Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road

Set up the game of Merv by placing the central board in the middle of the play area. Organize all resource cubes, city tiles, wall and gate pieces, contracts, favor tokens, and cards into their respective supply areas. Each player chooses a color and takes their corresponding master meeple, servant meeples, scoring markers, and player tokens, placing them on their starting positions on the board and tracks.

The main objective of Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road is to accumulate the most victory points by the end of the game. Players achieve this by developing the city with buildings, trading goods along caravan routes, advancing on track influence levels, completing contracts, and satisfying the palace through effective strategic planning.

During a turn, a player moves their master meeple around the city grid to select a row or column, then chooses a building site to activate. They generate resources from that site and any matching buildings they own, and finally perform one of three actions: gain favor, deploy a servant meeple as a soldier, or execute the site's board action.

Scoring happens at the end of each round and at game end. Players score victory points based on their influence, courtiers in the palace, sets of spice caravan cards, contracts fulfilled, and various bonuses earned throughout the game.

The game concludes after three rounds, each consisting of four turns followed by scoring phases and Mongol invasions. After the final round's scoring and invasions, all points are tallied, and the player with the highest total wins.