The White Castle Duel

Setting up The White Castle Duel involves placing the main game board in the center and arranging all influence cards, training tiles, lantern cards, activation hexagons, location tiles, and social ladder tiles on their respective fields. Players receive their player boards, middle stones, clan seals, score markers, lantern stones, castle gates, and starting components according to the rules. Dice and resources like food, pearl beads, and coins are pooled in the center ready for play.

The main objective is to lead your clan to victory by scoring the highest number of victory points. Players accomplish this by activating lantern paths, training samurai, collecting resources, advancing on the social ladder, and fulfilling various scoring conditions throughout the two rounds of the game.

Each of the two rounds gives players six turns to execute various actions. A turn begins optionally with a tile activation, followed by choosing one of six available dice actions. Players then select and place a stone onto a matching field on the board, fulfilling requirements and collecting associated bonuses, resources, or card effects based on their placement and dice choice.

Scoring happens at the end of the game based on several categories: lantern stamps, collected resources, noburi flag positions, garden animal types, samurai training tracks, and remaining coins, pearl beads, and activation tiles. Ties are broken by who has more placed stones, then who is higher on the social ladder.

The game concludes automatically after the second round once all stones have been placed and all players have completed their turns. Final scoring is calculated, and the winner is determined by comparing total victory points.