Each player chooses a color. Take the player board, the figures, the cubes, the counters, and the overseer tokens in your color. You also take a scroll board, which fits beside your player board as shown below.

Keep 3 of your figures near your board for now. You will send them to Messina on your first turn. Put 2 of your figures on the table in the token supply. You may be able to claim them during play.

Place your 3 cubes at the bottom of the three tracks on your scroll board, as shown.

In round I, 1 boat arrives:

• Draw the top docking tile from its stack to determine which dock gets the boat.
• Place the top boat tile in one of the dock’s spaces, face up.
• Give that boat tile 1 plague cube.

In this case, a plague cube goes on each hex with a left-facing rat. Each orange hex gets 1 nun, each white hex gets 1 craftsman, and each blue hex gets 1 aristocrat. Red hexes get no citizens.

Your efforts to fight the plague may give you actions from the popularity register which you can use any time during step 4.

Also at any time during step 4, you may pay to advance on the city register or the church register. You may advance multiple times in one turn, if you wish. This may give you more actions to use during step 4.

In round I: Simply take your lieutenant figure from your estate and stand it on a hex that does not yet have a figure on it. Your figure marks the hex where you will work this turn, and it blocks everyone (including you) from choosing that hex on later turns this round.

In Rounds II–VI: You already have lieutenants in Messina, on the hexes they occupied in the previous round. They begin the new round lying down to show they have not been used and are not blocking that hex.

When choosing a hex for a lying-down figure, you can choose the same hex or an adjacent hex for free. But to choose a hex farther away, you must pay 1 coin for each hex beyond the first. For example, moving 4 hexes away would cost 3 coins.

Red chooses a hex with a nun. The hex has no plague cube, so when Red rescues the nun, she must place the nun in an empty square in the gray sector of her estate. The chosen square will be important later, but it does nothing at this time.

By contrast, if there is a plague cube on the hex, then the nun cannot go to the gray sector and Red would have to put the nun in space I of an empty quarantine cabin.

Note: A citizen from a plagued neighborhood must go to quarantine even if you eliminate the plague in the next step of your turn.

In later rounds, the cost to remove a plague cube is 2 fire tokens, as shown on the round info table. In this case, for each plague cube removed, score 2 points.

For each plague cube you removed, advance 1 space on the popularity register. If this leads to one or more actions (see here) you may resolve them before, after, or during your hex action.

Every hex has an action illustrated in the upper left corner. You perform that action as the last step of your turn.

Most hexes can be repopulated with citizens from your estate. If you choose to repopulate the hex, you do this instead of the illustrated action.

After taking the tile, if you now have an even number of boats, you may advance one of your overseers. Overseers are explained here.

Also during this step, you may buy advances on the city and church registers and use any register actions you have earned, in any order, as usual.

The three types of goods are precious stones, spices and silk.

To perform these actions, simply take the indicated tokens. There is no limit to the number of tokens players may have.

Coins come in three denominations. Players can make change as needed at any time.

A slash indicates that you choose between two options. In this case, the options are Build or gain a major fire token.

This action allows you to advance one space on either the city register or the church register. You can also pay to advance on these registers at any time during the Action step of your turn, but the actions depicted here allow you to advance for free. The registers are explained in detail here.

Your scroll board has 3 tracks, each rewarding a different aspect of play. When you take this action, choose one of those tracks and move your marker up one space. Your scroll board will be important during final scoring, so it is explained in detail here.

Your estate is managed by 3 overseers – the 3 round tokens that start in the middle of the board. When you have an opportunity to advance an overseer, you may be able to gain benefits from some of the citizens on your estate. Each of the actions allows you to advance the matching overseer 1 space along its path.

This action allows you to advance 1 overseer of your choice.

When you advance an overseer with this action, you have the option to first skip over one step in the path.

Certain advances on the church register allow you to upgrade an overseer. Flip the chosen overseer token over to its upgraded side. From now on, it can bring you an extra activation in its region when it advances. However, you still cannot activate the same citizen twice during one advance.

If both adjacent squares have citizens, the upgraded overseer activates them both. (But if only one has a citizen, you activate only that one.)

Activate up to 2 citizens in this region. If there is only one citizen, you can only activate that one.

Activate up to 2 citizens in the upgraded overseer’s matching adjacent region and 1 citizen in the other adjacent region. If there are fewer citizens in those regions, you can activate only the citizens available.

Activate up to 3 citizens, anywhere in the three sectors of your estate, just as a nonupgraded overseer does.

Some workshops require an upgraded citizen. (See here.) Others produce more if they are worked by an upgraded citizen.

Some neighborhoods require upgraded citizens when you Repopulate them. (See here.)

