Rulebook

A1 - Introduction

As a Renaissance banker[1], you will finance kings and republics, sponsor voyages of discovery, join secret cabals, and unleash jihads and inquisitions. Your choices determine if Europe is elevated into the bright modern era or remains festering in dark feudalism. Four victories determine the future course of Western Society: will it be towards imperialism, trade globalization, religious totalitarianism, or enlightened art and science?[2]

• a. Terms. Capitalized terms (e.g., Prestige) or terms in all-caps (e.g. See PRESTIGE) are defined in the glossary. Bold indicates the term is being defined. Italics indicate the term is defined elsewhere, usually in the referenced section.

• b. Time Scale. Each turn represents two years in the time period from 1460 to 1530.

• c. Rules Layout. The rules are divided into two parts: sequential processes and alphabetical terms. The sequential rules describe processes arranged in the order you meet them in a typical game: setup (C), sequence of play (D), actions (E), operations (F), trade fairs (G), One-shots (H - K), and victory (L). Although useful for learning to play, the processes are not comprehensive without the game terms. These terms and other details are listed alphabetically in the glossary, where they serve as an easily-found reference during a game and do not bog the sequential rules with unnecessary minutiae.

• d. Golden Rule. If the text on a card contradicts these rules, the card has precedence. If text on a play aid contradicts these rules, the rules have precedence.

A2 - Flow of Play Overview

Each player takes a turn in a clockwise fashion. On your turn, choose two actions (E1 - E6) and then perform a market refresh (D2).

• a. Actions. You may purchase a faceup Market Card to add to your Hand, play a card from your Hand into the row of faceup cards in front of you (your TABLEAU), sell a card for cash, enable the operations (Ops) of your cards in either the East or West side of your Tableau, Discard a facedown Market Card to stimulate the economy with a trade fair, or declare victory. You must take at least one of your two actions.

• b. Play Card. Upon card play, you may place the Agents depicted according to the Location listed. If you place an Agent on a City or Border, this must replace any Token already present there (E2.2).

• c. One-Shots. If playing a card with the bomb icon, you may perform its One-shot, which places an Agent and can realign trade, or weaken and seize an Empire. For details, see coronations (I), conspiracies (J1), peasant revolts (J2), Religious Wars (K1), apostasy (K3), or trade shift (H1).

• d. Trade Fair. Convening a trade fair will Discard the facedown card in either the East or West Market. This starts a trade fair voyage (G2) which distributes profits (G3) and raises Levies (G4) as it follows the East or West Trade Route. If there is not much profit, the voyage will be short (G5).[3]

Notes

1. RENAISSANCE BANKERS, what do you know about them? That they were rapacious, greedy, and fabulously rich? That they purchased Kaisers and Kings? What you don’t know is that they were the first capitalists, the first to overcome the tyranny of warlords. As they vanquished medieval feudalism, they steered the Western World out of the Dark Ages and into the world of 747s, skyscrapers, and Coca-Cola. This is the thesis of the game.

2. RELEVANCE OF HISTORY. Today’s intellectuals and professors routinely label the Renaissance as an irrelevant and eurocentric illusion of progress. Indeed, they smear all of history as “written by the winners”, denigrate all knowledge as “culturally biased”, and dismiss all truth as “subjective”. Plato would have been proud. Small wonder that students find history irrelevant - why waste time studying a set of dates and power struggles if meaning and knowledge are impossible? But history is relevant to one’s own time. One can understand other times and cultures, and use this in our own time. Westernization replacing serfdom is a good thing. A recommended book is Stephen Greenblatt’s “The Swerve, How The World Became Modern”.

3. RENAISSANCE. “It took more than a revival of antiquity to make the Renaissance…it took money - small bourgeois money: the profits of skillful managers and underpaid labor, of hazardous voyages to the East and laborious crossing of the Alps, to buy goods cheap and sell them dear, of careful calculations, investments, loans, of interest and dividends accumulated until enough surplus could be spared from the pleasures of the flesh, from the purchase of senates, signories, and mistresses, to pay a Michelangelo or a Titian to transmute wealth into beauty, and perfume a fortune with the breath of art. Money is the root of all civilization…Doubting the dogmas of the Church, no longer frightened by the fear of hell, and seeing the clergy as epicurean as the laity, the educated Italian shook himself loose from intellectual and ethical restraints, his liberated senses took unabashed delight in all embodiments of beauty in woman, man, and art,…” —Will Durant, The Complete Story of Civilization, 1954.

A3. Objective of the Game

There will be two Comet cards, functionally identical, placed towards the end of each of the two draw decks. If you purchase one from the Market, you immediately choose one of the four Victory Squares (holy, imperial, globalization, or Renaissance) to become active.

• a. Activation. Once a Victory Square is active, any player may spend an action on his turn to declare victory if he has met the listed conditions of that particular Victory Square. See Part L.

A4. Changes From 1st Edition

1. New Components include wooden tokens for Pirate ships, Pawns for Concessions and Serfs, placards for Player Boards, and squares for Victory & Empires. 2. Extra Map Cards. These allow the mounted gameboard to be left behind for small game portability. 3. Player’s Guide (Book II). This adds the solitaire game, “Push-Start” playthrough, Strategy and Frequently-Asked Questions. 4. Expanded rules include Dalmatians, Cryptography, Condottieri, apostasy, and the solitaire game. 5. New Emporium & Trade Route. This adds a white Trade Route to the Red Sea. 6. Thrones. These allow storage of Queens, Bishops, and Repressed Tokens even if the King is not in any Tableau. 7. 4 States have been added to each Empire, making possible a Medieval Papal States, Catholic England, Orthodox Greece, or other possibilities not possible in the 1st edition.

B1. Game Contents

• Rulebook (You are reading it).

• Player’s Guide.

• 188 Cards; 168 Tableau & 20 Map.

• 14 Tiles; 10 Empire Squares & 4 Victory Squares.

• 1 Mapboard.

• 4 Player Boards (on punchout board).

• 13 Pirate Ships (6 gold galleys, 4 green galleys, 3 red round ships).

• 40 Pawns; 10 in each of four player colors (yellow, purple, green, blue).

• 15 Bishops; Chess Bishops (5 gold, 5 green, and 5 red) representing inquisitors.

• 24 Rooks; Chess Castles (10 gold, 7 green, and 7 red) representing nobles.

• 24 Knights; Chess Knights (10 gold, 7 green, and 7 red) representing heavy cavalry.

• 37 Florin Disks; 33 yellow disks worth 1 Florin each, and 4 red disks worth 5 Florins each.[4]

• 4 Busted Disks; 2 white and 2 black disks, representing busted Emporia.

B2. Gameboard Anatomy

• a. Empires (10). These slots store a Map Card (B6) if a Theocracy is formed.

• b. Medieval vs. Theocracy. The Papal States and Mamluk start Theocratic, shown by the Catholic crucifix and the Islamic crescent. The remaining Empires, with no religious icons, start Medieval.[5]

• c. Borders (13) are the 10mm of space between each Empire. They are used to place Concessions (including a player’s start Concession indicated by his heraldic escutcheon) or Pirates.

• d. Thrones (10). An Empire Square stored in a gameboard slot is not in the Tableau of any player.

• e. Draw Deck Slots & Market Slots. Two rows, one East and one West.

• f. Victory Slots (4). The four Victory Squares are stored here.

• g. China. Florins not controlled by players are stored here. See CHINA.

• h. Emporia (6). All but two of the six are always busted. See EMPORIUM.

B3. Player Boards

You start with one of the four Player Boards (C2) in your Tableau.

B4. Empire Squares

The ten two-sided Empire Squares start in the Throne (B2d) next to their Location. While here, they remain uninfluenced by any player. Whenever you acquire an Empire Square, whether through a One-shot (E2), vote (F6) or campaign (F9), place it into your Tableau (East or West) with its King side (gold frame) faceup. If it becomes a Republic,[6] turn its pillar-frame side faceup. While in your Tableau, treat both Kings and Republics as tableau cards.

• a. Op and Prestige Icons. If present, these are as described in Part F and B5c,d.

Notes

4. THE FLORENTINE REPUBLIC was already over a century old when it first privately minted the florin in 1252. This coin reintroduced the gold standard to Europe, and the reputation of the Florentine banks quickly made the florin the dominant trade coin of Europe. Thus a Republic became the birthplace of banks, capital, and the Renaissance. Unlike other currencies, the florin was never debased (diluting gold with base metals, or manipulating the gold-silver ratio), a common form of disguised taxation by royals. The only comparable European region with such conservatism in mint policies was England, whose strong Parliament blocked royal greed.

5. MEDIEVAL FEUDALISM had dominated for a thousand years at the start of the game, and could have easily lasted another thousand. The warlord in his castle was a micro-government, overseeing toiling serfs in his fields. The serfs, indistinguishable from slaves by most definitions, were legally tied to the land and owned by their lord. They had no hope that their sons might do better, or even a concept of betterment. Those who claim that money is the root of all evil should note that there was little to no coinage or money in medievalism, which is sustained by the unpaid enforced labor of the serfs. Endless warfare ensued as neighboring fiefs battled each other for land, the only commodity. Liberation from feudalism and serfdom came from an unlikely source with no swords and no power: the merchants and bankers.

6. THE RENAISSANCE REPUBLICS that sprung up in the mercantile zones along the coasts of the North, Tyrrhenian, and Adriatic Seas were ruled by the vote of committees of guild elders. Although England and the Holy Roman Empire were not republics, they also had electoral colleges whose vote became important for freedoms and reform. In a Republic, rulers are subject to the laws just like anyone else, and have been stripped of the power to arbitrarily change them. Stability is maintained by separation of power rather than the divine right to rule.

Components

Empire Victory Squares (10) Squares (4)

Rulebook Pirate ships (13) Player´s Guide

Florin disks (37)

Mapboard

Busted disks (4)

Tableau cards (168) Map cards (20) Knights (24)

Player Boards (4) Pawns (40) Rooks (24) Bishops (15)

Player Board Empire Square

Republic Side Shown Ops column Ionic Pillar (white banner (= Republic) = West)

Location Bank Starting escutcheon Concession

Prestige Concession (placed when Regime Change) Op (political)

West Tableau East Tableau (to the left) (to the right) Op (economic)

Player Yellow (Medici) Empire (English Republic)

Easily Missed: The color of the Ops banner (black = East, white = West) indicates which trade deck it belongs

in and which side of your Player Board to play the Tableau card or Empire Square. This does not confer special location rules to the card. A few cards (e.g. Brotherhood of St. Mark) are Westerners who operated in the East (and vice versa). Such “crossover” cards are useful to allow Bishops to shift between the West and the East. [B5]

B5. Tableau Cards

The East and West tableau cards represent personalities who inhabited Europe from 1460 to 1530. The following card features are listed:

• a. Ops Column. A banner containing the icons, Ops, and Abilities available while the card is in your Tableau. A black banner indicates an Eastern philosophy,[7] while a white banner indicates the West.[8]

• b. Location. Agents are placed in the Location indicated, either set on one of its Cities (Knights or Rooks), one of its Borders (Pawns or Pirates), or on a Tableau Card with the listed Location (Bishops). See E2.2 for placement. See LOCATION.

• c. Prestige. Some cards have a Prestige Icon, with a gold diamond backdrop, relevant for victory.

• d. Ops. Operations (F) that can be done if activated by an action E4.

• e. One-Shot. A bomb icon indicates that the play of this card can trigger a One-shot, either trade shift, coronation, Civil War, or Religious War as indicated. Bomb icons for trade shifts are black or white, and Religious Wars are in religious colors (jihad is shown).

• f. Abilities. Some cards have an Ability listed in a scroll frame. Abilities are active if in your Tableau, and, unlike Ops, are activated even if the East or West Ops are not run.

• g. Agents. This depicts a number of Agent Tokens, and their religious color (gold = Catholic, green = Islamic, red = Reformist). You decide if an Agent is placed when you play the card into your Tableau (E2). If the Agent icon is a gray Pawn, this indicates that you deploy a Pawn in your player color.[9]

B6. Map Cards

There are 20 Map Cards, two per Empire, which are used to modify the map of Europe and the Mediterranean.[10] Each is double-sided, with each side showing a possible THEOCRACY or medieval state of the Empire. They start the game in a stack and are placed in an Empire if a Theocracy is formed (K2a).

• a. Cities. A CITY is a Knight or Rook icon enclosed by a circle on the map. Each is of a color indicating its Religion. If its name is in all capital letters, it is the capital.

• b. Trade Routes. The white and black lines are Trade Routes, running from a start Emporium (marked by a nine-pointed star) to its end (marked by an arrowhead).

• c. Concessions. These are Pawns placed in BORDERS, the gap between two Empires. Each player starts with a Concession placed in the Border marked with their bank escutcheon (in Lisbon, Florence, Augsburg, and Alexandria).

• d. Emporia. A City surrounded by a nine-pointed star is called an EMPORIUM. They are Trebizond, Spice Islands, and Red Sea (white), and Tana, Novgorod, and Timbuktu (black).

Notes

7. THE EAST-WEST DICHOTOMY is most apparent in the inward-looking religions and medical practices usually associated with the East, as contrasted with their outward-looking Western counterparts. Eastern thought is possessed by the idea that consciousness controls existence, and true knowledge comes from introspection, bypassing the external world. Western philosophy holds the opposite, that consciousness is a subset of existence, and that knowledge of existence comes only from objective extrospection. An Eastern doctor uses meditation, acupuncture, and the occult to find a patient’s “inner power” of self-healing, in sharp contrast to the microscopes, X-rays, and surgery of Western Medicine. “Mind over matter” versus “Nature bats last”. This division is clear in today’s world of anti-West suicide bombers, but in the Middle Ages it was the Islamic world that was “Western” in its philosophy while Europe was steeped in mysticism. The Renaissance represents a fundamental role reversal in thought.

8. THE WEST refers not to a geographic location but to a philosophic and cultural disposition. Western people and nations are those that substantially (if imperfectly) embrace and uphold certain Enlightenment values, including: the principle that reason (i.e., observation and logic) is man’s means of knowledge; the principle that individuals have moral rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and the principle that political freedom—including freedom of conscience and expression—is essential to civilized society. —Craig Biddle, 2016.

9. FORCE VS. PERSUASION. As in other Pax games, the cards and Tokens are divided into two social classes: agents of persuasion and agents of force. The agents of persuasion (serfs, merchants, slaves) are pawns. These commoners have no power but earn their sustenance through voluntary transactions with others, offering goods and services. The agents of force (royals, ruling class nobility, pirates) are the remaining chess pieces. They have the swords and armies to enforce involuntary transactions. Defining a government as the agency with a monopoly of force, these include government bureaucrats, viziers, inquisitors, tax collectors, and warriors.

