London

Place the development board in the middle of the table. Each player takes a score tracker in their chosen color and places it on the zero space. Separate the building cards into three shuffled piles (A, B, C) based on the letter on their face-up side. Put the C pile face-down, then the B pile on top, and finally the A pile on top to form the city deck. Place this deck beside the board. Set out the coin, poverty pieces, and loan tokens nearby. Each player receives 5 English pounds and is dealt 6 cards. Go through the borough cards and find the three with a darkened grey banner, placing them below the board in any order. Shuffle the remaining borough cards into a face-down pile nearby. The person who set up the game is the first player, or choose randomly.

In London, players develop parts of the city to gain benefits, balance their finances, and deal with the ever-growing threat of poverty. The goal is not just to end with the most money, but to leave a legacy by being the most prestigious architect of your generation.

At the start of your turn, you may pay off any loans you have by returning 15 pounds to the supply for every 10-pound loan you wish to remove. Then, you must draw one city card. After drawing, you take one action from four options: 1) Draw three cards: Take exactly three cards from any combination of the city deck and the face-up cards on the development board. 2) Develop your city: Play one or more city cards from your hand to your building area, discarding another card of the same color from your hand for each card played (poppers cannot be played this way). Additional costs may apply. 3) Run your city: Activate any number of face-up cards in your building area, one at a time, in any order. Pay any activation costs (money or discarding a card). Some cards flip face-down after activation, others remain face-up. After all activations, gain one poverty piece for each stack in your building area and for each 10-pound loan you have, and one poverty piece for each card remaining in your hand. 4) Buy land: Buy a single borough card from the three face-up cards by the board, paying its cost. Place the borough in your building area and immediately gain its benefits. Replace the purchased borough with a new one from the deck. You cannot choose an action you cannot perform.

When the city deck is empty at the end of a player's turn, each other player takes one more turn, and then the game ends. To calculate final scores: 1) Each player takes one poverty piece for each card remaining in their hand, then removes those cards from the game. 2) Turn all city cards in your display face-up. Go through all of them and check for a diamond symbol above the semicircle in the bottom right-hand corner. Add all of those values together as prestige points and add them to your score on the track. 3) Pay off as many of your 10-pound loans as you can afford at the regular rate of 15 pounds each. Reduce your score by 7 for each unpaid loan remaining. 4) For every 3 pounds you still have, give yourself 1 point. 5) Compare how much poverty each player has and determine who has the lowest. All players remove that much poverty from what they have. All players who still have poverty will check that amount on the 'Prestige Lost Due to Poverty' chart and lose the corresponding number of prestige points. The player with the most prestige wins. In case of a tie, the tied player with the least amount of poverty wins. If still tied, the tied player with the most borough cards wins. If still tied, the tied player with a city card worth the most prestige points wins. If still tied, the tied players share the victory.

The game ends when the city deck is empty at the end of a player's turn. Each other player then takes one more turn, and the game proceeds to final scoring.