This action gives you an opportunity to improve your estate (which will pay off at the end of the round). Alternatively, you can use it to build a wagon to help you repopulate Messina. The Build action has 3 options:

Quarantine cabin improvements are available on the scoreboard. Choose one of those available, then turn up the next tile to make it available for later Build actions.

Pay the cost by returning the indicated tokens to the bank. (If you can’t pay the cost, you can’t take that improvement.) Choose one of your quarantine cabins that has no improvement and place the tile on it. A citizen in that cabin will now be able to do work for you at the end of the round. (See here.)

Choose an available workshop from the scoreboard and turn up the tile below it.

Pay the cost and place the workshop in one of the slots alongside your board. (If you somehow manage to get more than 6 workshops, just keep them all in roughly the same place.) You may move a citizen of the appropriate type from its sector to the empty square of the workshop at any time. Sometimes you will do this immediately, but it is legal to wait until Production or until you need to make room in the sector for a rescued citizen.

(A citizen in quarantine cannot be moved to a workshop, nor can a citizen from another workshop.)

Each workshop will accept only one class of citizen. If the workshop requires an upgraded citizen, you may put a nonupgraded citizen there, but the workshop gives you no rewards until the citizen is upgraded.

This cabin gives an immediate reward when it has an upgraded aristocrat. If you give it a nonupgraded aristocrat, it will give you the reward when the aristocrat is upgraded.

Early-Game Workshops: At the beginning of the game, the workshops you can build are the type that will produce at the end of every round. (See here.)

This workshop gives you nothing immediately, but it will give you 1 major fire token and 1 coin at the end of every round as long as it has an upgraded nun.

Late-Game Workshops: When you set up for round V, the workshops on the scoreboard are replaced with a new set. These can be constructed according to the same rules. However, when the citizen is placed in the workshop, you gain the indicated rewards immediately. This reward is received only once – a late-game workshop will not produce at the end of the round.

Flip the tile face down (but leave the citizen on top) to show its reward has been used.

This workshop gives you a onetime reward of 1 fire token and 3 points. You get the reward as soon as it has an upgraded or nonupgraded nun.

Choose an available wagon from the scoreboard. In a 2-player game, only one is available. Two are available in games with 3 or 4 players.

Repopulating this neighborhood costs 1 lumber. It requires 2 aristocrats.

Upgraded citizens can repopulate neighborhoods where regular citizens are depicted. But if an upgraded citizen is depicted, an upgraded citizen is required.

Repopulating this neighborhood costs 1 coin. It requires 1 nun – upgraded or not. It also requires 1 upgraded craftsman. (A regular craftsman is not sufficient.)

Repopulating this neighborhood costs 2 coins. It requires 2 nuns, and it requires you to give up one lieutenant you have not used this round.

When you repopulate a neighborhood, cover the repopulation requirements with one of your repopulation tiles. For the remainder of the game, no one can take the Repopulate action there. Your reputation is now tied to this neighborhood, and what happens there will reflect well or poorly on you:

• Whenever that hex is chosen by any player’s lieutenant (including yours), you immediately score 2 points (as depicted on the repopulation tile).
• Whenever that hex gets a disease cube, you gain 1 rat.

Three registers in the center of the scoreboard measure your reputation with the people, the city, and the church.

Your position on these registers determines play order (see here) and at the end of the game, it may give you points (see here). Advancing on a register can often give you immediate benefits as well.

The only way to advance on the popularity register is to fight plague, as explained here.

At any time during the Action step of your turn, you can pay to advance on the city register or church register. You may advance in this way as often as you like. The cost is one coin per lieutenant. Count the 3 lieutenants you start with plus any you acquired during play, including even lieutenants you returned to the box when you sent them to repopulate Messina.

For simplicity reasons, the Yucata.de implementation doesn't allow to advance this way at really any time during the Action step. For example this is not possible while handling a field benefit like e.g. advancing an overseer. This however does not restrict the advancement on the registers. It is still possible to advance at any meaningful time during the Action step.

Certain actions may lead to a free advance on the city register or the church register. You pay nothing for these.

The popularity register offers actions similar to those you might get from city hexes. These can be used any time during the Action step of the turn in which you earned them.

The city register is the only way to get more of your lieutenants in play. When you advance to a space with a figure, take one of yours from the token supply and lay it beside your board. You may send it to Messina on a later turn this round, after all your lieutenants already in Messina have been used.

When you advance to this space in the city register, you may take any action depicted on any hex in Messina, even if the hex is blocked by a player’s figure (including yours). This includes harbor hexes, but not docks.

The church register can let you upgrade or advance your overseers on your estate, as explained here. This particular space allows you to choose one overseer, upgrade it if it is not already upgraded, and then advance it.

When you advance to a space like this on the church register, you may activate the indicated number of citizens on your estate. (This is like the action you get for your overseer, as described here.)