10. MODERN STATES & ECONOMIES developed in Europe, and not in the much older and more populous cultures in China and India. Late Manchu China with a population of 400 million supported fewer than 2% of the population as non-producers such as nobility and warlords. This compares with almost 15% of the 40 million in France, Germany, and Britain who had risen above serfdom. Europeans commanded more working capital per head than the Asians, mainly in the form of livestock. As a corollary they ate more meat and livestock products, so far as archaeological or literary evidence can tell us. Europeans disposed of more energy in the form of water power. The distribution of income in Europe was unusually equal, that is to say not equal at all but with a flatter Lorenz curve than obtained in Asia. This was reflected in the sense of dismay with which many early European travelers to Asia reported on the depths of poverty among the masses and the heights of prodigality among the rich… —Eric Jones, The European Miracle, 2008.

Tableau Card

Ops column (black banner = East)

Location

Prestige (Islamic)

Op (political)

Op (military)

Op (religious)

Agent (green Bishop)

Bomb icon (green) East Tableau Card (reverse) One-shot (Religious War)

Map Card

City (Levy is a gold Rook) Land Border (No Pirates allowed) Sea Border Theocracy Icon (Muslim) Arrowheads (end of both Ring (indicates the black Trade Routes) Emporium starts busted)

Bank Escutcheon White Emporium (Cœur’s starting Pawn) (start of the white Trade Route if not Busted)

Mamluk Capital (starts with a green Rook) Location (Mamluk) (◊ indicates this is a starting Map Card) Muslim Theocracy Map Card

Trade Route

Busted Disk Emporium

(start)

Arrowhead

(end)

FAQ Busted Disks: For the 3 white Emporia, one is always uncovered, and the other two are

covered by a white busted disk. The same is true for the 3 black Emporia. Any Emporium covered

by a disk cannot start a trade fair and cannot have Agents or Levies played in it. Any Tokens on an

Emporium that becomes covered by a disk (due to a trade shift) are immediately Repressed. [B6d]

B7. Comet Cards & Victory Squares

• a. Comets. These 4 cards are mixed into the last 12 cards of both draw decks during setup (C5).

• b. Victory Squares. These 4 tiles start inactive (facedown) in the four slots provided on the gameboard. One is flipped to its active side each time someone buys a Comet. Thereafter, if any player spends a victory action (E6) and has met the conditions listed on an active Victory Square, the game ends with that player as the winner.[11]

C1. Populating the 1460 Map

The Map and Throne slots indicate ten EMPIRES: England, France, Holy Roman Empire (HRE), Hungary, and Byzantium to the north, and Portugal, Aragon, Papal States, Ottoman, and Mamluk to the south.

• a. Busted Emporia. Place a black disk over both Timbuktu and Novgorod, and a white disk over both the Spice Islands and the Red Sea. An Emporium (B6d) is not in play and can hold no Tokens until and unless the disk covering it is moved to another Emporium through a trade shift One-shot (H1).

• b. No Map. If (for space reasons) you do not use the gameboard, for the starting Map arrange the 10 starting Map Cards (the ones that depict a small “◊” after the Empire name) into a 2 x 5 matrix. Arrange the other components next to this Map.

• c. 1550 Map Variant. This variant occurs after Reformation has started to sweep Europe. Use the regular setup, except place a Reformist England Map Card on England, and a Reformist Holy Roman Empire Map Card on the HRE.

C2. Players & Starting Concessions

Each player randomly receives a Player Board, which indicates their player color and escutcheon (heraldic shield). Up to four players can play. Each player places a Pawn of his color in the Border specified (indicated on the map with the bank’s escutcheon):

• a. Fugger Bank Start Concession. Place a blue Pawn in Augsburg (Border between France/ Holy Roman Empire).

• b. M edici Bank Start Concession. Place a yellow Pawn in Florence (Aragon/Papal States Border).[12]

• c. Cœur Bank Start Concession. Place a purple Pawn in Alexandria (Ottoman/Mamluk Border).[13]

• d. Marchionni Bank Start Concession. Place a green Pawn in Lisbon (England/Portugal Border).[14]

Victory Activation

Pawn

Pawn

Bu D st i ed sk

Notes

11. BANKING promotes the economy by facilitating lending, payments, and trade in risk. While lending often steals the limelight, the role of the banks in facilitating payments and trade in risk is no less essential. The Italian bankers cashed checks, issued letters of credit, and exchanged merchandise as well as credit. Florentine bankers invented double-entry bookkeeping (since at least 1382), the written order of payment, and insurance for voyages. The Florentine rates of exchange (about 10%) fixed the rates for all the currencies of Europe. —Meir Kohn, 1999.

12. COSIMO DE’ MEDICI, while rich and influential, never entered politics or enjoyed the force of arms. A humanist, he spent vast sums sponsoring Florentine artists and scholars. By the time of his death in 1464, Cosimo had made his bank the richest in Europe, with branches in Venice, Pisa, Milan, Bruges, Avignon, Lyons, Geneva, and London. Forced war loans to Sforza of Milan, Edward IV of York, and Charles the Bold closed three of these branches. His son, Lorenzo the Magnificent, carried his tradition after barely surviving a 1478 assassination attempt by a rival banking firm. The Florentine bank was burned by a mob incited by the Pope and Savonarola in 1494, exiling the Medici for 18 years.

13. JACQUES COEUR, looking and dressing like Lawrence of Arabia instead of a French merchant, pioneered the spice trade with the Levant. He owned a fleet of galleys, a great warehouse in Montpellier, and banks in Barcelona, Avignon, Lyons, Paris, Rouen, Bruges, and the Levant. For financing Charles VII’s invasion of Normandy in the Hundred Years War, Cœur was summoned to Paris, knighted and made master of the mint. But in 1451 Charles had him arrested on trumped-up charges and confiscated everything he owned. Cœur escaped two years later, and narrowly eluded his pursuers to start his career over in Rome.

14. THE MARCHIONNI FAMILY imported slaves, mainly females, from Caffa in the Crimea to work as domestic servants. After Caffa was shut down by the Turks in 1475, the family sent their scion Bartholomeu to Lisbon, to work in the nascent West African slave trade. Starting as an office boy in the Florentine Cambini Bank, he became Portugal’s wealthiest banker and trader in African slaves from Guinea. Even after the Cambini Bank went bankrupt in 1482, Bartholomeu Marchionni maintained a lease on the Niger Delta, and financed Vespucci and Vasco da Gama in their voyages. In 1518, one of his sons went to the Indies.

Setup

Bu ste Di d sk

Globalization Victory (active side shown)

Bu ste Di d sk

ple Pur wn Pa

Bu ste Di d sk

C3. Player Tableaux

To start his Tableau, each player places his Player Board in front of him. He will play East Tableau cards to the right of his Player Board, and West Tableau cards to the left.

• a. Pawns. Each player places the 9 remaining Pawns of his color into his Reserves near his Player Board.

C4. Starting Ruling Class

Place one Token of the shape and color indicated in the capital of each Empire. The capital has the name of the City all in capital letters (e.g. PARIS). Other Cities start empty.

• a. Constantinople starts with three Tokens (two green Knights and a green Rook).

C5. Preparing the East & West Draw Decks

Separate the tableau cards into two piles, one East and the other West.

• a. E ast Draw Deck. Take 12 random facedown East cards and shuffle the two East Comet cards into them. To the top of this 14-card deck add 4 additional random East cards for each player in the game (e.g. for a three-player game add 12 cards, so 26 in total).

• b. W est Draw Deck. Do the same for a draw deck containing the West cards plus the two West Comet cards, placed just above the East draw deck.

• c. Astrology Variant (optional). As part of Setup and Market Refresh, turn the top card of each Draw Deck faceup, visible but not available for purchase. This option allows players to “see into the future”.

C6. the Market, Thrones, & Victory Squares

• a. Market. Deal 6 cards from the East draw deck to form a row of six faceup cards where indicated on the gameboard, and then flip facedown the leftmost one (furthest from the draw deck). Do the same for the West draw deck. These two facedown cards represent the East and West trade fairs (Part G).

• b. Fill Thrones. The ten Empire Squares are placed King side up in the slots next to their respective Empires.

• c. Victory Squares. The four Victory Squares are placed on the gameboard where indicated, with the inactive side faceup.

C7. Starting Florins

Randomly determine a first player. If the Fugger Bank (blue) is in the game, this player is always the first player.[15] The first player receives 3 Florins (3 yellow disks), the second player (clockwise) = 4 Florins, the third player (if any) = 5 Florins, and the fourth player (if any) = 6 Florins.

• a. China. Place the remaining Florin disks onto the gameboard in the region called China.

• b. The First Player now takes his turn.

(inactive side up)

Put remaining Florins here.

(on Capitals, 12 places)

(King side up)

Notes

15. BANKING, like the Renaissance itself, was Italian by birth. Italian banks dominated until about 1480, when the Fugger and other German banks arose in the free cities of Augsburg and Nürnberg. Although the German banks were free of the papal usury prohibitions the Italian banks suffered under, they lagged far behind the Italians in accounting methods, such as double-entry bookkeeping.

D1. Action Phase

On your turn, you must perform either 1 or 2 actions (Part E), chosen from the list below. They can be performed in any order. You cannot choose an action unless it changes the game state in some way (e.g., if you choose to run Ops, there must be at least one Op with a valid target). The first three can be performed twice in one player turn, and the others once:

(Max twice per turn)1. Purchase Market Card (E1). By paying Florins to the Market, take a faceup card into your Hand. 2. Play Hand Card (E2). This plays a card from your Hand into your Tableau, and optionally introduces Agent Tokens (Bishops, Knights, Rooks, Pawns, or Pirates) onto the Map or Tableau.

• Bomb Icon. If the card has the One-shot (bomb) icon and you decide to trigger it, Agent placement is mandatory; see Parts H, I, J, K. If Victorious, this moves the Empire Square into your Tableau, adds a Concession of yours, and optionally emancipates the repressed.[16] See REGIME CHANGE. 3. Sell Card (E3). Discard one card from your Hand or Tableau to receive 2 Florins from China.

(Max once per turn)4. Activate Eastern Ops (E4). Each card in your Eastern Tableau can perform one of its depicted Ops on each player turn. This action can be performed only once per player turn. 5. Activate Western Ops (E4). As above but in your Western Tableau. 6. Convene an Eastern Trade Fair (E5). By Discarding the facedown card in the East Market, you embark on a voyage following the black Trade Route. Along the way, the owners of Concessions get paid, and Empires raise Levies. This action can be performed only once per player turn. See Part G. 7. Convene a Western Trade Fair (E5). Same as Eastern, except the voyage follows the white Trade Route. 8. Victory Action (E6). This action wins the game if you meet the requirements per Part L.

D2. Refresh Market Phase

If there are gaps in the Market after you perform your actions, starting with the leftmost card, move each card in the Market (along with any Florins on it) to the leftmost empty position in its market row. Then draw new cards to fill any remaining empty market positions so there are again 6 cards in each row. To do this, draw cards from the respective East or West draw deck and fill the rows from the leftmost empty slot. If either of the cards in the leftmost column are faceup, flip them to their facedown (trade fair) side.

• a. Facedown Cards may no longer be purchased (their historical protagonists are deemed to have withered into obscurity without financial backing).

• b. Deck Exhaustion. If one deck (East or West) runs out, start drawing from the other instead. This will put West cards into the East market or vice versa. See Patron victory (L2a) if both decks run out.

• c. Round Robin. Continue play clockwise with the next player and his action phase.

Easily Missed: If you run out of Tokens, you can take them from any Repressed Tokens, or (if this is not possible) from any position. [D1]

Important: Certain card Abilities allow you to perform East Ops or West Ops without expending one of your 2 actions. Nevertheless, East Ops and West Ops can still only be performed once each per turn per D1. [D1.4, D1.5]

1. West Icon 2. East Icon

Notes

16. ITALIAN EMANCIPATION. Slavery and serfdom declined in the Italian Renaissance, with a slave population of a fraction of a percent in most city-states and having died out entirely in Siena and Bologna. The latter republic seems to be the first in history to have banned slavery outright, with the 1256 Liber Paradisus. Fractions were higher (3-5%) in Venice and Genoa, purchased from the Black Sea slave markets of Caffa and Tana. Slave populations were much higher in the Italian colonies such as Chios, Cyprus, or Crete. The price of slaves was high, averaging 45 florins. Most (82%) were young women, as domestic servants and presumably for sexual services. Almost all of them originated from Eastern Europe and Central Asia, with a sprinkling from sub-Saharan Africa. The justification for slavery was religious rather than racial, as the Pope prohibited the enslavement of both Christians and citizens from lands whose rulers acknowledged the papal authority. Remarkably, there are records of a few successful petitions by slave women for their manumission based upon their Hungarian or Bosnian heritage. The impact of slavery on the Italian economy was insignificant, compared to neighboring Aragon and Portugal, and especially compared to the Ottoman Empire, the biggest slave trafficker in history.—Sally McKee, Domestic Slavery in Renaissance Italy, 2008.

Refresh Market Example

Refresh Market Example: At the end of your turn, the East Market has no gaps, and the West Market has the 2 gaps shown. The cards and Florin slide to the left as shown, to fill the gaps, and 2 new cards are drawn from the draw deck. [D2]

Easily Missed: If the West deck runs out of cards, draw cards into the West row from the East deck, and vice-versa. The game ends per L2a if a market refresh is attempted and there are no more cards to draw. [D2b]

E1. Purchase Market Card

Purchase a faceup card from the Market into your Hand.[17]

• a. Hand Size. You are limited to two cards in your Hand. If you wish to purchase a third card you must first play (E2) or sell (E3) one already in your Hand. b C ost. The purchase price of a card depends on its current column in the Market. The first faceup Market card costs 1 Florin, the next 2 Florins, then 3 Florins, etc. Pay this cost by placing 1 Florin on each card in the same row to the left of the card you are purchasing. To purchase the facedown (leftmost) card, thus commencing a trade fair, see action E5.

• c. Market Gap. If a market spot is vacant, pay the card in this spot in the other market row. (This might occur if you purchase two cards in one turn, or if you convene a trade fair in your first action.)

• d. Speculation Profits. Take any Florins on the card you purchase (but you can’t use them toward that purchase).

• e. Usury Laws. If you place a Florin on a Market Card for any reason, you may not purchase that card this turn (but you can commence a trade fair per E5).

• f. Comet. If you purchase a Comet, it is played immediately per L1, without Hand size limits.

E2. Play Hand Card & Place Agents

Place an East card from your Hand to the furthest right side of your Tableau (next to existing cards), or a West card to the furthest left side. If the played card has a bomb icon[18], you must first decide and announce if the listed One-shot (1) occurs, or (2) doesn’t occur/there is none.

1. If One-Shot Occurs. You must deploy the card’s Agent(s):

• a. Battle. If the One-shot is a Civil or Religious War, the Agent is a Rook, Knight, Pawn, or Pirate that can function as an attacker(s) in a Battle per Part J (conspiracies and peasant revolts) or Part K (crusades, reformations, and jihads). If some survive, they are Victorious and cause a REGIME CHANGE. Bishop Agents do not participate in the Battle but must be placed after the Battle per E2.2a below.

• b. No Battle. If the One-shot is a trade shift or coronation, there is no Battle and its Agent(s) must be deployed. See E2.2 below for placement details. 2. If No One-Shot. The placement of Agent Tokens is optional. You may place all, some, or none of them. If so, place the number and color indicated on the Map or Tableau per the following bullets.

