Citadels

To prepare the game of Citadels, remove any cards featuring a white star in the top-left corner if you are using the Dark City expansion. Shuffle the remaining character cards to form the character deck and the district cards to form the district deck. Deal a random district card and two gold coins from the bank to each player. Finally, give the crown counter to the oldest player to signify the start.

The main objective of Citadels is to build your own medieval city by constructing district cards. You compete against neighboring kingdoms to construct the most valuable and strategic city. The player who accumulates the highest total score through district values, color diversity, and bonus conditions at the end of the game wins.

Citadels is played over a series of rounds, with each round divided into four main steps: drafting characters secretly, calling out characters in numerical rank order, taking actions, and building districts. On your turn, you must first choose an action—either taking two gold coins from the bank or drawing two district cards and keeping one—after which you may optionally build a single district card from your hand by paying its gold cost.

Scoring happens at the end of the game once a player completes their seventh district. Players receive base points equal to the total gold cost of all districts in their city. Additional points are awarded if a player has at least one district of each of the five different colors, if they were the first to complete seven districts, or simply for finishing seven districts. Ties are broken by the total gold cost from step one, and further ties by gold wins.

The game triggers its end condition the moment any player successfully builds their seventh district card in their city. The current round is played to completion so that every active character gets their turn, after which the comprehensive scoring process is executed to determine the winner with the most points.