Viscounts of the West Kingdom

Viscounts of the West Kingdom is set up by placing the central board with its hexagonal layout and inner castle ring in the middle. Players receive a personal player board, a set of 20 workers, 9 buildings, a marker for virtue and corruption, and a viscount meeple. Debt and deed cards are shuffled and placed in stacks along with building tiles, manuscripts, and tomes. Each player starts with a standard deck of townsfolk cards, draws an initial hand, and drafts starting character cards and setup tiles to determine their starting resources and meeple positions.

The main objective is to lead the kingdom through a tumultuous period by earning the highest victory points before the game ends. Players must carefully balance virtuous deeds with corrupt debts while navigating the realm, constructing buildings, writing manuscripts, working in the castle, and trading resources.

On a turn, a player plays a card from their hand onto their player board's conveyor belt, activating its effects. They then move their viscount clockwise along the board's paths, paying silver if they want to move further than the card's base movement value. Upon reaching a destination, the player takes one of four main actions—trading, building, working in the castle, or writing manuscripts—matching the symbols on their active card and those accumulated on their conveyor belt. Finally, they may hire a new townsfolk card from the display and draw back up to their hand limit.

End-game scoring awards points for the number and type of buildings constructed on the board, workers placed in the castle tiers, sets of distinct manuscript colors collected, and flipped deeds and debts. Players also lose points for un-flipped debt cards, making debt management crucial.

The end-game condition is triggered the exact moment either the debt card stack or the deed card stack is completely exhausted. Once triggered, each remaining player takes one final turn before final scoring is tallied.