• a. Place Bishop Agent. Place it directly on the Tableau card played. Alternatively, you may place it on any Tableau card (even in an opponent’s Tableau) or Throne that has the same Location as the Tableau card being played. (See LOCATION.) If you place it on a card with a Token, apply the Diet of Worms rule (F1a) or the pacification rule (F1b).

• b. Place Rook & Knight Agents. Place these into your choice of Cities on the Empire specified. If you choose a City occupied by a Token, you must Repress it, and pay 1 Florin to China for each Token repressed. A placed Agent can even Repress a Token of the same type and color in this manner.

• c. Place Pirate Agents. Take a pirate ship of the specified color and place it as a Pirate into one of the Sea Borders surrounding the Empire specified. A Sea Border is one that is crossed by an active or inactive Trade Route. If there is already a Token there (Concession or Pirate), it is Killed for no cost.

• d. Place Pawn Agents. Place one Pawn of your color into a Border of your choice of the Empire specified. If there is already a Concession there, you must pay 1 Florin (to China) to REPRESS it. You cannot place a Pawn into a Border occupied by a Pirate. You can place a Pawn into a non-Sea Border.

Notes

17. NORTHERN ITALY was more urban and industrial than any other European region except Flanders. It had never suffered full feudalism, but its nobles declined in influence compared to its cities and merchant class. For a century, the capitalist city-state of Florence was the cultural capital of the world. —Will Durant, 1953.

18. BOMB ICON is actually a Renaissance grenade. The first cast iron models appeared in Europe in 1467.

Purchase Market Card Example

West facedown cost = cost = cost = cost = cost = West draw card 1 Florin 2 Florins 3 Florins 4 Florins 5 Florins deck

Purchase Market Card Example: You purchase the fourth card from the left in the Market by spending 3 Florins. Place the first Florin on the far left card, the second Florin on the next card to the right, and the last Florin on the next card to the right. Although there are 2 Florins on the fourth card you are purchasing, you cannot use them towards this card’s purchase. You now take the fourth card into your Hand and take the 2 Florins on that card. [E1a-f]

Important: If you take a facedown card (to start a trade fair per E5) or purchase a comet card, Discard it rather than put it into your Hand. [E1]

One-shot Example

Peasant Revolt One-Shot Example: You play the Flanders Guilds card, a Pawn Card located in France, and trigger its peasant revolt. The card’s Pawn Agent is the only attacker, see J2. There are no Ruling Class to defend, so the revolt is Victorious. The French Empire Square is in an opponent’s Tableau, and you claim it into your Western Tableau. This Regime Change allows you to place an additional Pawn, for a total of two Concessions, placed in two separate Borders next to France. [E2.1]

Important: The City icon (Rook or Knight) and color are irrelevant when placing a Token due to card play! [E2.2b]

• e. If You’re out of Tokens, see TOKEN MANAGEMENT.

• f. Strawman is your play of a One-shot or an Op against your own cards or Tokens. This play is sometimes useful to gain enough Repressed Tokens to perform a Victorious Civil War, or to overthrow your own King to create a Republic. However, you cannot use campaign for Strawman.

E3. Sell Card

Discard a card or Empire Square to receive 2 Florins from China. The sold item must come from your Hand, Tableau, or an Old Maid (I2a). Except for Empire Squares, Discard all Tokens on the sold card. See DISCARD.

• a. Royal Couple. A coronated pair (I1) must be sold as a set for 4 Florins total. This is one action.

• b. Sold Empires. If you sell an Empire Square, including Vassals, return it (along with all of its Vassals) to its Throne along with its Queen (if any) and all Tokens (Repressed Tokens & Bishops).

• c. Sales Abilities. A card with an Ability affecting its sale may only use this Ability if sold from Tableau.

E4. Activate Ops (East & West Are Separate Actions)

If you choose to activate the East Ops as an action, you may perform one Op in each of the cards in your East Tableau. You must perform at least one Op in total if you take this action, and the Op must have a valid target. This is the same in the West. Each card can be used once, for only one of its Op icons (even if the card has more than one icon). See Part F for a list of the Ops.

• a. Order. You may perform your Ops in any order. You may perform Ops on cards acquired as a result of Ops (e.g. campaigns), as long as it is in the proper (East or West) Tableau.

• b. Target of the Op. You may use an Op only against the targets depicted in the Op icon. The target may be a Florin in the Market (commerce op), a Tableau card (behead or vote ops), a Token on a Tableau Card (inquisitor op), or a Token on the Map (repress, tax, or any of the three military ops).

• c. “The East” or “The West” Locations. See LOCATION.

• d. Target Location. For the Repress, tax, corsair, and siege ops, the target must be Token(s) on the Empire matching the acting card’s Location. (Remember: the Location of a Concession or Pirate is both Empires that it borders.) For the campaign op, the target must be Adjacent to the acting card’s Location. For the behead op, the target must be a card with a Location matching the acting card’s Location. For the inquisitor, commerce, and vote ops, the acting card’s Location does not matter.

• e. Strawman Target. You may target your own Tableau cards or Tokens (e.g. Repress one’s own Pawn to gain a Florin, avoid taxes, and/or fuel a future Civil War). If Victorious, a Strawman vote (F6) against your own King creates a Republic (and vice versa). You may use an Op listed on the new Republic (as long as the card hasn’t already been used for an Op).

E5. Perform Trade Fair (East & West Are Separate Actions)

Use this action to Discard the facedown card in the East or West Market, which convenes the corresponding trade fair per Part G. Remember that you do not claim the Florins on the card, which instead go towards general profits (G1a).

E6. Victory Action

Use this action to declare victory per L2.

Notes

19. SELL represents the profits from the internal money-lending market. The earliest bankers such as Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici made their fortunes from small investors. They offered a reward to the shyest investor and brought credit within reach of the petty trader and craftsman. Mere entries in books of account became a flexible substitute for disbursements of cash. Farmers and peasants wiped out by a crop failure could recover with a bank loan. For instance, when scab had reduced the sheep production to zero in England, the shepherds could not have recovered, and English wool exports could not have reached such high levels, without the injection of Italian capital. For the banker, the loans were safe and profitable, because the customers are locked to the land and not going to disappear.

20. BANKS, defined as institutions dealing in money as a specialized pursuit, did not exist in the Islamic world. Indeed medieval Arabic has no word for banks or banking, nor for the abstract notion of money. The Islamic world, like Italy, absolutely prohibited interest of any kind. Also prohibited is the notion of deposit, where the depository keeps funds and uses them for commercial purposes. Buying and selling on credit was an accepted and widespread commercial practice, providing funds for enabling trade, an outlet for surplus capital to be profitably used, and lubricating business when coins were unavailable. Merchants provided their own money changing and books for merchant banking, based upon their hierarchic social status and reputation. Suftajas were issued by and drawn on well-known bankers. Unlike the Bill of Exchange, so central to European banking, a Suftaja is more akin to a check without an exchange of currencies. Status and social hierarchy formed the basis for credit and merchant banking activity. Clever Islamic money-lenders could bypass usury prohibitions through the use of non-profit donations, establishing the elaborate waqf system still used today.

No One-shot Example

Pawn Placement Options. (France has 3 Borders). Enemy Concession. (If you choose to place your Concession here, you must pay a Florin to Repress this Pawn).

Your new Concession. Pirate. (You are not allowed to place in this Border).

Install Pawn Agent Example: You play the Flanders Guilds card as in the previous example, but do not trigger the One-shot. Instead you place one of your Pawns in a Border as a Concession. The east Border is occupied by an enemy Concession, and you don’t want to spend a Florin to Repress it. The west Border is occupied by a Pirate, so you can’t place there. The south Border is open, but it is not on a Trade Route and is not likely to be profitable. Nevertheless, you place in the south to block Player Yellow from targeting France with a vote op. [E2.2a-f]

Activate Ops

Activate Ops Example: You have two adjacent tableau cards with the commerce op in your West Tableau, but one is silenced (F1f*) by a red Bishop. You also have a card allowing you the inquisitor op (F1**) for red Bishops. For an action, you activate Ops in your West Tableau. First, you perform the unsilenced commerce op, then the inquisitor op to move the Bishop to the adjacent Tableau card, and then perform a second commerce Op from the now unsilenced card.* [E4a-e]

Easily Missed: Once played, cards and their Agents are independent of Easily Missed: You can perform an each other. If you target a card already in a Tableau, the Agent Tokens action on a newly obtained card (e.g. placed when the card was put in the Tableau are unaffected. If you target campaign or vote). But you cannot activate Agent Tokens, the card that originally generated the Agents is unaffected. the same card more than once per turn. You do not keep track of which cards deployed which Tokens. [E4a-e] [E4]

Ops (short for “Operations”) are activated by action E4. There are 4 colors of Ops:

• a. Religious Op. This Op icon (inquisitor) is light blue and moves a Bishop of the indicated Religion. This is the only Op not silenced by the presence of a Bishop (F1f).

• b. Economic Op.[21] This Op icon (commerce) is light orange and targets Florins in the

Market, either lying in the East ( ) or the West ( ) as indicated (F2).

• c. Political Ops. These Op icons are purple and behead (F3), tax (F4), repress (F5), or

elect (F6) their targets.

• d. Military Ops. These Op icons are dark red and target Ruling Class or Pirate Tokens. They can be used to Kill Tokens, see corsair (F7), siege (F8), and campaign (F9).

F1. Inquisitor (Religious Op)

Use this Op to move a Bishop Token of the indicated religious color from one tableau card to an Adjacent card in the same Tableau, or to another card (in any Tableau or Throne) that has the same Location as the one it currently sits on.

• a. Diet Of Worms Rule. If the destination card contains a Bishop (of any color), both Bishops are Killed in an exchange.

• b. Pacification Rule. If the destination card has no Bishops but has Repressed Tokens, you may choose one Token (of any type and color) to Kill at no cost.[22]

• c. Move Restrictions. You cannot move a Bishop onto a Player Board. This often means that it cannot cross between East and West in a Tableau (because the East and West are separated by a Player Board in each Tableau). You may not move a Bishop on a Throne directly to another Throne.

• d. Moves within a Suzerainty. A Bishop on a Suzerain may move to any of its Vassals. A Bishop on a Vassal may move to its Suzerain or one of the Suzerain’s other Vassals (if any). Lateral moves to a Suzerainty can go either to the Suzerain or any of its Vassals.

• e. The East/West. If a Bishop starts on a card with a Location listed as “The East”, it may move to any card with a printed Location in Hungary, Ottoman, Byzantium, Mamluk, “The East”, or vice versa. Correspondingly for “The West”.

• f. Silenced Ops. The presence of any Bishop on a card or royal couple prevents some of its Ops from being used. Only its light blue (religious) Ops can be used.

• g. Silenced Abilities. A Bishop also silences any listed Ability, e.g. ransom or Stadtwechsel.[23] However, Prestige and Abilities granting immunity to silencing are never silenced.

Notes

21. LABOR THEORY OF VALUE. It’s a common fallacy, both in the Renaissance and in today’s era of political correctness, to see all productive activity as manual labor. This was true in feudalism, a non-division-of-labor society where production means nothing more than the toiler in the field or at the loom. But in a capitalist society, beginning with the first ones in Florence Italy, the vast majority of productive activity is accomplished by unsung middlemen: bankers, traders, retailers, advertisers, and entrepreneurs. All these activities are viewed with suspicion by anti-capitalists, although they fuel the economy and enrich the lives of all who employ their services. It could hardly be otherwise, since use of their services is voluntary, and only proceeds if a value is gained on both sides. The Renaissance and the ending of serfdom represented a quantum leap in the lives and destinies of humanity and civilization.

22. PACIFICATION should be thought of bishops pacifying the oppressed with a fatalistic philosophy and dreams of the afterlife, rather than actually killing them.

23. STADTWECHSEL. German municipal exchange banks, both public and private, were especially busy during the autumn trade fair. Since circulation of foreign coins was subject to heavy punishments, all merchants were required to exchange foreign coins at the Stadtwechsel, who sent them to the city mint. The rights of coinage and exchange were bound throughout Germany, and often controlled by guilds (Hausgenossenschaften). The Stadtwechsel dealt in letters of credit, interest-bearing deposits guaranteed to be safe from creditors (popular among all classes of society), and various types of loans, with interest rates supposedly regulated to appease the Church. Unsecured loans needed the permission of the borrower’s wife. The Augsburg ledgers show that the Stadtwechsel were lenient in overdrafts to reliable clients such as the Welsers and Fuggers. —W. Roberds & F. Velde, Early Public Banks I, 2016.

Perform Trade Fair Example

FAQ: The facedown card to the far Double Trade Fair Example: For your two left of each Market is only for trade actions, you perform first an East trade fair, fairs, and can never be purchased then a West trade fair. [E5] into your Hand.

Inquisitor Ops Example

“The West” can be moved to/from another Western card. See LOCATION.

FAQ Bishop Movement: You can Inquisitor Example: During your activate Western Ops action, move between East and West if cards you use 3 West Tableau cards, each with a reformist inquisitor share the same Location. [F1] op, to move a red Bishop 3 times. (You could also move 3 Bishops once.) Each move either moves it right or left by one card or jumps FAQ Pacification: You must move the it to another card sharing its current card’s Location. Bishop to a new Location in order to The final move is onto the King of Portugal, and you decide to pacify. [F1b] Kill its Repressed Token. Until the Bishop moves on, the King’s campaign op is silenced. [F1b, F1f]

Silence Example

Silencing Silenced Ability Example: Gutenberg Bishop allows your hand size to be unlimited. But if a Bishop silences Gutenberg, you must Discard down to 2 cards immediately. [F1g]

Ability

F2. Commerce (Economic Op)

Use this Op to take one Florin from any card (including trade fair cards) in either the East ( ) or the West ( ) Market card row as specified in the commerce icon.[24]

F3. Behead (Political Op)

Use this Op to Discard one card in any Tableau. The Location of the beheaded card must share that of the acting card. However, a card cannot behead itself.

• a. Assassin. If used to Discard an Empire Square, the card used to behead is also Killed.[25]

F4. Tax (Political Op)

Use this Op to target one Concession bordering the Location of the card used to tax.[26] The target’s owner must choose to either (1) pay a Florin to China or (2) Repress his Concession. In either case, the Concession owner must place a Levy within the taxing Empire (represents that the tax monies were used to start an army).

• a. Tax Prerequisites. The tax location must not be Saturated (i.e. must have at least one empty City) and must have a Concession in its Borders as the target of taxation.[27]

• b. The East/The West. These cards are considered to be in all of the Empires of the East or West, so that the taxing player specifies which Location/Empire is being levied.

