The Guild of Merchant Explorers

To set up, place the main board in the center. Shuffle the objective cards and reveal three. Place money tokens in separate piles. Shuffle the action cards, revealing the top row for initial use, and place the remaining cards in stacks for Eras II, III, and IV. Shuffle navigation and treasure cards, placing them face down. Each player chooses a color and takes their corresponding player components. If using the crystal map, place crystal tokens near the board.

The objective of The Guild of Merchant Explorers is to re-discover the map and earn the most points by exploring, establishing settlements, building towers, and connecting trading posts. Players will strategically use action cards to expand their presence on the map, aiming to complete objectives and collect valuable treasure.

Each turn, players simultaneously reveal an action card from the common board. All players perform the action indicated on the card, such as placing cubes on specific terrain types (mountains, grasslands, water). Cubes must be placed adjacent to an existing cube or the starting city. Placing a cube on a space with a coin grants that coin. Some cards allow placing cubes on non-adjacent spaces or act as wildcards. Players can choose to perform fewer actions than allowed. Numbered cards (I, II, III) introduce special navigation cards, allowing players to choose one of two unique actions to keep for the rest of the game, activating it whenever that numbered card is revealed.

At the end of the game, points are scored from several sources. Players earn points for each discovered region, with larger regions yielding more points. Connecting trading posts of specific values provides points equal to the product of their values. Towers built on the map grant increasing points for each tower placed (6, 8, 10, 14 points). Completed objective cards and collected treasure cards also contribute to the final score. The player with the highest total score wins. In case of a tie, the player with the most towers wins; if still tied, the player with the most settlements wins.

The game is played over four rounds, called eras. Each era consists of players revealing and performing actions from the action card deck until all basic action cards for that era have been played. At the end of each era, all placed cubes are removed from the map, but settlements and memory tokens (from shipwrecks/ruins and covered trading posts) remain. New action cards are added to the deck for the next era, increasing the available actions. After the fourth era, final scoring occurs, and the player with the most points is declared the winner.