more until you make a Sell in the Tea Market action to sell its load, or to offer it at the temple (see "Sell in the Tea Market"). Remember that each worker can only carry one type of tea (with the exception of the collector) and that only the peasant can collect Sencha tea.

  Example 1: Gael sends 2 peasants to Kyoto, where he has one house, so he can only collect 1 type of tea. He decides to collect 1 cube of Sakura with each worker.

  Example 2: Miri sends 1 peasant and a cart to collect at Shizuoka, where she has 2 houses, so she can collect 2 types of tea and decides to collect 1 cube of Sencha with her peasant and 3 cubes of Black Tea with her cart.

  Example 3: Lara sends 1 donkey and a collector to collect from Kyoto and Osaka, where she has 2 houses, so she can collect the same or different types of tea in each plantation. She collects 2 cubes of Black Tea with her donkey in Kyoto, since she can only collect one type of tea and cannot collect Sencha with the donkey. In Osaka, the collector takes 1 cube of Sakura and another cube of Black Tea, since she has 2 houses and can collect 2 different types of tea with the collector.

  Important: If there are no resources available to collect in the plantations where you have houses and you do not have the money to generate new production, you may grab a free resource at random from the tea bag, and play it to any of your available workers directly.

  Source note: the printed sentence reads "play with to any of your available workers"; "play it to" is read from context. This is a judgment call.

Sell in the Tea Market

With this action you can sell for money the tea collected by your workers and/or send tea to the Emperor for Victory Points. You can sell as many cubes of tea as you want to get points, money, or both.

• Sales: Sell tea cubes at the price marked by the Tea Market card in play to receive money. Also, when you sell you will receive 1 yen for each house you have on the field. Place any cubes you sell on the appropriate tracks of the Tea Market card.

  Example 1: Gael sells in the Tea Market and offers 2 Black Tea cubes and one Sakura for 6 yen.

• Sending tea to the Emperor: Receive Victory Points in exchange for tea. Each Tea Market card indicates the current rewards from the Emperor for tea and the Victory Points earned in exchange.

  Example 2: In the same action, Gael also delivers 1 Sencha cube to the Emperor and wins 1 Victory Point.

• Meeting the demand: Whenever someone completes at least one column of the Tea Market card, it is considered that the card's demand has been met and you must discard it to reveal a new one.

  • Offerings: At the time a card's demand is met, you can offer to the Temple any tea cubes that don't fit in the Tea Market. You can only give tea from columns that are already full in the Tea Market.

  Example 3: Thus, he meets the black tea demand of the Tea Market and, before discarding the Tea Market card and drawing a new one, Gael decides to offer his last cube of Black Tea to the temple, which he places on his temple card.

  Note: The tea cubes on the discarded Tea Market return to the tea bag.

• Taxes: Each time your Victory Point marker reaches the taxes icon on the track (3 and 5 Victory Points) of your temple card, you have to pay 1 yen for each house you have on plantations or, if you don't have enough money, as much as you can. Taxes are paid at the end of your turn. You can never have a negative balance.

End of the Game

The game can end in 2 ways. In both cases, the other players play a last turn before the end of the game:

• When the demand of the last Tea Market card is met: At the time that a player meets the demand of the last Tea Market card, don't discard it. Instead, leave it on the table so that the other players can, if they wish to, satisfy the demand on the same card and/or offer to the temple any tea they could not sell, as their last turn action.
• When a player gets 7 Victory Points on the score track: At the time that someone gets 7 Victory Points, the rest of players play their last turn normally.

Scoring

Once all players have played their last turn, proceed to the Victory Point count and tally the final score:

• Points on your Victory Point track.
• 1 Victory Point for each cart and collector you have.
• 1 Victory Point if you have between 7 yen and 11 yen.
• 2 Victory Points if you have exactly 12 yen.
• 1 Victory Point for each house that you have in the field.
• 1 Victory Point for each type of tea you have the majority of in the temples. (In case of a tie nobody takes the Victory Point.)

The player with more Victory Points at the end wins the game. In the event of a tie, the winner will be the one with more money, from the tied players. If the tie persists, the winner is the one who offered more tea to the temple.

Note on the transcription: the Tea Market card reward values (yen, Victory Points and the Emperor's offer tracks) and the worker and plantation card faces are printed as graphics in the manual and on the components, and are not transcribed here. Tea cube colors: green = Sencha, pink = Sakura, black = Black Tea. Icons such as Victory Points and the taxes mark are written out as words.

Example (end of game): The game ends, since Miri (yellow) reaches 7 Victory Points with her marker. After the other players played their last turn, the score ends as follows:

Player	Temple	Collector	Cart	7-11 yen	12 yen	Houses/field	Offerings	Total
Dani (blue)	4	0	0	0	2	2	0	8
Gael (red)	5	0	1	1	0	1	1	9
Miri (yellow)	7	2	0

Miri claims victory in Sencha!