3 Easily Missed Tax Rules: 1. The owner of the Concession chooses the Levy to place when targeted by tax - not the taxing player. 2. A Levy must be the color and shape indicated on an unoccupied City. 3. You may tax your own Concession. [F4a]

F5. Repress (Political Op)

Use this Op to remove one Map Token (Knight, Rook, and/or Pawn, of any color, as depicted on the repress op icon) in the acting card’s Location and place it as a Repressed Token on its corresponding Empire Square.[28]

• a. Persistent Repression. An Empire Square accepts repressed Tokens regardless if it is still in its Throne (B2d), or if it is in a player’s Tableau (including Suzerains and Vassals). If the Empire Square ever moves, its repressed Tokens travel with it.

• b. Gains. Using this Op to remove a Token from the Map gains you 1 Florin from China.

Commerce Example: You execute your Western Ops, and the Bundschuh Revolt is in your Tableau. The West Market has one Florin, and you take it. [F2]

Notes

24. WEALTH is created by labor and voluntary transactions, especially trade, rather than by “resources”. A feudal society lacks most divisions of labor other than lord and serf, and so the transactions are largely involuntary with little generation of wealth. The Renaissance featured the most diverse divisions of labor in the world, with a mercantile class organized into guilds. Today’s Western lawyers and doctors are still largely organized along guild lines.

25. ASSASSIN comes from the name of the Nizari Isamili sect in the Middle East during the time of the crusades. The word has its roots in hashish, perhaps because its agents used drugs in their murderous pursuits. By the time of the Italian Renaissance, the name of the sect was generalized to apply to any sort of political murderer.

26. TAXING represents not just coerced duties but also royal loans made under threat of seizure, closure, or imprisonment. All the banks in the game obtained their enormous wealth from small short period loans. A typical customer is a farmer suffering a crop failure, who needs capital to restart next year. This loan is safe for the banker, as the farmer is tied to his land and is not going anywhere. From these humble examples millions of Florins were made. However, because bankers are powerless commoners, they can only try to stave off forced loans by whatever means of persuasion they possess. The Fuggers of the Deer, for example, were bankrupted when their reserves were emptied by the ruling Habsburgs (Lukas Fugger was mockingly appointed as “King of Atlantis” in “compensation”). The King of France seized the vast assets of the rich banker Jacques Cœur, baselessly accusing him of poisoning his mistress. Jacques eventually escaped from prison and restarted his career from the ground up in Rome. The Medici bank, headquartered in a Republic (Florence) rather than a Monarchy, fared better, but nevertheless faced exile with confiscation of property in 1433, 1494, and 1527. Despite the injunction of Cosimo Medici to the Medici branches to “never lend to princes, courts, or the upper aristocracy”, forced loans closed the Medici banks in Milan, Bruges, Lyons, and London.

27. TAX. Europe’s dispersed portfolio of resources conduced to long-distance, multilateral trade in bulk loads of utilitarian goods. Taxing these was more rewarding than appropriating them. —Eric Jones, The European Miracle, 2008.

28. REPRESSING. As commoners, bankers held no power to repress or tax, but could whisper to the royals and nobles who held such power.

Behead Op Example

Your Tableau

Tax Example: You have the Holy Land Crusade in your Tableau, allowing taxation of Mamluk Egypt. You use the tax op and target the Cœur Concession, located between Mamluk and Ottoman. He chooses not to repress his Pawn and thus must pay 1 Florin. He also must install a Levy in an empty City, and he chooses Cairo. Its icon is a gold Rook so the Levy here must be a gold Rook. [F4a] 1.

FAQ: A Concession in-between East and West is taxable in both regions. [F4]

Repress Op Example

Repress Example: You activate your West Tableau, including Queen Isabella married to the King of Aragon. You use her “Alhambra Decree” repress op to remove a Concession in Aragon to become a Serf on the Aragonese King. You earn 1 Florin. Because her icon shows both a Pawn and a Rook, you could have repressed the Rook instead. [F5]

Commerce Op Example

W = “West”

Florin comes from any card in the West Market.

Behead Example: Your opponent can use his Qizilbash card to siege all the Eastern Empires to the point that he can campaign all of them.

To stop him, you use your “Grim” card to behead the Qizilbash. The “Grim” is located in the Ottomans and the Qizilbash is located in “The East”. Therefore, the “Grim” is allowed to target the “Qizilbash”. See LOCATION. [F3]

Tax Op Example

New Levy

Tip: Repressing makes Civil Wars more likely, and makes voting more expensive. [F5]

2.

F6. Vote (Political Op)

Use this Op to cause a REGIME CHANGE in an Empire. Its Empire Square can be in any Tableau, but must be in an East ( ) or West ( ) Tableau as specified on the icon. It cannot be a Vassal or in its Throne.

• a. Cost. Pay to China a number of Florins equal to the Empire’s Repressed Tokens (Serfs, Knights, Rooks).[29] Repressed Tokens can then be Emancipated as a result of the Regime Change.

• b. Majority Rule. To perform this Op, you must have more Concessions than any other player on the Empire’s Borders.

• c. Democratic Effects. See REGIME CHANGE. You will gain a Concession. If the Empire Square is in an opponent’s Tableau, you gain it as a King. If it is in your Tableau, flip it to its other side (King or Republic).

• d. Golden Liberty. If the Empire is a Theocracy, you can add, subtract, or flip its Map Card to create a Medieval (non-theocratic) state (B2b).[30]

F7. Corsair (Military Op)

Use this Op to move a Pirate in a Sea Border of the card’s Location to another Sea Border either in the card’s Location or an Adjacent Location sharing a Sea Border. This Pirate must be of the color specified by the icon’s religious symbol and cannot move to a Border occupied by a Pirate of the same color.

• a. Naval Attack. Moving automatically Kills any Concession or Pirate in the Border moved to. There is no Battle, and there is no cost.

F8. Siege (Military Op)

Use this Op to Kill one Rook, Knight, or Pirate of any color in the acting card’s Location. There is no Battle, and there is no cost.

F9. Campaign (Military Op)

This Op is found only on Empire Squares on their King side. Use it to create a Battle in a defending Empire Adjacent to the King’s Location (adjacency includes diagonals).

• a. No Strawman. All campaigns are against an Empire in its Throne or an enemy Tableau. You are not allowed to campaign against an Empire in your own Tableau.

• b. Attackers. All Knights (of every color) in the King’s Location are the attackers.

• c. Cost. Pay to China 1 Florin for each attacker. To make a campaign, all Knights must attack and all must be paid for.[31]

• d. Defenders. All Ruling Class Tokens in the defending Empire are the defenders.

• e. Repressed. Repressed Tokens in either Empire do not participate in the Battle.

• f. Resolution. A BATTLE is fought (see battle table on player aid). If Victorious, the defending Empire suffers a REGIME CHANGE and is claimed as a VASSAL (next bullet) of the attacking Empire.

Notes

29. EMIGRATION is a form of voting for the best place to live, open to the new class of relatively wealthy commoners and skilled laborers who were not tied to a particular real estate. The possibility of a flight of talent to neighboring states with less oppression or taxation curbed the worst excesses of the kings and popes. The device of paper claims to wealth (bills of exchange) greatly increased the chances that a banker or merchant could escape economic or religious persecution without losing what he earned. Trade raised a class with international connections, rising political influence, and an interest in avoiding war.

30. GOLDEN LIBERTY of Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a unique democracy with the principle that every nobleman, regardless of rank or wealth, had equal legal status and veto power in the Parliament. The King was elected and subordinate to this principle. The Golden Liberty also featured almost unprecedented degrees of religious tolerance. But these freedoms only extended to the nobles, perhaps 10% of the populace. “Heaven for nobles, purgatory for townspeople, hell for peasants.” —Paradiscus Judaeorum, 16th century.

31. FINANCING CONQUEST. The use of loans to launch campaigns revolutionized military history, with a far greater impact than the introduction of the firearm. Armies had a greater proportion of paid men, including mercenaries, and could stay in the field longer. The Italian bankers operating in England, France, Italy, and Germany were casually repaid from the proceeds of customs duties. In this way, revenues can be anticipated, and the cost of an expensive campaign spread over several years, avoiding intolerable short term tax hikes. The bankers requested that the monasteries serve as loan guarantors, and also as safe houses for the storage of gold, jewels, and plate. The King of England considered loan guarantees to be an outrage, and demanded the Italian bankers to be “menaced as they deserved”. When he decided to seize all private deposits, it was the monasteries that were searched, not the Italian residences. —Prestwich, 1979.

Vote Op Example

New Vote & Papal Overthrow Example: Concession You have the Papal States containing three Tip: A successful Serfs. You have two Concessions on the Italian vote against your Borders, while your opponent has one. You own King flips it have the Sindicat Remenca card, allowing a into a Republic. Western vote. As part of a Western tableau Conversely, a action, you use this card to vote, paying 3 successful vote Florins to flip the Pope to its republic side. against your own Because all three Papal Borders are occupied, Republic turns it you can’t Emancipate the three Serfs, and, into a King (useful in order to place your Papal Concession, you for placing new decide to Repress your opponent’s Concession Concessions). [F6] to place your Pawn. This costs a Florin and 4. adds a fourth Serf to the Papal States.

You decide to install a golden liberty, changing the Papal States Map Card into a Medieval one. [F6]

Corsair Op Example

Corsair Example: You use an Ottoman corsair op to move a Pirate from the Hungary-Ottoman Sea Border to the Aragon-Papal States Sea Border. This is legal since the destination Border is in an Empire Adjacent along a trade route to Ottoman. The Pirate does not Kill all Tokens along its path - only those found at its final destination. [F7a] Easily Missed: Pirates can only enter Sea Borders.

FAQ Corsair: The corsair op moves a Pirate on the Map in a similar way that the inquisitor op moves a Bishop in a Tableau. In both cases, only one Token is allowed at the destination. But there is a difference. The corsair op can only be used in the Location printed on its card, while the inquisitor op can be used to move a Bishop regardless of where it is positioned in a Tableau. [F7]

Siege Op Example

FAQ Siege: Sieges Siege Example: You have the against Tokens in an Duke of Milan (an Aragon card Empire you already with the siege op). In the Aragon control can be useful! Empire there is one gold Knight Preemptively removing and one green Rook, and an Heretics prevents Islamic Pirate in its Border. If you Religious Wars. Killing undertake the Aragon siege, you off Ruling Class weakens may Kill any one of these Tokens. the Empire so that a [F8] Strawman Attack can form a Republic. [F8] 1.

• g. Claiming Vassals. Place the defeated Empire Square on its King side below the Victorious Empire Square in your Tableau, to show his vassalage to your King (now called a Suzerain). All Repressed Tokens remain repressed on the Vassal, unless you choose to Emancipate them in the REGIME CHANGE.

• h. Queens & Bishops. If the defending Empire is in its Throne, any Queens or Bishops come with it if it becomes a Vassal. But if it comes from an opponent’s Tableau, Discard any Queens or Bishops.

• i. Movement. This Op moves no Tokens between Empires. Thus a newly conquered Vassal Empire contains only Emancipated Tokens (if any) and its Pirates and Concessions (if any).

• j. Campaigns by Vassals. If a Vassal wins a campaign, the conquered Empire ends up as a Vassal under the same Suzerain. Per F9a, however, Vassals and Suzerains cannot campaign each other.

If as an action (E5) you Discard the facedown card at the left end of the East or West Market, you convene an East (black) or West (white) trade fair, respectively.[32] This creates profits and Discards a card (G1), traces a voyage (G2) along the black (East) or white (West) Trade Route, disperses profits (G3) to yourself (the initiator) plus to all those owning Concessions along the route (until profits run out), and finally raises Levies (G4) along the route.

G1. Profits & Discard

• a. Profits. Take 1 Florin (if 1- or 2-player game) or 2 Florins (if 3- or 4-player game) from China, and add them to the market Florins lying on either the East or West facedown card, as appropriate. Together, these Florins are called profits.[33]

• b. Discard the facedown card out of the game, leaving the profits on the empty gap.

G2. Subsidy

To determine how profits and Levies are dispersed, trace a voyage starting from either the black Emporium and following the black route (if East) or from the white Emporium following the white route (if West).

• a. Embarkation. The starting Emporium must be the one that is not busted (C1a).

• b. Emporium Subsidy. The player who convened the trade fair receives 1 Florin out of profits. If this takes the only profit, the voyage ends before it begins and G3/G4 do not occur.

G3. Voyage Profit Dispersal

The voyage proceeds from one Empire to the next, following the Trade Route. If while crossing a Border a Concession or Pirate takes the last profit (G1a), the voyage ends at that Border (see G5).

• a. Concession. If any player has a Concession in the Sea Border between two Empires, he receives 1 Florin out of profits as the voyage passes.

• b. Piracy. If a Pirate (of any color) sits in the Sea Border between two Empires, China receives 1 Florin out of profits as the voyage passes.

Notes

32. THE BLACK TRADE ROUTE simulates the slave and gold trade. The white Trade Route represents the silk and spice trade from the Orient, originally over the Great Silk Road from China. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias discovered a maritime route around the southern tip of Africa. He called it the “Cape of Storms”, but the King of Portugal quickly renamed it “The Cape of Good Hope”. This made for better PR, much the same way as Greenland was named. Whatever its name, the discovery of this route made Oriental imports far cheaper, within the reach of the mildly affluent, thus increasing the demand 10X. Thus the rise of Atlantic ports such as Lisbon and Antwerp.

33. PROFITS. In capitalist theory this represents demand, which increases when cheap foreign goods become available (such as when a bank convenes a trade fair). This causes an initial outflow of gold, reducing prices and wages in the nation (and increasing them in the Orient). These changes make the country’s producers more competitive, both domestically and abroad. Some part of the domestic market initially lost to imports are regained and an expansion of exports takes place. The country ends up both importing and exporting more. Fewer citizens become involved in the domestic market, and more in import and export (and banking). The net gain of the citizens is that the additional imports they obtained represents more and better goods than they could produce with the same labor devoted to producing for the domestic market. The trade benefits citizens of the Orient in the same way.

Campaign Op Example

Repressed New Rook Bloodless Campaign Example: You invade Repressed Concession France using the Holy Roman Empire campaign Pawn op. The HRE has two Knights (red and gold, but their color does not matter in a campaign), so you must pay two Florins. Note that you are disallowed Easily Missed: to invade with just one of the Knights to save In all Battles, all money. Since France has no Ruling Class, there are eligible attackers no defenders. The HRE wins, and you gain a French must be sent in Concession. You also claim the Empire Square of the attack. This France, which was in your opponent’s Tableau. means you must Because the HRE is a Vassal of the Ottomans, pay for all eligible France also becomes a Vassal of the Ottomans. Knights in a France had 2 Repressed Tokens: a Rook and a Serf campaign. [F9c] of your color. You decide to Emancipate both of them, placing the Rook into Lyon and the Pawn as 1. a 2nd Concession into the east Border. Otherwise, France would have remained depopulated, because the attackers return to their posts. [F9a-i]

Tip: Tokens never move out of their Empire as a result of a Battle (even Adjacent Knights used in campaigns or Religious Wars return home after the fight). Tokens can’t move, except for Bishops using the inquisitor op and Pirates using the corsair op.

