Bruges Board Game How to Play and Review

Bruges is a City building, hand management game.

Title: Bruges.

Year Published: 2013

Designer: Stefan Feld

Publisher: Z-Man Games

Players: 2-4

Game Time: ~60 Mins

Set-up Time: >5 Mins

Ages: 10+

Theme: Renaissance

Mechanic: Hand Management

How to win: Have the most points

Game Description

In Bruges, players assume the role of merchants who must maintain their relationships with those in power in the city while competing against one another for influence, power and status. Dramatic events cast their shadows over the city, with players needing to worry about threats to their prosperity from more than just their opponents…

Bruges Set Up

For a fairly large game, the set-up is simple.

Put the statue tokens on the statue in order with the 7 on top.

Put the cards into 5 piles of 33, shuffle one pile per player together half it for the two draw piles and put it in the little card dispenser.

Players put their colour markers on their Guard House and their pawns in the Town Hall and the starting space on the point tracker. They also start with 5 Guilders, one of each colour worker and 3 face-down majority markers.

Decide the start player

Bruges Game Play

Gameplay is taken over 4 phases.

Phase 1 – Draw

You draw cards from either stack one at a time until you have 5 cards in your hand. Each player does this in clockwise order. You’re not allowed to look at the cards until you have completed your draw phase.

If one of the piles ever runs out, you add in the spare stack of cards. If another one runs out just split the remaining pile in half so there are always two piles available.

Phase 2 – Roll the Dice

Roll the dice and place dice in ascending order on their spaces on the board and hold your breath!

For each 5&6 rolled give each player a threat marker of that colour then, if you have three of a single colour you get a penalty and return the tokens. These are generally bad…

Red – Fire –Burn down one of your houses or use the water from the Canal to put out the fire and lose a canal piece. A person in a destroyed house is returned to your hand safe.
Blue – Flood – Wash away all of your workers back to the supply.
Purple – Intrigue – Lose 3 points. Thankfully you can’t go below 0 points and you start on 5 so you’re good.
Brown – Plague – Lose a person in one of your houses to the plague.
Yellow – Raid – All your money is stolen! Return it to the bank.

After this, if the players haven’t lost their mind, they may pay the sum of each 1&2 on the dice to move up 1 step on the Reputation track.

This is done in turn order, can only be done once and can’t be done if there are no 1&2s available. No freebies!

Phase 3 – Play Cards and Perform Actions

Now the fun starts…

Each player plays one card in hand for one action in turn order until everyone has played 4 cards. On the right side of each card, there are 5 actions you can do…

1 – Take 2 workers of that colour

Great way to get workers should you need them in that colour.

2 – Take Guilders

Equal to the number of pips on the dice matching that colour. Hoping there were no 5’s and 6’s earlier. You want them now don’t you?! 🙂

3 -Remove a threat marker

If you did get some threat tokens, you can discard a card to remove a threat marker of the colour of the card you discarded. You also get a point so good news.

4 – Build a canal

Starting from your guard house and building outwards. You can choose either side as long as the discarded card matches the colour of the space you are building on and you pay the cost in Guilders on that space.

Also, if you build out to the 3-point space, you get 3 points, yay! BUT! if you build one canal all the way to the end you get the topmost statue tile which is worth 7 points if you’re there first!

5 – Build a house

Paying worker of the colour of the house you are building and that place that card face down in front of you. And you thought the houses on the back of the cards were just artwork… 🙂

6 -Add Person to House

Once you have houses you can play the cards in your hand as the actual people printed on them, finally. Each house hosts one guest and you simply pay the cost and put them in a house.

These guys have either one-shot or one-per-round abilities which help you during the game, or some just give you end-game scoring.

Phase 4 – Verify Majorities

If a player has a clear majority in Reputation, People (in houses) or Canals they flip their token face up and they will have those points at the end of the game, even if they get overtaken eventually. Once you have it, you keep it.

Players refresh used people in houses and the start player banner is passed on and a new round begins with drawing cards and rolling dice.

Bruges Game End

If the deck ever runs out of cards that trigger the final round of the game.

Score for people in houses and extra if they score extra points, each house, majority markers, canals and reputation.

Plenty of ways to get points with the tiebreaker being the player with the most Guilders.

Bruges Round-Up

I like this kind of medium-weight game with lots of choices, paths to victory and quick player turns.

Yes, it is random and while I don’t mind  90% of the time there is always that game when you draw a ‘Score points for every Musician you have only to not see one for the entire game. Hard to develop a strategy but the winners of this game know how to diversify and manage those situations.

Also, I find satisfaction in allowing those ‘useless’ people to succumb to a plague or a fire. Mwah ha ha!

I also like racing for the majorities, especially the canal one where you’re also racing for the Statue tiles and extra points.

On the ‘Point Salad’ thing. That doesn’t exist, it’s a myth in the mind of the Feld game. Other games give you points for doing a wide variety of things that aren’t made by Feld and they don’t get this fairly derogatory label “It’s a point salad” they say, so what, it’s fun! 🙂

Rating

A very fun tactical game, a little random but not too heavy and not too long.

I give it 6/10

Bruges Initial Review May 2014

Building Bruges in Belgium, Card play and gaming done right.

So yeah, I like this one.

Bruges Summary

This game is so simple, yet complex and plays very quickly. We’ve had a 4 player game with 3 new players playing in 45 minutes.

There are lots of ways to score yet nothing seems obviously better than anything else.

Building canals are expensive and tricky. You need to have the right colour card to discard and enough money to pay the ever-increasing costs. But you’re rewarded with 3 points at the 3 spot and when you build to space 5 on one of your canals you get a statue. These start at 7 points and go down to 2 so the quicker you build one, the more you’ll get at the end. It becomes a bit of a race to get the 7-point statue but it doesn’t give you the game.

The people are cool too. The effects are nice. Some have a 1 off affect and others have an activated ability that costs workers to use. Some are nasty and steal coins from other players or make them gain those threat tokens.

It’s a very quick, nice game that’s very easy to teach, plays smoothly yet requires a lot of thought.

I’m waiting for the expansion to come out with the 5th player board and an effect that occurs when 3’s and 4’s are rolled on the dice.

I really enjoy playing this game.

Jesta ThaRogue