Board Game - Messina 1347

In the board game "Messina 1347", you will take on the roles of noble families owning lands in the countryside surrounding the port of Messina – a source of infection in Sicily. Try to save the people from the plague by quarantining the infected and sending the healthy to work in your estates. While the Black Death rages in Messina, you will have to create small independent enclaves in an attempt to stop the contagion with fire.

As the game nears its end, the plague will start to subside, and you will have the opportunity to return the rescued inhabitants to normal life. Will a couple of final rounds be enough for you to repopulate the resilient city of Messina?

A game of "Messina" lasts 6 rounds, during which you will send your assistants to the districts of Messina. The districts are represented by hexagonal tokens, from which a starting game board is assembled before the game starts. On your turn, you perform 4 stages in order:

• Choose a district and place your assistant there
• Rescue townspeople if they are in the district and take them to your estate
• Fight the plague
• Perform the district's action or populate the district

If you placed a worker in a district with a townspeople token, you rescue them and move them to your estate board: if there was a plague token in the district, the townspeople are placed in the quarantine area, and if not, they are placed in the townspeople square corresponding to their class. This can be a craftsman, aristocrat, or nun.

After a townspeople has been rescued, you can eliminate the plague in their district. To do this, you need to spend a fire token and remove a plague cube from the district. For each contagion eliminated, your popularity rating in the community will rise. And if you decided not to use fire, or if the plague still remains after the fight, you receive a rat token for each plague cube that was not eliminated. Trust me, it's better not to collect them...

By pouring righteous fire onto the contagion, you can use the district's action: this could be gaining resources, increasing your rating, advancing on the scroll board, improving a townspeople, or building. However, instead of performing the district's action, you may populate Messina: pay the resources required by the district, return the needed townspeople to the supply, and place your settlement token in the district.

A round ends when players have sent all their assistants to the districts of Messina.

After the sixth round, players proceed to calculate victory points. They are awarded for popularity rating in the community, populated districts, the scroll board, and remaining resources. Remember the rat tokens you receive if you do not fight the plague in the district? Each rat is a penalty that subtracts from your victory points. And the more of them you have, the more points you will lose. Add up everything you have earned and determine the winner – it is the player who has scored the most victory points!