Perform Trade Fair

To perform a West trade fair along the Facedown cards white Trade Route:

New Termination. Levy

No profits remaining for this Concession. Arrowhead uncovered (end of Trade Route) This Concession & Pirate white Your Reserves. each take 1 Florin. Emporium Pirate’s Florin goes to China.

Perform Trade Fair Example: Shown above is an example White Trade Route. There are 2 Florins starting in the West Row. It’s a 2-player game, so 1 more Florin is added, to make 3 profits altogether. The West facedown card is Discarded, and you take 1 Florin just for running the fair. The 2 remaining profits are taken, first by a Concession, and the second by a Pirate. Then the profits run out, so the voyage terminates. Levies are added to the unsaturated Empires up to the termination point. [G4c]

FAQ Trade Fair: What if you initiate a trade fair but there is no money in the pot? It ends before it begins. The initiating player takes their 1 Florin from the bank, but no Levies are raised (only possible in a 1- or 2-player game). [G1]

FAQ Trade Fair: What if you initiate a trade fair but there are no concessions along the route? You take 1 Florin for initiating the trade fair, then raise Levies along the entire route. [G3]

G4. Levies

Each Empire the voyage enters, starting with the one containing the Emporium, receives one Token, called a Levy.[34] A Levy is placed upon one of the unoccupied Cities on the Empire and must be the color and shape indicated. The player who convened the trade fair chooses which City gets the Levy.

• a. Constantinople. The City of Constantinople is considered unoccupied if it holds fewer than three Tokens.

• b. Saturation. If all its Cities are occupied, that Empire is Saturated and can accept no more Levies.

• c. Venetian Condottieri. Certain card Abilities (e.g. Duchy of Ferrara, Wolf of Rimini, Gonfalonier) allow the City of Venice to hold two gold Tokens instead of one. As soon as one or more of these cards is set into play and the knight icon in Venice is gold (Catholic), Venice is considered unoccupied if it holds fewer than two Tokens. If this Ability is sold, beheaded, or silenced, or the Papal States becomes a non-Catholic Theocracy, Discard down to a single Knight or Rook in Venice.[35]

G5. Voyage End

The voyage ends when it reaches its arrowhead, either in the Holy Roman Empire if white or Mamluk if black. However, if the profits run out before this, the last Concession or Pirate to take a profit marks the end of the voyage, and no Levies are raised beyond this point.[36]

• a. Leftover Profits. If Florins are leftover, they remain in the empty space left by the trade fair card and will be placed on the new trade fair card during the refresh market phase (D2).[37]

G6. Bankruptcy Variant (Optional)

If you convene a trade fair, you do not receive 1 Florin out of profits, contrary to G2. As a consequence, it is possible for you to run out of Florins, cards, and Concessions during a game. If so, you are eliminated from the game, simulating that banks can and did fail.[38]

Notes

34. CUSTOMS. In the Renaissance, kingdoms rose and fell depending on how the trade routes were aligned, and how many troops the kings could raise from customs fees.

35. RENAISSANCE VENICE is depicted in the cover image by Josefn Strand. The setting is a piano nobile (the main floor of a Venetian palazzo), and St Mark’s campanile and a trade fair Venetian galley bound for the East are visible outside. The architectural style comes from Andrea Palladio, the chief architect of Renaissance Venice. Here at Ion Game Design, there was debate on what the banker should be holding in the cover: scales, ledgers, a coin? A queen was chosen both because the game uses chess pieces, and because a new untraditional chess variant, in which the queen was the most powerful piece on the board, was becoming popular. The cover tells a story of the bankers behind the scenes of the momentous events of the Renaissance. Perhaps the banker is arranging a marriage that forges a new alliance, or even a new nation such as in the cases of France, Spain, or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The model for the banker was Pal, head of game development at Ion.

36. COSIMO DE’ MEDICI is the “midwife” of the Renaissance according to Durant. He is usually described as the “de facto” ruler of Florence 1415-64. But in this half century he never held public office, remaining nothing more than a rich and respected bank manager (albeit one who accepted responsibility for fortifications and defense). His opinion was respected in the Signoria (Florentine ruling council of guilds), but the council retained final say in constitutional interpretation of the Florentine Republic. When the rival Albizzi bank convinced the Signoria to have Cosimo executed, he bribed the gonfalonier to commute the sentence to exile and meekly resumed banking in Venice. There was no bloodshed, as Cosimo commanded no arms. When the Signoria bowed to popular pressure and re-invited Cosimo and his bank to return a year later, there was again no blood (although it was the Albizzis turn to be banished). Cosimo was a banker, not a brawler. “To be elected to office is often prejudicial to the body and hurtful to the soul.” —Cosimo de’ Medici.

37. BANKERS are routinely accused of having politicians in their pockets. Indeed, trying to protect their earnings from arbitrary seizure, bankers such as the Fuggers and Medici used their wealth to influence votes and elections. But just who is in whose pocket here? A king can behead a banker, but not the other way around. A banker commanded no armies, no police, and no tax collectors. He could not force a single transaction. If his customers came to mistrust him, they simply went to a rival bank. At any time a ruler could seize all his gold for any reason, or no reason. Or perhaps worse, seize his ships for use in war or crusade. The power of bribes is no match for the power of torture. The published instructions of Cosimo Medici to his bank managers strictly forbade lending to kings or royalty, but this was easier said than done. Kings can smell a steady source of income, and competition among them to squeeze a banker with forced “loans” was fierce.

38. PERSONALITY OF A BANKER. What sort of man was Cosimo de’ Medici? He rose early, went nearly every day to his office, like an American millionaire. He dressed simply, ate and drank temperately, and (after begetting an illegitimate son by a slave girl) lived a quiet and orderly family life. He was normally humane, mild, forgiving, reticent, and yet known for his dry wit. He was generous to the poor, paid the taxes of impoverished friends, and hid his charity, like his power, in a gracious anonymity. He donated 400,000 Florins ($10,000,000?) to public works and private charities, twice as much as he left to his heirs. Along with his descendants Lorenzo the Magnificent, Leo X, and Clement VII, the Medici patronized learning and art to a degree unequaled by any other family in the history of mankind. —Will Durant, 1953.

Condottieri Example

Condottieri Ability Example: You play the Gonfalonier, a condottieri (Italian mercenary). This card has two gold Knights as its Agents, and since the Papal States is currently a Catholic Theocracy, the condottieri ability allows you to place both into Venice. Venice already holds a Rook, which you pay a Florin to repress. [E2.2b] Then, in a campaign against a neighbor, one of the 2 Knights is Killed. But because the Gonfalonier is still active in your Tableau, the next trade fair that goes by Italy 1. resurrects him as a Levy. Unfortunately, a Catholic inquisitor silences the Gonfalonier, and one of the 2 Knights is instantly Killed. [G4c]

Trade Route Example

Trade Route Example: As Player Blue, you convene an eastern trade fair, which starts at Tana. You have a Concession between Byzantium and Hungary, and Player Purple has one between Ottoman and Mamluk. If the trade fair has only 2 profits, then both go to you (one as the initiator, the other for your Concession). The voyage stops at your Concession, so Player Purple gets no profits, and only Byzantium raises a Levy. Both Tana and Caffa in Byzantium are empty. You choose the former, which places a green Knight in Tana. [G4, G5]

Longer Trade Route Example: In the example above, suppose there were three profits instead of two. This allows your voyage to go to the Ottomans, stopping at the Border where the purple Concession takes the last profit. This voyage potentially raises Levies in Hungary and the Ottomans as well as Byzantium. However, Hungary is Saturated with two Tokens. In the Ottomans, all the Cities are filled except Constantinople with one of its three spaces free. You have no choice except to place its third Token (a green Rook). [G4, G5]

Condottieri Ability

1.

H1. Trade Shift One-shot Effects

If you trigger a trade shift One-shot, move the busted disk (C1a) (if any) covering the specified Emporium to cover (and deactivate) the uncovered Emporium of the same color. This deactivation Represses any Token that may be there, placed into the Empire Square where the Token was located. This reroutes the Trade Route for any future trade fair actions taken of that color.

• a. Spice Islands Route (white). If the Spice Islands is covered by a white “busted” disk, this trade shift moves it from the Spice Islands to cover the uncovered white Emporium (either Trebizond or the Red Sea).[39]

• Spice Islands Requirement: You must have at least one Discovery Prestige in your Tableau (not counting the card being played) in order to activate the Spice Islands trade shift! This simulates the challenges faced in learning how to circumnavigate Africa.

• b. Red Sea Emporium (white). If the Red Sea is covered by a white “busted” disk, this trade shift moves it from the Red Sea to cover the uncovered white Emporium (either Trebizond or the Spice Islands).[40]

• c. Novgorod Emporium (black). If Novgorod is covered by a black “busted” disk, this trade shift moves it from Novgorod to cover the uncovered black Emporium (either Timbuktu or Tana).

• d. Timbuktu Emporium (black). If Timbuktu is covered by a black “busted” disk, this trade shift moves it from Timbuktu to cover the uncovered black Emporium (either Novgorod or Tana).[41] See example at right.

Notes

39. TRADE ROUTE SHIFTS. Unlike the other trade route shifts in the game, the Portuguese discovery of a maritime route around Africa to the Orient quite suddenly turned the Mediterranean from the hub of the world to a quiet backwater. Especially for the Ottomans and Venetians who saw their customs revenues dwindle to almost nothing. The caravel, the only ship capable of such a voyage, was invented around 1451 under the sponsorship of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal. A modification of a Basque fishing boat design, the lateen sails of the caravel gave it speed and the capacity for sailing windward, and its construction allowed it to cross open waters.

40. RED SEA TRADE. After the tiny and insignificant kingdom of Portugal became the richest and most powerful nation in Europe merely by discovering a trade route around Africa and sinking the Mamluk fleet using repurposed Basque fishing boats, the former warring superpowers saw their incomes vanish overnight. They were so desperate to break the Portuguese stranglehold and regain a naval route to the Spice Islands through the Red Sea that the empires of Venice, France, and the Ottomans took the unprecedented step to work together. The spectacle of Muslim and Christian ships conducting joint operations shocked the European world. But attempts to bolster the Mamluk Red Sea fleet failed; the Mamluks were landlubbers who favored horses over ships.

41. AFRICAN GOLD. As the game begins, Western Europe returned to gold coinage for the first time in half a millennium, which was helpful in keeping control of the money supply out of royal hands. Genoese and Catalonian bankers obtained gold dust from the Wangara Saharan caravans from Timbuktu with a terminus in Safi, a port in Morocco. Since most Western banks and mints were privately owned, the rulers had to resort to extorting or demanding funds from the bankers. Some rulers nationalized the banks and outlawed private competition. Such monopolies were favored by the King of Aragon, and public banks were established in Barcelona, Valencia, Majorca, and Gerona. All such state banks quickly failed and forfeited the depositor’s money. Meanwhile, in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, the emperor or sultan regulated the mints and controlled the money supply.

Trade Shift Example

3.

1.

2. 4. White busted disk.

Trade Shift Example: The Soniinke Wangara card is played. This moves the black busted disk on Timbuktu to cover Tana (red arrow). The Rook on Tana becomes a Repressed Token in the Byzantium Throne (as the formerly wealthy Crimean nobility suddenly see their funds dry up). The black trade route now stretches from the Timbuktu Emporium to Mamluk as shown (double line). The former black Trade Route is shown by a black dotted line. [H1d]

FAQ Trade Routes: Trade Routes always end in the same Empire: Mamluk for black and HRE for white. Only the starting point of a Trade Route is changed by a trade shift. [H1]

Trade Shift One-shot Icon

Bomb Icon (white = West)

Agent (green Bishop) Emporium Uncovered (move busted disk) One-shot (Religious War) Required Prestige (in order to activate One-shot)

All Queens have the coronation One-shot, which if triggered marries her to a King. The King must be an Empire contained in the Queen’s list of suitors, and must be unmarried, either in his Throne (C6b) or in your Tableau.[42] Alternatively, the Queen can be played as an Old Maid.

• a. Concession Reward. A coronation is a REGIME CHANGE, so you can claim a Concession in that Empire.

I1. Royal Couple

If you decide to perform a coronation One-shot, form a royal couple by placing the King side of the chosen Empire Square on top of the Queen card in your Tableau so that her Ops and Prestige (if any) are visible.

• a. Location. The royal couple go into your East or West Tableau according to the Imperial Location. A coronated Queen always has a Location in the Empire she is married to.

• b. Tableau Ops. A coronated King and Queen each run their own Ops during an Ops action (E4).

• c. Sexism.[43] If the King is returned to his Throne (e.g. sales (E3a) or apostasy (K3)), the Queen goes with him in all instances except for beheading (F3) or REGIME CHANGE. These two exceptions represent the violent overthrow of the monarchs. The Queen is Killed if either the King or Queen is beheaded.

• d. Regime Change. If you acquire a royal couple from the Throne during a REGIME CHANGE, the marriage is preserved. But if you lose a royal couple during a Regime Change, the Queen is Killed.

• e. Silencing. If a Bishop lands on either the King or Queen, both are silenced.[44]

I2. Old Maids

If you play a Queen unmarried (i.e. do not trigger her coronation), store her card under your Player Board. She is not part of your Tableau, so you may not perform her Ops or Abilities and ignore her during apostasy.

• a. Sales. An Old Maid can be sold per E3.

• b. Endgame Prestige. If she has Prestige, this counts when victory is calculated (L2, L3, L5, L6).

Notes

42. CORONATION. Normally only an unmarried prince could get married to a queen, but King Henry VIII, who beheaded 2 of his 6 wives, would disagree. His Ability reads “Your coronation One-shot can claim Kings who are married or in an opponent’s Tableau.”

43. SEXISM means to classify people according to their gender instead of their individual merits and to treat them differently, either legally or commercially. In this time period, the whole political/religious world was sexist and had been for a long time. The Renaissance was perhaps the first glimmers of freedom for womenfolk, as women had more autonomy (as queens and merchants) than any time before (or immediately after). Because the Renaissance led to the Western Enlightenment, with such thinkers as Olympe de Gouges, this was the beginning of the degree of freedoms that women in the West enjoy today.

44. SILENCING reflects the general religious condemnation (and torture!) of bankers and financiers in Europe, using intimidation tactics similar to today’s “cancel culture”. The charging of interest is condemned in Deuteronomy 23:20: “Unto a foreigner thou may lend usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend usury.” The Catholics and Muslims interpreted “brother” to refer to any human being, whereas the Jewish interpretation (stemming from the High Middle Ages) identifies a “brother” as a fellow Jew. These interpretations allowed Jews to dominate money-lending throughout Europe and the Ottoman Empire, from neighborhood pawn shops to international financing. But they also sparked anti-Semitic pogroms during the Spanish Inquisition and Luther’s reformation, as well as in England, France, and Austria. What fueled such hatred? Those clans who specialize as intermediaries between producers and consumers, the so-called “middleman minorities”, have always been persecuted throughout the world. Examples are the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the Ibo in Nigeria, Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Lebanese in Sierra Leone, the Koreans in the USA, the Gujaratis in South Africa, and the Jews in Nazi Germany. The widespread hostility against middlemen minorities is not due to religion, race, or creed, since they differ from one another in all these regards. What they have in common is their much resented economic role - regardless who performs that role. Although bankers perform invaluable services, they are falsely accused of being exploitative, greedy, miserly, rapacious, and redundant. They are blamed for high rates, despite the fact that they would be shut out by the free market if they raised prices arbitrarily and the real cause is taxes, inflation, or crime. If forced to pay off public officials to keep their business, they are accused of corruption, a clear case of blaming the victim. From the expulsion of the Medici to the Holocaust of WWII, irrational prejudice against bankers and middlemen continues today. The term “middleman minority” was developed by sociologists Hubert Blalock and Edna Bonacich to explain and stop the origins of racial hate and genocide. —Thomas Sowell, Is Anti-Semitism Generic?, 2005. —Edna Bonacich, A Theory of Middleman Minorities,1973.