If you get an advance on a register during production, move your counter immediately. However, if this advance leads to an action, you do not take the action until the Action step of your next turn. (And if this happens at the end of the final round, you will not take the action at all.)

The craftsman in the first cabin will produce 1 fire token and 1 point. The middle cabin has no citizen and will not produce. The aristocrat in the third cabin cannot produce because the cabin is not improved.

Because this nun is upgraded, she produces 2 fire tokens instead of 1. She will also produce 1 point.

This citizen produces 1 point because he is upgraded. The workshop's rewards were gained when it was built – it will not produce them now.

Advance the round counter to the next round.

Lay all lieutenant figures in Messina flat on their hexes to show that they have not been used yet in the new round.

Remove citizen tokens from hexes that have plague cubes.

Check the round info table to see which register has priority this round. Rearrange the counters on the play-order indicator according to who is ahead on that register. If players are tied, the one ahead is the one who moved to that space most recently. (Their counter should be on top.)

In this round, priority is determined by who is ahead on the scoring track.

Draw a docking tile from the stack and place a boat tile in one of the spaces at the indicated dock. Give the boat 1 plague cube.

If the round info table indicates two boats arrive, place a second boat (with a plague cube) at that same dock.

Add a new hex tile to Messina. The city has six spaces for new hexes. These spaces are illustrated here.

To find the correct space to fill, start at the harbor hex chosen in step V and go around the perimeter clockwise until you come to a space that has not been filled yet. Add the new hex tile there.

If it is now the beginning of round V, remove all workshop tiles from the scoreboard. Replace them with the late-game workshop tiles, which are set up in the same way.

Rotate the window of the population wheel one space clockwise. Then add plague cubes, as explained here.

In rounds marked with this icon, rotate the wheel one more space and add plague cubes again.

Add citizen tokens as explained here. You are now ready to play the next round. Play in the order shown on the play-order indicator.

By round VI, the plague has begun to abate. The neighborhoods of Messina get no new plague cubes and no new citizens in need of rescue. However, plague cubes continue to arrive on boats.

During the game, players may have acquired rat tokens. These represent plague events that damage players’ reputations. Now it is time to pay the penalty.

After taking penalties for your rat tokens, evaluate your final position on each register. If there are points shown on your current space, score those points at this time.

On the popularity register, players also get points for being farther ahead. In a two-player game, the first player gets 5 points. In a three- or four-player game, the first player gets 10, second gets 7, third gets 3. Break ties in favor of the player with more fire tokens. For this tiebreaker only, count a major fire token as 2 fire tokens.

Score the points shown on each hex that you repopulated. (Do not score the 2 points shown on your repopulation tile – you scored those points whenever a lieutenant visited the repopulated neighborhood.)

During play, you had the opportunity to take scroll actions that advanced your markers on your scroll board. Now you will score points for three aspects of your reputation. Your markers show how much each aspect is worth. An example is here.

Add up your remaining coins, fire tokens, major fire tokens, and lumber tokens. Divide by 3 and round down. Score that many points.

Assign player colors randomly. Each player takes the board in that color and uses the b side. (Quarantine cabins will be on the right.) Mix up the scroll boards and assign them randomly. Each player uses the b side.

Note: It is also possible to use the a player boards with b scroll boards, or vice versa, but these variants have not been playtested.

Each sector has one square that offers a generous reward that can be used only once per game. These squares are marked by the symbol in the corner.

When you activate a citizen in such a square, mark it with a solo game tile to remind you that you cannot use it again. (In solo games, mark it with a spare token.) The citizen remains there even though it cannot be activated again. However, the citizen can be sent to a workshop or to repopulate Messina, as usual.

In addition to the usual ways to score points, players compete to see who can repopulate the most neighborhoods. The player with the most gets 10 points, second most 7, third most 3. A player who repopulated no neighborhoods gets no points. Break ties in favor of the player whose neighborhoods are worth more points (in step 2 of final scoring). If players are still tied, divide the points for all tied places evenly among them.

This tile can be used even if you are not playing the advanced variant. It modifies the round info table, altering which register has priority in each round.

Choose colors for yourself and the opponent. Set up a 2-player game. The opponent will not use the city and church registers, so place only your counters on those two registers.

Shuffle the deck of opposing-player moves and keep it nearby.

Note: If you are using the b side of your player board, you will need some spare tokens to mark single-use squares on your estate.

Scoring of repopulated hexes in solo game differs from the base game. If a player repopulates two hexes, he scores 3 points. For repopulating 3 hexes, he scores 7 points and if he manages to repopulate 4 hexes, he scores 10 points.

Adding Hex Example: The docking tile adds a new boat at the lower left dock. The new hex goes in closest empty space clockwise.