Notre Dame - A Teaching Guide
Identification:
Province Board – Each player has their own board, laid out depending on number of players. Notre Dame – The province boards are placed against Notre Dame middle piece. Buildings – These are the separate sections within your province. Described later. Cubes – Called ‘Influence Cubes’. Each player starts with 4 of his chosen color. The rest go in ‘Supply’. Trusted Friend – The piece that looks like a guy wearing a hat. Each player has one of his own color. Coins – Each player starts with 3. The rest stay in ‘Supply’. Coaches – Placed in the center of each player’s province (also called a ‘Market’). Black Cube – This is a rat. Each player places one on the ‘0’ in their ‘Plague Track’ (the swamp area). Messages – 8 sided colored pieces, placed face-up on markets located on edges of each province. Prestige Points – 6 sided tan pieces. These are kept in ‘Supply’ until rewarded later in game. Action Cards (colored backs) – Each player will start with 9 shuffled cards of his own color. Character Cards (Gray and Brown on back) – Put these aside for now, described later. Hunchback Figure – This is only used to identify whose turn it is. At this time, the board should be ready to go – rat on the plague track, messages placed face-up on the market spots of each province and coach in the center of each player’s province (each province will have 4 of the same colored messages around the province border, one for each market there). Each player will have 4 influence cubes (called just ‘cubes’ from this point on), 3 coins, 9 Action Cards of their own color and one Trusted Friend. The Character Cards will be laid out also, and these will be described later. During the game – players will be placing cubes onto different buildings in the province. Doing so will result in a reward granted from that building.
Description of Buildings:
Bank (light purple background, has coins in image): A cube here will get you a coin from the supply. If there are already other cubes here, you get the amount of coins equal to the total amount of cubes. Residence (light orange background, has prestige points in image) – A cube here will get you a prestige point from the supply. If there are other cubes here already, you get the amount of points equal to the total amount of cubes. School (yellow background, has cubes in image) – A cube here will let you take a cube from supply (not to be confused with the cubes in your possession). If cubes are on this building already, take cubes from supply equal to total amount of cubes on building. Coach House (dark orange background has coaches in the image) – A cube here will allow you to move your coach to different markets. Each cube in building equals how far coach travels. More details later. Hospital (light blue background, has rats in image) – A cube here moves your rat back one step on the plague track. It also takes care of one rat at end of round. More details later. Park (green background, also has a rat in image) – A cube here moves your rat back one step on the plague track. You can get bonus prestige points for every 2 cubes in this building. More details later. Hotel – (grayish brown background, cube, coin, rat on image) – A cube here allows you to take a cube, or a coin from the supply, or move the rat back one spot. If you have a total of 4 cubes on this building, you may take 2 cubes, or 2 coins, or move back rat 2 spots… ONLY if you have 4 cubes here.
Action Cards:
Of the 9 cards each player has (each player will have 9 cards with their color on the back), 7 of them will match the buildings just described above. There are 2 more to describe here. Trusted Friend (light brown background, trusted friend figure in image) – Allows you to place your trusted friend figure into a building of your choice (kind of like a wild-card). It acts just like a cube placed in the building. He stays on that building until you use the Trusted Friend card to move him later. Notre Dame (light brown background, coins & cube in image) – Allows you to place a cube in the Notre Dame Cathedral, located in the center of the board (all provinces touching it). When you place a cube in Notre Dame, you MUST donate coins to the church. If you donate 1 coin, you get 1 Prestige Point… if you donate 2 coins, you get 3 Prestige Points… if you donate 3 coins, you get 6 Prestige Points. The donated coin goes into the supply… not placed on the cathedral. More details on Notre Dame later. If you can’t donate a coin, you can’t place a cube in Notre Dame
Playing Action Cards:
At the beginning of a turn, each player will pick up 3 cards of their own color (these are pulled from his shuffled pile of 9, upside down cards… player DOES NOT see the face of the cards before selecting), and now looks at the faces of these 3 cards. Of these 3 cards, you will be keeping 1 card and getting rid of 2. You will then be passing cards to the person on your left – the first time, you pass those 2 unwanted cards. You will then get 2 new cards from the person on your right (these are that player’s discarded cards). You look at your 2 new cards and may keep 1 of them to add to your hand. The card you do not keep gets passed to the person on the left, and you will get a card from the person on your right. Each player will now have 3 cards in their hand; each one will have a different color on the back. You will now be playing your cards – of the 3 cards in your hand, you will be playing ONLY 2… one of the cards is not used at all. Beginning with the starting player (the one that has the hunchback figure), that player chooses one of his 3 cards to play… and does so by laying it down for everyone to see. He then takes one of his cubes (not from the general supply, but the ones he has in front of him… you start with 4 cubes) and places it on the building that is indicated by the card just laid down… he then gets the action of that building, whatever it may be. Then the next player (to his left) lays his card down and so on until everyone has laid one card. You then lay your 2nd card down, and put your cube in the corresponding building… which, like before, you do the action of that building. The 3rd card in your hand is not played – in fact, it is good to hide it from other players… the easiest way to do this is when laying down your 2nd card, put it on top of your 3rd card and then lay them both down, keeping the 3rd card hidden. After everyone has laid down their 2nd card and completed their actions, the now laid down/played cards may be gathered up into a discard pile.