Coronation Example

Coronation Example: For your first action, you buy Queen Palaiologina in the Market. Among her list of suitors is the King of Hungary, Mátás Corvinus, who is still unwed in his Throne. For your second action, you play the queen and trigger the coronation One-shot with this king to form the royal couple. This is a Regime Change, Location and you gain a Concession in the Borders of Hungary.

You place the royal couple into your Tableau on the East side, since Hungary is in the East. [I1]

1. 2.

Easily Missed: A coronation always produces a King. It cannot produce a Republic, which is only formed from a Strawman (E2.2f) on a King already in your own Tableau. [I1]

Coronation One-shot Icon

Bomb Icon (gray = neutral)

List of possible Kings for the royal couple.

Old Maid Example

Old Maid Example: As in the previous example, you buy Queen Palaiologina in the Market. She goes into your Hand, and you intend to Old Maid Prestige arrange her coronation on your next counts towards victory. turn. But alas, by that time all 4 of her suitors are either married or in an opponent’s Tableau. This makes it impossible to activate her coronation One-shot. Instead you play her under your Player Board as shown. [I2]

There are two types of Civil War: conspiracies and peasant revolts. If you play a card with a “Conspiracy” or “Peasant Revolt” One-shot, you first specify if there is a Civil War or not.

• a. No Civil War. If no, there is no BATTLE. You may place the card’s Agent Tokens per E2.2.

• b. Civil War. If yes, there is a BATTLE.

• c. Succession. If the attackers have at least one survivor, the Civil War is Victorious, causing a REGIME CHANGE. See J1 or J2.

J1. Conspiracy One-shot

If you launch a conspiracy, this creates a BATTLE:

• a. Attackers. The card’s Agents (except Bishops), Bordering Pirates (any color), and repressed ruling class (repressed Knights & Rooks on that Empire Square, of any color) must join the Battle as attackers. Note that repressed Pawns do not participate.

• b. Defenders. All Ruling Class Tokens (i.e. Tokens in Cities).

J2. Peasant Revolt One-shot

If you launch a peasant revolt,[45] this creates a BATTLE:

• a. Attackers. The card’s Agents (except Bishops), Bordering Concessions (of your color), Bordering Pirates (any color), and Serfs (repressed Pawns on that Empire Square, of any color) must join the Battle as attackers. Note that repressed Knights and Rooks do not participate.

• b. Defenders. All Ruling Class Tokens (i.e. Tokens in Cities).

Easily Missed: Populate your choice of Cities with Battle survivors. Repress any Tokens if there are not enough Cities. [E2.2]

Easily Missed: Serfs of your own color can be used by anyone in a peasant revolt, even one against your own Empire! (Serfs don’t care which leader has which banker in their pocket.) [J2]

Notes

45. PEASANT REVOLTS may seem to have been uniformly crushed during the Renaissance, yet they are a sign of a continent struggling toward modernity. In England, for example, when the legal privileges afforded to tin miners in Stannary courts were suspended in 1496, the Cornish miners rose in rebellion the following year. The rebels were defeated and its leaders hung, yet they saw a measure of success as the semi-automous Stannaries were reinstated 11 years later. The city-states and guilds of Flanders often rose in revolt, with some successes, as craft guilds sought alliances with nobles and urban elites against the dukes or the Emperor.

Conspiracy Example

Conspiracy One-shot Example: You play the House of Borgia and declare that its conspiracy One-shot occurs. This card is located in “The West”, and you declare the target to be Aragon. The Agent for the Borgia card is a Bishop, but he does not fight. Instead, the attackers consist of a repressed red Knight on the Aragon Empire Square, and one Barbary Pirate Adjacent to Aragon. Aragon defends with one Ruling Class Rook.

Two against one, so the conspiracy succeeds with one survivor. You choose the Knight to be the survivor, and set him in Valencia. The Pirate dies. You claim the Aragon Empire Square from your opponent’s Tableau. France, a Vassal of Aragon, gets returned to its Throne. You place a Concession Adjacent 1. to Aragon for the Regime Change. Finally, you place the Borgia Bishop on any Tableau 2. card in the West. [J1]

FAQ Battle: In a Civil War or campaign, the color of the attackers and defenders is irrelevant! [Jb]

Peasant Revolt Example

Easily Missed: If you trigger a peasant revolt, your Adjacent Concessions must rise up and fight too, even if they won’t survive. [J2a]

1.

Republic Creation Example: You play the Flanders guilds to launch a peasant revolt against the French Vassal in your own Tableau. The attackers are the Pawn shown on the card, plus (in the French Borders) a Pirate and a Concession of yours. There are two Ruling Class defenders, so you win with one survivor. You choose a Pawn to survive, placed as a Concession. You get another Concession for the Regime Change. Flip the French Empire Square to its Republic side, and move it to become your leftmost tableau card. [J2]

K1. Crusade, Reformation, or Jihad One-shot

There are 3 kinds of Religious Wars: crusade (Catholic), reformation (Protestant), and jihad (Muslim). If you play a card depicting a Religious War One-shot, you can trigger a Religious War in that Location. This creates a Battle between Believers (Tokens of the religious color shown on the card) and Heretics (Tokens of the other two religions).

• a. Attackers. The card’s Agents (except Bishops or Pawns), Bordering Pirates (Believers only), Ruling Class (Knights & Rooks in that Location, Believers only), and Knights in Adjacent Locations (Believers only) must join the Battle as attackers. Note that Adjacency includes diagonals, see ADJACENT.

• b. Defenders. All non-repressed Heretics in the Location (Ruling Class and bordering Heretic Pirates).

• c. The Bloody Rule. The Religious War cannot be triggered if there are no Heretics to Kill in the target Location (neither Heretic Ruling Class nor bordering Heretic Pirates).

• d. Repressed Tokens. Repressed Tokens do not fight in a Religious War (and thus can’t be used for the “bloody rule”).

K2. Crusade, Reformation, or Jihad Effects

• a. Map Card Change. A Victorious crusade/jihad/reformation[46] in an Empire changes it into a Catholic/Islamic/Reformist Theocracy, respectively. Add, remove, flip, or replace its Map Card to indicate this Theocracy, assuming its Map Card must be updated. All Ruling Class remain in the same Cities (attacker’s choice in the case of Constantinople).

• b. Regime Change. A Victorious Religious War causes a REGIME CHANGE.

K3. Apostasy One-shot

If triggered, this One-shot affects the Tableaux of all players, who are put on trial for dealing with Heretics. Each player who has cards with Prestige icons of both indicated Religions in his Tableau must Discard all these cards! There is no Battle.[47]

• a. Royal Couple. If either the King or Queen is Discarded as a result of apostasy, both are returned to their Throne (with their marital status intact).

• b. Martyr’s Disciples. If the card launching the apostasy is itself Discarded by its own One-shot (e.g. Oratory of Divine Love), it may deploy its Agents (e.g. Bishops) before dying.

• c. Old Maids (I2) do not count towards apostasy.

Easily Missed: Ruling Class, Bishop Tokens, and Pirate Ships do not “belong” to any player. Any player may use them for a Religious War, holy victory, etc. regardless of who moves them or caused them to be placed.

Notes

46. APOSTASY is the compromise of your beliefs to the point of renunciation. For example, reformers such as Martin Luther were led to apostasy concerning Papal Authority. Bankers who deal with customers of two opposed religions often must soften or compromise adherence to their own religious doctrines, and this pragmatism may well result in condemnation and charges of apostasy by hard liners of both sides. This abandonment is what is being simulated by the game’s apostasy rules.

47. LUTHERANISM. As part of his effort to make the Catholic Church less worldly, the evangelist of protest Martin Luther attacked Aristotle and objected to the intrusion of logic into theology. “Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason,” he said, reversing some of the successes which the spread of Aristotle’s philosophy of reason had brought to Renaissance culture. —Burgess Laughlin, 1995.

Crusade Example

FAQ Bloody Rule: Do Heretic Pirates in a Border count for the bloody rule? Yes. For example, a Reformist Pirate bordering England can enable a crusade there. [K1c]

1. 2. 3.

Crusade One-shot Example: You play the Jesuits and start a crusade into Aragon. The attackers are a gold Rook in Aragon, a gold Knight in neighboring Portugal, and a gold Pirate on Aragon’s eastern Sea Border. In the Battle the sole defender, a green Algerian Rook, dies, and you choose the Rook in Aragon as your casualty (the Knight or Pirate are also possible choices for the casualty). The victorious crusade adds the Aragon Map Card on its Catholic side. Because Aragon is already a kingdom in your Tableau, this victory flips it to its republic side, and you can place a Concession. [K1,K2]

Apostasy Example

1. Apostasy played.

2a. 2b.

Apostasy One-shot Example: You play the twelver ghulat, and trigger its apostasy One-shot. This makes cards with Reformation Prestige incompatible with those with Islamic Prestige. In your Tableau there is one reformation card (Luther), and two Islamic cards (The Grim and The Handsome). Luther is in your West, and the other two are in your East, but East and West do not matter for apostasy. Discard all three cards. Even though its One-shot triggered the apostasy, the twelver ghulat is also Discarded, after deploying its Agent, since it too has an Islamic Prestige. Thematically, you have been excluded because of your pragmatism.

Your opponent has three reformation cards and one Islamic one, and all four are Discarded. The Islamic card is the Empire Square Sultan Mehmed with a Vassal, and both Vassal and Suzerain are Discarded into their Thrones.

Another opponent, with only a reformation card, does not have to Discard any cards. [K3a-c]

L1. Purchase & Discard the Comet Card

If you buy one of the four Comet cards, you must Discard it immediately and activate (flip over) one of the inactive Victory Squares of your choice to its active side.

• a. Cometa Aster. If a Comet reaches the leftmost (cheapest) slot of the Market, like any other card it is flipped and no longer available for purchase. It is Discarded out of the game without effect if used to convene a trade fair (G1b).

L2. Endgame

The game ends if a player uses an action (E6) to declare victory in a particular activated Victory Square. He must fill the victory conditions listed in L3-L6 for that Victory Square.

• a. Patron Victory. The game also ends if the market cannot be refreshed from either the East or West draw decks during market refresh (D2). If so, the player with the most Patron Prestige wins.[48]

• b. Tiebreaker. As a final tiebreaker, the one with the most Florins wins. Players still tied share their victory.

L3. Holy Victory (Torquemada)

To win, you must have more Prestige in the Supreme Religion than your opponent with the most Prestige in the Supreme Religion. A Religion achieves supremacy if it has both:

(1) More Bishop Tokens of its color in Tableaux or Thrones than both other religions combined, and (2) More Tokens (Knights, Rooks, and Pirates) of its color in play in its Theocracies than both other religions combined. Count only unrepressed Tokens whose color match the Theocracy they live in.

L4. Imperial Victory (Charles V)

To win, you must have at least two more Empire Squares on their King side (whether Suzerains or Vassals) than each opponent. In a 2-player game, it must be three more.[49]

L5. Globalization Victory (Columbus)

To win, you must have:

(1) at least two more Concessions than each opponent. (2) more Discovery Prestige than each opponent.

L6. Renaissance Victory (Leonardo)

To win, you must have:

(1) More Republics than each opponent.[50] (2) At least two more Law Prestige than each opponent.[51]

Notes

48. RENAISSANCE PATRONS were overwhelmingly private. In other words, the paintings, sculptures, and architecture of the artistic Renaissances in lands such as Italy, Germany, Netherlands, and England were paid for by wealthy commoners who made their fortunes in banking and commerce. Sometimes the courts of Hungary and Egypt are falsely described as part of the Renaissance, due to the lavish patronage of rulers such as Mátyás Corvinus and Qa’it Bay. But public works paid for from forced transactions, mainly appropriations and taxations by royals and nobles, are fundamentally different from private works paid for ultimately from voluntary transactions. For one thing, there is nothing new or lasting about monuments built by slaves intended to glorify the king of kings. Like the works of Ozymandias, they crumble into dust. The art of the Renaissance glorified humanity and humanism rather than a particular king. This was a harbinger of something utterly novel, and ushered in the modern eras of globalization, banking, capitalism, abolition of slavery, increased wealth in every social class, industrialization, science, mass literacy, and the Enlightenment.

49. IMPERIALISM. The dominions of Charles V in Europe and the Americas were the first collection of realms to be referred to as the “empire on which the sun never sets”.

50. RENAISSANCE OF FINANCE. What underpinned all the great artistic, literary and architectural achievements that we now see as quintessentially ’Renaissance’ was an equally momentous revolution in trade and finance. Ever since the Crusades of the 12th century, a politically fragmented and economically undeveloped Europe looked to the cultures of the east for luxury, wealth and new ways of doing business. —Dr. Jeremy Brotton, 2011.

51. LAW was increasingly resorted to for settling disputes among nobles, and this pacification benefited merchants and bankers which in turn benefited the kings who were taxing them. This was to transform European feudal units into the first modern states, in which objective and clear standards trumped arbitrary decrees.

Purchase Comet Example

Game Winning Example: You spend one action to purchase the comet, activating the imperial Victory Square. You use your second action to declare victory in imperial. [L1]

Supreme Religion Example

Catholic Two Islamic Theocracy Theocracies

1.Somewherean IslamicBishopis inplay.

4.

Islam Supreme Example: The only Bishop in play is a green token in an opponent’s Tableau. There are only 3 Theocracies, the Papal States (Catholic), Ottoman (Islam), and Mamluk (Islam). There is one gold Knight in Venice, but no Tokens in the other 2 Theocracies. Thus, no religion is supreme. The Ottoman Navy is played, placing a Pirate in the Mamluk Border. Because it borders 2 Islamic Theocracies, it is counted twice. Therefore, Islam becomes the Supreme Religion. [L3]

Ability (B5f)

A special rule listed on a card’s scroll (lower corner), active for you as long as the card is unsilenced and in your Tableau. Its effects are cumulative (e.g. Concession payout in spice island trade fairs).

• a. Red Text. These Abilities apply to all players, and their effects are not cumulative.

• b. Free Ops. An Ability that lets you run an Op for free still limits you to one “activate Ops” per East or West.

