Santa Maria

Set up Santa Maria by shuffling and placing scholar and bishop tiles, shipping tiles, and standard building tiles. Each player receives a colony board, starting resources, and six monk tokens of their color. Place tokens on the religion, conquistador, and market tracks, and determine a start player. Roll and distribute dice for each player.

Players take on the roles of colony builders, aiming to establish and develop a thriving settlement. By strategically placing building tiles, managing resources, shipping goods, and utilizing monks, players compete to build the most prosperous and happy colony.

During a round, players take turns choosing one of four actions: expanding their colony with new tiles, activating a single building, activating an entire row or column with dice, or retiring to the market. Actions require paying costs in resources or coins, and dice mechanics drive the core activation engine.

Scoring happens primarily at the end of the game based on accumulated happiness. Players earn points for completed rows and columns, bishop tile criteria, scholar tile effects, harbor tiles, and conquistador track progress. The player with the highest happiness total wins the game.

The game concludes after three full rounds, referred to as years. After the final retirement phase in the third year, players convert remaining resources into happiness and calculate final scores to determine the winner.