Using the Character Cards:
The character cards are the ones with brown or gray backs on them, and a person on the face of each one. These cards are played AFTER a round of laying action cards (a round is where each person has laid 2 actions cards). There are 6 brown-back cards, and 9 gray back cards – the gray cards have the letters A, B and C on the back (3 A’s, 3 B’s, 3 C’s). You will be laying out 3 cards each round – these are put to the side of the board where everyone can see them. Of the 3 cards you lay out, 2 will be brown-backed and 1 will be gray-backed. For the 1st 3 rounds, you randomly lay one of the gray-back cards down that have the letter ‘A’… the 2nd 3 rounds, lay one gray-back card that has the letter ‘B’ and choose from the gray-back cards with the letter ‘C’ during the last 3 rounds. There are 6 brown-back cards – you lay out 2 each round along with the 1 gray-back… at the end of 3 rounds, you shuffle the 6 brown-back cards and re-use them in the future rounds. At the end of each round, each player has the opportunity to bribe one of the 3 characters shown on the character cards. A bribe costs only one coin – a player CAN NOT bribe a character if he/she has no coins left. Beginning with the start person (the one who has the hunchback), he gives a coin back into the supply and announces which character he will be bribing… and then does the action the chosen character indicates.
RATS!:
Wonder why you have a rat on a plague track? It is time to worry about them. If you will notice, on the 3 character cards showing – at the bottom of each, you will most likely see some images of rats… from none to 3 rats on each one. You total up the rats showing, and that total indicates how many rats each player has to worry about in their province. After everyone has bribed a character, you then have to go to each player and move the rat on the plague track one space for every rat (from the total on the 3 character cards). Don’t worry – there are ways to help keep the rats in check. If the player has a cube in their hospital building, they move the rat one spot less on the track… you get one spot less for each cube in your hospital. If you have more cubes in your hospital than rats showing on the character cards, you can actually move your rat backwards accordingly. Common mistake: Cubes in the Park DO NOT have any influence on the rats at this point. If your rat goes PAST the number 9 on the plague track, that indicates a plague has hit your once beautiful province. Not good. Here is what happens: The rat stays on the number 9, the player loses 2 prestige points, and MUST remove 1 cube from his province – the cube is removed from the building that has the most cubes on it. If you have buildings that have an equal amount for the most cubes, the player can choose which building forfeits a cube.
End of the Round:
After the rats have been moved, the round ends – you remove the 3 character cards, replacing them with 3 new cards (again, 2 brown-backs and 1 gray-back). Each player then takes 3 new action cards from his shuffled stack (which should now have 6 cards left). The Hunchback is given to the next person, making him/her the starting player. The next round starts… repeating the steps described for the 1st round (passing cards, laying cards, bribing characters, moving the rat).
End of 3 Rounds:
You will have gone through your 9 action cards – the discarded action cards used in the last 3 rounds will need to be separated and returned to each player who will once again have 9 action cards of their own color, which they will shuffle in order to use in the next 3 rounds. At the end of round 3, something very important happens – Notre Dame gives back some prestige points to players that have at least one cube in Notre Dame. The Notre Dame piece will show how many prestige points are available (it is different depending on the number of players). If only one player has a cube in Notre Dame, that player gets all the points available – if more than one player has cubes there, they must split the amount available… rounding down if there isn’t an even split (ex: 3 players splitting 10 points, each player gets 3 points). If one player has 2 cubes there, and another player has 1 cube – the points are split accordingly (ex: If Notre Dame is giving out 10 prestige points, player one gets 6 points, player two gets 3 points). After Notre Dame gives prestige points to the players, ALL the cubes in Notre Dame go back into the supply… they are NOT given back to the player, he loses that cube. When starting the next round, you will be using the gray-back character cards with the letter ‘B’ on them (letter ‘C’ in the last 3 rounds). If you haven’t guessed, since there are 9 gray-back character cards… you will be using them all just once throughout the game.
End of Game:
You will go through 3 sets of 3 rounds each, at which time the game ends. Each 3 rounds are played the same. At game end, each player adds up their Prestige Points – the winner has the highest score. If there is a tie, the player with the most coins wins… if still a tie, it is broken by player with the most cubes.
Additional Information:
Park Bonus – When a player has at least 2 cubes in the park, he gets a 1 prestige point bonus ANYTIME prestige points are awarded (with 4 cubes, he gets a 2 point bonus, and with 6 cubes he gets a 3 point bonus). This means if a player gets prestige points from a character card, from Notre Dame, from the Residence building or when the coach moves, he gets the bonus added to the amount of prestige points he received. Coach Movement – When a player puts a cube in the Coach House, he may move his coach. The coach begins in the middle of the player’s province, also known as a market. Around the edge of each province, there are 4 markets, each one having a face-up message. The coach can move to a different market, following the ‘alleys’ between buildings – each market is consider a one space move for the coach… the coach can move one market space for each cube in the Coach House building. Once the coach gets to the end of his movement, he takes the message marker located on the market he ends up on… and is rewarded whatever the message indicates. A player may stop anywhere along his movement route – he does not HAVE to move the total equal to amount of cubes in the Coach House. After player gets message bonus, he keeps this message until the end of the game. The player can collect as many messages as he wishes… with ONE exception: You must collect ONE message of every color before you can get a second one of the same color. No Cubes – If you lay an Action Card, but do not have any cubes left… you MAY take a cube from any one of your buildings and move it to the building indicated on the Action Card. This can only be done when you have no cubes in front of you (doesn’t matter how many are still in the supply).
When playing – you need to keep an eye on 3 things: 1) Cubes – Try not to run out of cubes too early! 2) Coins – Can’t bribe characters if you don’t have any money! 3) Rats – Don’t let the plague hit your province! Print out the great Notre Dame ‘picture playing aid’ found on Board Game Geek – it will explain each character card. These are great for each player to have when first learning the game. The guide has a description of each action card as well.