Adjacent

Two Empires are adjacent if they share a Border, or if they are diagonal to each other on the Map. Two tableau cards are adjacent if they are next to each other in a Tableau. Vassal cards are adjacent to the tableau cards immediately to their right and left, their Suzerain, and other Vassals under that Suzerain.

Agents (E2.2)

Chess pieces (Bishops, Knights, Rooks, or Pawns) or Pirates as depicted in the lower corner of a card. These tokens are placed on a single card or Border depending upon the base symbol of the icon: circular (on a City), between 2 cards (Border), or diamond (card).

Battle

To resolve a campaign (F9), Civil War (J1, J2), or Religious War (K), each attacking Token Kills one defending Token, but is itself Killed in exchange. The attacking player chooses all casualties. The attacking Tokens are Victorious if they have at least one survivor.

• a. Optional. Enacting a One-shot is always optional (whether or not it causes a Battle).

• b. Order Of Battle. (1) Determine attackers and defenders. All eligible Tokens must fight. (2) Eliminate attackers & defenders in the exchange. The Battle is Victorious if any attackers survive. (3) Place surviving Agents into the empty Cities, repressing for free once the Empire is Saturated. (4) If REGIME CHANGE, optional Emancipation if any empty spaces, plus optional Concession for free either at an empty Border or (for a cost of 1 Florin) repressing a previous Concession.

• c. Agents. These are attackers, except for Bishops which never fight in a Battle.

• d. Ruling Class. An Empire is defended by the Tokens in its Cities. In a Religious War, however, attackers and defenders are determined by the Token’s color (K1a,b).

• e. Pirates. Ship Tokens are attackers in conspiracies (J1a) and peasant revolts (J2a), and fight according to their color in Religious Wars (K1a,b).

• f. Pawns (Concessions & Serfs). These Tokens fight (as attackers) only in peasant revolts (J2a), except that Concessions of other players fight only if they have been repressed.

• g. Adjacent Knights. These Tokens fight (as attackers) only in campaigns (the cost is 1 Florin per Knight per F9c) and Religious Wars (K1a,b).

• h. Repressed Knights & Rooks. These Tokens fight (as attackers) only in conspiracies (J1a).

• i. Placement. Any surviving Agents or Repressed Tokens used as attackers in a Battle must be placed in the conquered Empire Square (until it is Saturated). Any remaining Repressed Tokens on the defending Empire may be Emancipated (see REGIME CHANGE). Knights and Rooks go into empty Cities (ignoring the city icon), Pirate ships go into empty Sea Borders, and Pawns (including Serfs) go into empty Borders. If there is not enough room in Cities or Borders because of Saturation, the excess are placed on the Empire Square as Repressed Tokens.

Believer (K1)

A Token with a religious color matching that of a card’s Agents. If the card has Agents of multiple colors, it has no believers. See HERETIC.

Bishop (F1)

This chess piece, in one of the 3 religious colors, represents a religious inquisitor or missionary. Bishops are always located on (and travel among) Tableau cards or Thrones per F1.

• a. Placement. A Bishop of the specified religion is placed as an Agent on any Tableau card or Throne that shares its Location (E2.2a), and if its One-shot triggers a Battle, its placement is not restricted to the same Location where the One-shot was triggered.

• b. Silencing. A Bishop entering a card (by placement or movement) Kills any other Bishop there in exchange. It can also Kill one Repressed Token there (pacification, see F1b). The presence of a Bishop silences (i.e. inactivates) all the card’s Abilities and its Ops except for religious ops (light blue, see Fa).

• c. In Play. A Bishop is never found on the Map or fights in Battles, and never becomes Repressed. If a card is moved or removed, its Bishop follows.

• d. Movement. A Bishop of the specified color is moved using the inquisitor op (F1).

Border (B2c)

The gap between two Empires. For instance, England has two Borders, one to the east and one to the south. A Sea Border is a special border that is crossed by an active or inactive Trade Route. For instance, all three of the Ottoman borders are Sea Borders. Each Border can hold either one Concession (Pawn) or (Sea Borders only) one Pirate. A Concession on a Sea Border can receive trade fair profits (G3).

Catholic

Religion that recognizes the pope as the centralized authority. Color = gold. See PRESTIGE.

China (B2g)

A pool where Florins that are out of circulation are stored. Florins enter the game during a trade fair, through repression ops (F5), or by selling (E3), and leave the game if paying for repressions by Agents, campaigns, votes, and taxation. Except when purchasing a card from the Market, all costs go to China, which represents the foreign market.

City (B6a)

Circular map icon containing a Levy icon (Knight or Rook). Each City can contain one Knight or Rook, regardless of the City icon. (Constantinople is considered 3 Cities.) Thus the number of Cities in an Empire limits the number of Ruling Class Tokens it can contain. The color and shape of a Levy during Levy placement must match the icon shown in the City icon. But for other placements (Agents, Victorious attackers, or Emancipated Tokens), any shape or color of Token can occupy a city.

Civil War

Battles caused by conspiracies (J1) and peasant revolts (J2). Repressed Tokens sometimes fight in civil wars.

Comet (B7a)

One of 4 cards that forces you to activate a Victory Square if you purchase it. It reflects both the science and superstition of this age. The four, identical except in name, are Copernicus, Nostradamus, Regiomontanus, and Excommunication of Halley’s Comet.

Concession (B2c)

A Pawn in one of the player colors located in the Border between two Empires, with a maximum of one concession per Border. It represents both merchants and the permission to sell at a local port.

• a. Placement. The gray Pawn icon means that a Pawn of your color is placed as an Agent (E2d).

• b. In Play. A Concession participates in voting, can join peasant revolts as attackers, and helps in a globalization victory. It can be attacked by taxation, Repression, and piracy.

• c. Trade Fair. Concessions in the Sea Borders along an activated white or black Trade Route line are paid from the profits.

Cryptography

The MEDICI CIPHERS BROKEN Ability allows you to perform during each “perform West Ops”, one additional Op using a card from an opponent’s West Tableau, exactly as if that card was in your Tableau. The Op must be a

political (purple) Op, so you gain a behead, tax, repress, or vote Op. The puppeted card retains all its limitations (e.g. cannot behead itself, Killed if beheads an Empire Square, can be silenced, etc.). The card retains its Location, so the Op occurs in the Location of the card stolen from. Example: Your opponent has a coronated pair in Portugal including Isabella of Castile, who has a Behead Op. You use Cryptography on Isabella to murder her husband and send the Empire Square back to its Throne. The widow Isabella is Discarded.

Discard

Cards (and any Bishops on them) are discarded as a result of selling cards (E3), beheading (F3), apostasy (K3), trade fairs (G1b), or Comet purchase (L1). Remove discarded cards from the game, and return discarded Tokens to the general pool or player Reserves.

• a. Empires. Return discarded Empires to their Throne, along with any Vassals. Retain any Repressed Tokens and Bishops but Discard the Queen (if any) if beheaded or REGIME CHANGE.

Discovery

The doctrine of maritime exploration and imperialism. See PRESTIGE.

East

Refers to the 4 eastern Empires in the game, and the cards, Trade Routes, and Market Rows exhibiting the philosophic and cultural dispositions associated with these Empires.

Emancipation

See REGIME CHANGE.

Empire (C1)

Either a Map Card or a slot on the Map labeled England, France, Holy Roman Empire (HRE), Hungary, Byzantium, Portugal, Aragon, Papal States, Ottoman Empire, or Mamluk.

Empire Square (B4)

The 10 public tiles with a King (gold frame) on one side and a Republic (pillar frame) on the other. Each corresponds to an Empire on the Map. Each Empire Square starts in its Throne (C6b), but can be added to your Tableau by a REGIME CHANGE. If so, place it either in your furthest East or West position, or (during campaigns) as a Vassal.

Emporium (B6d)

A City marked by a nine-pointed star. It can be either white (for commoner luxuries such as spices and silks) or black (for nobility luxuries such as gold and slaves). The black Trade Route starts at a black emporium, and the white Trade Route starts at a white emporium. At any given time only one white and one black emporium are not busted (C1). A busted disk on an Emporium means it is not in play, and so it cannot raise Levies or accept Agents. Novgorod, the Spice Islands, Timbuktu, and the Red Sea start busted.

Florins (C7)

Florins, as represented by yellow disks (1 Florin each) or red disks (5 Florins each), will circulate among players during the game. Florins are depicted on cards as gold Florin icons. Florins are added to the game during trade fairs and by selling cards, representing the foreign and domestic markets respectively. They also enter by the repress op, representing the slave trade.

• a. Spares. The Florins provided in the game are not a hard limit. Use spare disks if required.

• b. Public. Your number of Florins is public knowledge.

Hand

If you purchase a card from the Market other than a Comet, place it in your Hand, kept hidden from other players. Your Hand size is limited to 2 cards. You cannot purchase a card if you are at this hand size.

• a. Larger Hand Size Ability. If such an Ability is silenced or lost, immediately Discard down to two cards of your choice.

• b. Abilities on cards in your Hand are inactive.

Heretic (K1)

Any Token of a religious color different from the Agent color of the Card used for the Op or Agent placement. See BELIEVER.

Islam

Religion that uses the koran as its authority. Color = green. See PRESTIGE.

Kill

For cards: same as Discard (but implies violence). For Tokens: put the Token back into Reserves/pool.

King

The side of an Empire Square with a gold frame. Each Empire Square has a King on one side, and a Republic on the other.

Knight

This chess piece, in one of the three religious colors, represents armored cavalry. Knights are important in campaigns and Religious Wars.

Law

A constitution that recognizes rules of nature rather than humans as its authority. See PRESTIGE.

Levy

A Levy is a Ruling Class Token placed in a City as a result of a tax op (F4) or trade fair (G4). A Levy cannot be placed in a fully occupied City, and must match the Token type and color indicated on the Map.

Location

The top right (for Western) or top left (for Eastern) of each Tableau Card indicates the Empire or Map Card its Agents are placed into and where its Ops take effect. If the Agent is a Concession or Pirate, the Location is in a Border of the indicated Empire or Map Card. Player Boards and Queen cards have no Location.

• a. Religious Ops. The Location of a card used for the inquisitor op (F1) does not matter.

• b. “The East” Religious, Political & Military Ops. During your phase, you can consider a card (in any Tableau) with a Location listed as ‘The East’ to be in any one of the four Eastern Locations (Hungary, Ottoman, Byzantium, Mamluk). Thus each time a ‘The East’ card is used, e.g. for One-shots (E2.1), Agent placements (E2.2), or targets of political and military ops (these are purple and dark red in color, see Part F), the phasing player chooses one of the four Eastern Locations for it.

Example: A behead op in Mamluk can be used against a card with either the printed Location “Mamluk” or the printed Location “The East”.

• c. “The West”. Same as ‘The East’, except it operates in the six Western Locations (England, Portugal, France, Aragon, Holy Roman Empire, and Papal States) for Agents, politics, and military operations, and the Western markets for commerce.

• d. Concession & Pirate Tokens. These Tokens lie in the Border between two Empires and are considered to be located in both. Pirates are confined to Sea Borders.

• e. Bishops. The Location listed on a Bishop card indicates which tableau cards or Throne that a Bishop can start in.

Map (B2a)

The portion of the gameboard that shows 10 slots for the 10 Empires. These slots may contain Map Cards which modify the Map.

Map Card (B6)

There are 20 of these, two for each of the ten Empires: England, France, Holy Roman Empire (HRE), Hungary, and Byzantium to the north, and Portugal, Aragon, Papal States, Ottoman, and Mamluk to the south. Because Map Cards are double-sided, each Empire has 4 religious states: 3 Theocracies and 1 Medieval (i.e. non-theocratic) state. Map Cards are laid on the Map (e.g. after a Religious War or golden liberty (F6d) to indicate which state it becomes.

Market (C6a)

The Market has two rows: East and West. Each row has 6 Market Cards. The first card in each row is facedown, and all the rest are faceup. Obtain faceup cards by the purchase action (E1). The East or West trade fair action (E5) Discards the leftmost (facedown) Market Card.

Medieval (B2b)

A Map Card without a central religious icon, indicating a non-theocratic feudal state.

Old Maid (I2)

A Queen who you play without a coronation, instead storing her under your Player Board for the rest of the game. Any Prestige on Old Maids counts toward victory.

One-shot

This special one-time action optionally occurs as a result of the play of a card (E2.1) with the bomb icon. The one-shot must deploy the card’s Agents, which can function as attackers in a Battle per Part J (Civil Wars) or Part K (Religious Wars). However, the trade shift (H) and coronation (I) one-shots do not initiate Battles.

OP (F1 - F9) - Most Tableau cards offer Ops which are shown as a column of icons. As an action (E4), you can activate one Op from every card in your East or West Tableau. Each card in your Tableau can only be used for one Op per turn.

• a. Location of Ops are tied to the acting card’s Location, except for: vote (Location is always East or West), commerce (targets the East or West markets), and inquisitor (move any Bishop of the indicated religion, regardless of its Location).

• b. Victims. Ops normally depict the tokens (chess pieces) they can be used against. The target can be of any color, except for the corsair and inquisitor ops which can be used against only the religious color depicted.

Patron

A financial sponsor of the artistic Renaissance. See Patron victory (L2a) and PRESTIGE.

Pawn

This chess piece, in one of the four player colors, represents a Concession when in a Border and Serfs if on an Empire Square. A Pawn Agent is depicted as a gray Pawn, but is placed in a player color.

Player Board (B3)

Start with one Player Board in your Tableau, representing your merchant-banker. It has no Location and Bishops cannot move onto it.

Pirate (F7)

A wooden ship Token in a religious color that can only inhabit Sea Borders, see BORDER.

• a. Placement. A Pirate of the specified religion is placed as an Agent (E2.2c). It must be placed in a Sea Border of its card’s Location. This placement Kills any Concession or Pirate already occupying the Sea Border.

• b. In Play. Each Pirate takes 1 Florin from Trade Route profits (G3) and participates in Civil & Religious Wars (J1, J2, K1). They can never be Repressed, and are Killed either by the siege op (F8) or by Pirates entering their Sea Border, either during placement or by the corsair op.

• c. Movement. Move a Pirate by the corsair op (F7) of the corresponding religion.

• d. Arsenal/Dalmatians. If your Concessions cannot be Killed by Pirates due to an Ability, a Pirate placed on your Concession coexists with it, but cannot participate in trade fairs. However, you are still not allowed to place a new Concession into a Border containing a Pirate.

Prestige

There are six kinds of Prestige: Reformist, Catholic, Islamic, Law, Discovery, and Patron. These are depicted with a gold diamond in the banner of certain Tableau Cards, and are important for certain victories (L2a, L3, L5, L6).

Queen

A card with a coronation (I) One-shot and a list of suitors. Playing a Queen does not place Agents, but does create either a royal couple (I1) with one of her unwed suitors, or an Old Maid (I2). If the Queen is beheaded the King is unaffected. The Queen is Killed if the King is beheaded or a REGIME CHANGE occurs. The King-Queen pair is preserved if you claim them from the Throne (I1d) in a Regime Change, or return them to the Throne during sales (E3) or apostasy (K3).

