Pocket Master Builder Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Game Setup
• Player Setup
• How to Play
  • Develop Kingdom
  • Place Workers
  • Construct a Building
  • Extra Action: Using Reward
  • Rest
• Game End & Final Scoring
• Symbols

Components

• 28 Kingdom Cards
• 8 Wall Cards
• 4 Starting Cards
• 8 Landmark Cards
• 8 Oracle Cards
• 2 Player Cards
• 2 Help Cards
• 42 Worker Cubes (21 of each color)

Game Setup

1. Place all Wall Cards in the configuration shown in the example (a horizontal row along the top). Counting from the right, the first card marked "+6, +8", the second card marked "+4", the third card marked "+2", and the other 5 cards in random order.
2. Place all Starting Cards in random order in the configuration shown in the example (a vertical column down the left side).
3. Place all Landmark Cards in random order in the configuration shown in the example (a horizontal row along the bottom). Form a 7x4 "Kingdom Area" in the center of the grid.
4. Shuffle all Kingdom Cards and place them in a facedown pile. The empty area next to the pile is the "Discard Pile".
5. Shuffle all Oracle Cards and place them in a facedown pile.

Player Setup

A. Each player receives a Player Card, a Help Card and 21 Worker Cubes. Place these cubes on:

• 1 Worker: the leftmost Wall card
• 1 Worker: the "4" space of the Reward Track
• 1 Worker: the leftmost space of the Donkey Track
• 5 Workers: Worker Area
• 9 Workers: Rest Area
• 4 Workers: the 4 leftmost spaces of the Help Card

B. From the pile of Kingdom Cards, deal 3 to each player as their starting hand.

C. From the pile of Oracle Cards, deal 2 to each player. Each player chooses 1 card to keep, placing it facedown in front of them, and places the remaining card facedown under the Oracle Card pile.

How to Play

Randomly choose a starting player. Proceeding clockwise from the starting player, each player takes their turn in full. Each turn is composed of 4 phases:

1. Develop Kingdom (Must)
2. Place Workers (Optional)
3. Construct a Building (Optional)
4. Rest (Must)

Develop Kingdom

Placing a Kingdom Card: You must play a Kingdom Card to the "Kingdom Area", following the rules below:

• You must play it horizontally adjacent to a card.
• The direction of the card is fixed.

Invasion: After playing a card, if the 4 spaces in a vertical line are filled, trigger invasion immediately. Check if your Cube is on or on the farther Wall card in the line:

• Yes: gain Invasion Reward.
• No: gain nothing. After that, if you build that Wall Card, you CANNOT gain that Invasion Reward, but still can gain the Immediate Reward.

(The Wall card shows an Immediate Reward and an Invasion Reward.)

Place Workers

You may place 1 or more Workers on the Kingdom Card you played this turn, following the rules below:

• Use the Worker(s) in your Work Area.
• A Worker can only be placed on the side(s) that connected with other cards. Each side can only be occupied by 1 Worker.

Construct a Building

You may construct 1 unbuilt Kingdom Card by using your Workers and/or discard your hand card.

Note: Number of workers can be used, and number of cards can be discarded are determined by your Donkey Track level. (The Donkey Track on the Player Card shows, for each Level, the Worker number and the Discard number allowed.)

• When using a Worker, check the color of Resource Area underneath the Worker (Note: Place the using Worker(s) to your Rest Area.):
  • Same color on two sides: gain resources of both sides.
  • Different color on two sides: gain resources of 1 side.
• When discarding a hand card, gain the resource on the bottom side of the card.

(Note: You may temporarily record the acquired resources on the Help Card, but all resources will disappear at the end of your turn.)

After paying the resource cost on the left of the card, take a Worker Cube from your Rest Area as a marker, and place it on the upper right corner of the card, covering the reward space and gain the reward immediately.

Some Buildings will have an immediate effect, build effect or special effect. Triggered them in corresponding time.

(Card anatomy: Honor, Reward Space, Type, Name, Effect, Cost.)

Example: Wei would like to construct the BARRACK (1). He uses Worker (2) to gain 2 Woods and 1 Stone, uses another Worker (3) to gain 1 Gold (replace Brick), and discards the TOWER Card (4) to gain 1 Stone. After paying the resource cost (A), he places a Worker (B) covering the Reward space and immediately advance 1 space on the Wall Track (C), gain the immediate reward (D), and then immediately gain 1 Worker Cube for 2 Walls (E). If the 4 spaces in Line 2 are filled later, he can gain the Invasion Reward (F).

Extra Action: Using Reward

ANY TIME during your turn, you may use Reward as many times as you wish:

• Spend 2 Rewards for 1 Worker or 1 Kingdom Card.
• Spend 3 Rewards for 1 Gold. (Note: Gold may replace Wood, Brick, or Stone.)
• Spend 4 Rewards to advance 1 level of Donkey Track.

Rest

Choose 1 of the 3 actions:

• Take 2 Workers from Rest Area to Work Area
• Draw 2 cards from the Kingdom Card pile
• Take 1 Worker and draw 1 card

Note 1: If you have 0 Kingdom cards on your hand, you MUST draw at least 1 card.

Note 2: At the end of your Rest Phase, your hand limit is 5 Kingdom Cards. Place the extra cards faceup on the Discard pile. Whenever the Kingdom Card pile is empty, shuffle the Discard Pile to a new Kingdom Card pile.

Game End & Final Scoring

The game end is triggered when any player has built 6 buildings. When that happens, finish the current round and play another complete round. In this final round, the 4 phases are the same as normal, but each player may use as many workers and discard as many cards as they wish to construct ONE building (ignore the level of your Donkey Track).

After that, each player totals the honors (VP) from their Buildings, Landmarks, Walls, Donkey Track and Oracle Cards. The player with the most honors wins. In case of a tie, the tied player with more Rewards wins the game.

Symbols

• Worker Cube; Kingdom Card; Oracle Card.
• Reward; Advance Wall; Advance Donkey.
• Immediate Effect; Build Effect; Hand Limit.
• Wall icon with multiplier: Gain the indicated resource for every 2 Walls (each player has 1 Wall in the beginning).
• "+1" with building icon multiplier: Gain 1 honor for each of your Buildings displaying the indicated icon.
• "+1 / +3" with Donkey icon: Gain 1/3 honor(s) for the last 2 spaces on the Donkey Track.