Reformist

Religion that uses the bible/tanakh rather than the pope as its authority. Color = red. See PRESTIGE.

Regime Change

This occurs in an Empire during a coronation (I1d) or if you wage a Victorious vote (F6), campaign (F9g), Civil War, or Religious War against that Empire. Move the Empire Square to your Tableau on its King side, in the furthest East or West position as appropriate.

• a. Concession. If you cause a Regime Change, you always have the option to add one Pawn as a CONCESSION. Place this Concession in one of the Borders of the Empire (without Pirates). If the Border chosen is already occupied by a Pawn, you must pay 1 Florin to Repress it.

• b. Emancipation. If you cause a Regime Change in an Empire that has Repressed Tokens, even if they did not fight in a Battle, you may move any or all of the Repressed Tokens from the Empire Square onto its Map Location (into either empty Cities for Rooks or Knights, or into its empty Borders for Concessions).

• c. Golden Liberty. If your vote is successful in a Theocracy, you can add, subtract, or flip its Map Card to create a Medieval (non-theocratic) state (B2b).

• d. T okens & Queens. If the Empire Square comes from its THRONE, it comes with its Bishop (if any) and Queen (if any). If the Empire Square comes from an enemy Tableau, or if it is flipped in your own Tableau (see STRAWMAN), Bishops and Queens are Discarded and any Vassals returned to their Thrones. In all cases, Repressed Tokens that survived the Battle are retained or optionally Emancipated.

• e. Vassalage. If the Regime Change is caused by a Victorious campaign (F9g), the winning Empire becomes a Suzerain and the loser becomes its VASSAL. See previous bullet for the handling of Tokens or Queens on the Vassal.

• f. Suzerain that suffers a Regime Change loses its Vassals.

Religion

All Tokens except Pawns are in one of three colors indicating their religion: gold = Catholic, green = Islamic, red = Reformist (or Eastern Orthodox). Light blue Ops with a religious symbol are religious ops. (F1).

Religious War

Collective term for a crusade, reformation, or jihad (K1). These are identical except crusades are Catholic, reformations are Reformist, and jihads are Islamic.

Repress

This removes a Ruling Class or Concession Token from the Map, which becomes a Repressed Token that is set on the Empire Square, whether in a Throne or a Tableau.

• a. Cost. If you repress as a result of Agent placement (E2.2) or a Regime Change, the cost is 1 Florin paid to China.

• b. Gain. If you repress as the result of the repress op (F5), you gain 1 Florin from China.

• c. Free. If you repress as a result of the tax op (F4) or trade shift (H1), there is no cost or gain. If there are more Victorious survivors after a Battle than Cities or Borders to house them, repress them for no cost.

• d. S erfs. The Location of a card used to repress a Concession determines which Empire it enters as a Serf.

Repressed Token

A Pawn, Rook, or Knight stored on an Empire Square, including Vassals and Republics, that represents serfs, slaves, and disenfranchised nobility and guildsmen. Each one increases the cost of a vote (F6a) in an Empire by 1 Florin, and are Emancipated by the vote. Each can fight in certain Battles and may be Emancipated. If an Empire Square with Repressed Tokens moves, the Repressed Tokens remain on the tile.

Republic

The side of an Empire Square with a pillar frame. It is created by flipping a King in your own Tableau by a Strawman Regime Change (either vote (not on a Vassal), Civil War, or Religious War), and is important for a Renaissance Victory (L6). Easily Missed: A Republic can only be gained through a successful, self-inflicted attack (vote, Civil War, Religious War) on a King that is already in your Tableau. A Republic cannot be formed by coronations or campaigns.

Reserves

A player’s Florins and unused Pawns.

Rook

This chess piece represents a noble in his castle, in one of 3 religious colors.

Ruling Class

Any Knight or Rook Token on a City, regardless of color. Such Tokens can be placed as a result of a Levy, Agent, or Victorious Battle.

Saturation

If all Cities in an Empire are occupied by Ruling Class Tokens, then the Empire is saturated. Similarly, if a Border of an Empire is occupied by either a Concession or a Pirate, then that Border is saturated.

• a. Levies cannot be added to a saturated Empire (F4, G4b).

• b. Constantinople is considered unoccupied if it holds fewer than three Tokens.

Sea Border

See BORDER.

Serf

Any Pawn, regardless of color, stored as a Repressed Token on an Empire Square. Serfs must join as attackers in peasant revolts (J2).

Strawman Regime Change

involves attacking an Empire you already control. This is the only way to create a Republic. Strawman attacks (when a player attacks their own cards or investments to gain its “victim award” advantage), are a common theme in the Pax series. Other Strawman examples: taxing your own Concession (F4) or voting your own Empire (F6).

Supremacy (L3)

A Religion achieves supremacy if it has both (1) More Bishop Tokens of its color in play than both other religions combined, and (2) More Tokens (Knights, Rooks, and Pirates) of its color in play in its Theocracies than both other religions combined. Count only unrepressed Tokens whose color match their Theocracies.

Suzerain

The overlord of a Vassal, see VASSAL.

Tableau (C3)

A row of faceup cards under your control. Your East Tableau is to the right and your West Tableau to the left, separated by your Player Board.

Theocracy

Rule by priests or mullahs under a state religion, as indicated by a religious icon in the center of its Map slot or Map Card (B2b). A Theocracy can be either a King or a Republic. The absence of a religious icon indicates it is a non-theocracy in its Medieval state.

• a. Disestablishment. A Theocracy is changed by adding, subtracting, or flipping a Map Card as a result of a REGIME CHANGE during a Victorious Religious War. An Empire can lose its Theocracy under golden liberty (F6d).

• b. Holy Victory (L3). Ruling Class in a Theocracy and Pirates Adjacent to a Theocracy count towards religious Supremacy if they are the correct color. If a Pirate is Adjacent to two Theocracies of its color, it is counted twice.

Throne (B2d, C6b)

An Empire Square stored as a King in one of the 10 square slots on the gameboard. Thrones can also retain Repressed Tokens, Bishops, and/or Queens.

Tokens

Wooden chess and ship pieces on the Map and Tableau. Bishops = inquisitors, Knights = heavy cavalry, Rooks = nobles, and Pawns = merchants (or serfs/slaves if repressed).

Token Management

Each player has 10 Pawns, and each religion has 5 Bishops. There are 10 gold, 7 green, and 7 red Rooks. There are 10 gold, 7 green, and 7 red Knights. There are 6 gold, 4 green, and 3 red Pirates. Collectively these are called Tokens. If during card play or adding a Levy you wish to place a Token but none remains, you may remove the necessary Tokens from any Repressed Tokens, or (if this is not possible) from any position.

Trade Route (G2)

Two trade routes are active at any one time: the West (the white line) and the East (black line). Each one starts at a 9-pointed star called an Emporium, and ends at the arrowhead. Although there are three white Emporia (Trebizond, Spice Islands, and Red Sea), one is always covered by a busted disk (C1) so there will always be just one West trade route. Similarly, although there are three black Emporia (Tana, Novgorod, and Timbuktu), two of them are always busted at a given time leaving one unbusted.

Vassal

If a King conquers another Empire in a campaign (F9g), the losing Empire is called a Vassal. The Vassal Empire Square is placed adjacent and below that of its conqueror to indicate vassalage. A Vassal’s Prestige and Ops remain active. Vassals are always on their King side.

• a. Vassal-Suzerain Combination. The overlord of a Vassal is called a Suzerain. A Vassal and its Suzerain are treated as two separate cards during an Eastern/Western Ops action (E4) and Bishop movement/silencing (F1d,f).

• b. Tokens. If an Empire Square becomes a Vassal, it retains all Repressed Tokens. Any Queens or Bishops are retained if the Empire Square comes from its Throne, but are Discarded if it comes from an enemy Tableau.

• c. Targeting Vassals. Vassals can be targeted by Ops or One-shots, except you cannot initiate a vote (F6) against a Vassal.

• d. Liberation. Return a Vassal to its Throne (retaining its Queen & Tokens if any) if sold (E3) or if its Suzerain suffers a REGIME CHANGE.

Victorious

If the attackers have at least one survivor remaining after a Battle. See player aid.

Victory Squares (B7b)

One of 4 public tiles that start inactive (facedown) in the four slots provided on the gameboard. If you buy a Comet, you choose one inactive victory square to activate by flipping it faceup. This flipping represents an old era being replaced by a modern one:

• a. The Medieval Age replaced by Renaissance.

• b. The Galley Age replaced by globalization.

• c. East-West Schism replaced by holy victory.

• d. Age of Feudalism replaced by imperialism.

West

Refers to the 6 western Empires in the game, and their cards, Trade Routes, and Market Rows. They generally reflect Western philosophy and cultural values.

Notes

52. HALLEY’S COMET of 1456 was considered an ill omen throughout the world. The 1456 papal bull of Pope Callixtus III called for public prayer for the success of the crusade against the Ottomans besieging Belgrade. According to a 1475 posthumous biography, this measure was taken so that the “anger of God”, as manifested by the “maned and fiery comet”, “might be entirely diverted against the Turks, the foes of the Christian name”. Perhaps this was a just-so story to explain why the siege was lifted a few weeks after the comet vanished. In any case, the papal “excommunication” was an embellishment by Laplace, the mathematician who was rumored to have told Napoleon “I have no need of that hypothesis” (speaking about God). Carl Sagan also perpetrated the excommunication myth.

53. ALBERTI CIPHER DISK was invented by the father of modern cryptography: Leon Battista Alberti. As described in his treatise De Cifris of 1467, this device embodies the first example of polyalphabetic substitution with mixed alphabets and variable period, and is made up of two concentric disks, attached by a common pin, which can rotate one with respect to the other.

54. EUROPEAN KINGS. How did Europeans escape crippling exploitation of their own rulers? How was risk reduced and the depressants on investments lifted? Compared to Eastern sultans and emperors, the kings of the relatively small European states were never as absolute as they wished. The rising power of the market was a check upon them, and, for the sake of regular taxation, they themselves fostered market conditions. This abridged the worst arbitrariness of kings, and it was in their interest to check it among their nobles. —Eric Jones, The European Miracle, 2008.

55. THE NATION-STATE is nowadays the unit of affairs. It is a purely European form which has been exported to parts of the world that heretofore had only known tribalism or medievalism. —Eric Jones, The European Miracle, 2008.

56. ONLY 3 RELIGIONS? Although the early game prototypes had 4 religions, unfortunately all Christians having issues with Papal Supremacy have been shoehorned into “Reformist”, interpreting “Reformation” as any rejection of centralized religious authority. This can be extended to Islam as well. From 1480 to 1514 the Turcomen tribes in Anatolia rebelled against central Ottoman control and taxation, which led them to embrace a militant form of Shi’ism which could be interpreted as an “Islamic Reformation”. —R. Hakan Kirkoglu, Uprisings, Dissents, and Messianic Prophecies during the Reign of Suleyman I, 2012.

57. REPUBLIC VS. KINGDOM. In the court of the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, humanist Lippo Brandolini compared a Republic to a Kingdom. In a Republic, rule is by constitutional Law rather than the judgment of a person or persons, whether tyrants or electorate. The basis of the Law is the nature of man rather than the divine right of kings. The judicial, police, defense, and electoral functions were in the hands of the guilds (i.e. the business class). The arts, sciences, education, and the economy flourish under the rule of Law. The Renaissance, including its banks and autonomous bankers, began in the Republic of Florence, and spread to other Republics.

58. THE RENAISSANCE REPUBLICS were not democracies, although the two are frequently confused. A democracy is an unlimited majority rule, a social system in which one’s work, property, and life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of the majority at any moment for any purpose. In a republic, the majority has no say over the basic principles of governance, which are instead based upon discoveries of the nature of man as documented in a constitution. Democracies are Platonic, and republics Aristotelian. —Ayn Rand, 1976.

59. THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE is an indispensable prerequisite for freedom. One of the artists for this game is a friend who faces death in her nation of birth (Iran) because she has become an atheist. Nevertheless, a theocracy has an advantage over democracies or autocracies where the rule of law is inconsistent or arbitrary, which is even more debilitating for individuals and their transactions than a complete (but predictable) tyranny.

60. CHESS. In the 1470’s, a new style of chess swept Europe, in which the queen became the most powerful piece on the board. This game’s chess piece motif reflects medieval units that were made obsolete by the Renaissance. Kings and queens became figureheads in proper republics. Pawns (serfs) became merchants in a new business class, which today includes all employers, employees, and freelancers. Bishops are still with us, but have lost their political clout in the separation of church and state. Knights lost their “mafioso” role of demanding protection money from the cities, and became mercenaries and police. The castles of the landowning aristocracy (rooks) were helpless before Renaissance artillery. Since then, land has become less and less valuable compared to the value of ideas, and landowners produce less wealth than entrepreneurs.

61. POST-ROMAN DARK AGES. When the Roman Republic was overthrown by Roman Caesars, Europe fell into deurbanization, depopulation, and deep economic retrogression. Markets and coinage all but disappeared as pottery, bricks, and glassware ceased to be mass produced. Literacy and books also plummeted. Market farming was replaced by subsistence farming as roads fell into disrepair.

62. THE GALLEYS of the Mediterranean were coastal boats unable to safely leave sight of land. An unsung Basque fisherman modified his Atlantic boat with lateen sails for windward sailing, and other modifications suitable for the open ocean. The carrack was one of the greatest inventions of all time, enabling global trade empires and cheap Oriental imports.

63. EAST-WEST SCHISM. By age 21, Mehmed the Conqueror had breached the walls of Constantinople, the seat of the Byzantine Church. Instead of installing a Muslim Theocracy, the sultan accommodated the Orthodox Church. Exploiting the festering schism between the Greek and Roman Christians, he appointed anti-Roman Patriarchs and persecuted anyone promoting a Christian reunification. Thus he prevented an unified Christian backlash.

64. AGE OF FEUDALISM. Both the European feudal system and the Ottoman timar system granted a warrior noble class usage of their fiefs and serfs, in exchange for military service. The Renaissance would replace these petty warlords with the first nationstates.

Pax Renaissance 2nd Edition

Art Nr. SMG37-2, EAN: 653341042361, www.https://ionsmg.com/

Design: Phil and Matt Eklund

Development: Alex Serban

Cover Art: Josefin Strand

Artists: Josefin Strand & My Olausson

Production: Besime Uyanik & Pål Keller Carlquist

Rules: Kyrill Melai, Nikolaj Brucker, Ken Sinn, Josh Rea, Roel van der Hoorn, Van Willis.

Playtesters: Chris Peters, Andy Denison, Raimund Ruppel, Jenny Bradbury, Mikko

Heikela, Jon Manker, Ingeborg Asplund, Phirax, Alex Serban, Kevin Thatcher.

Genoa Playtesters: Stefano Tiné, Mauro Cella, Fabio Santamaria, Diego D’Arrigo.

Tabletop Simulator: Alex Serban, Dom Rougier, Sam Williams.

Vassal Module: Stefano Tiné.

Special Thanks: Liz’bet Campbell, who introduced the Renaissance to me.