How to Set Up The Voyages of Marco Polo

HI! It’s Ryan from Nights Around a Table. Here’s how you set up The Voyages of Marco Polo. First, choose whether to play in “beginner” mode, or with the more “advanced” variant. randomly deal the outpost bonus tiles and city cards to all the large cities. Deal out the city bonus markers by matching the letter on the tile to the city. In the advanced variant, randomize these tiles. Put the black dice on the board. Use player count plus one black dice in a 3- or 4-player game. In a 3-player game, block off the first space of the Khan’s Favor with a 1-pip die of an unused colour. With 2 players, block off two spots, along with the Take 5 Coins space.

Make 5 stacks of 6 contracts each. The remaining contracts form the special contract pile. Flip the tiles from the first pile onto the contract spaces. Coins and resources line the side of the board.

Every player picks a colour and takes their player board, five dice, 9 trading posts, and 2 camels. One Chef Boyardee goes on the scoring track, and one goes in Venizia. The starting player is the last player to have taken a journey. That player gets the hourglass token and 7 coins. Every other player going clockwise gets one more coin than the last. Each player gets a starting contract from the special blue stack.

When choosing the character tiles, make sure you use the Marcator ex Tabriz tile that’s right for you, depending on your player count. If it’s your first game, the manual recommends a specific character setup. Otherwise, deal a character tile out to each player at random. In the advanced version, randomly grab player count plus one character tiles and, starting with the last player in turn order, draft the characters by passing the tiles back counter-clockwise so that the first player gets last pick. Each player gets 2 random goal cards; in the advanced mode, everyone gets 4 cards and chooses to keep 2. Take your extra stuff – the extra die, the extra guy – depending on which character you’re playing.

And now you’re ready to play! If you’d like to know more about how to play, click the link at the end of this video or in the description below to watch my complete How to Play video, which includes the setup segment you just watched. And if you like what i’m doing, click the badge to subscribe, and the bell to get notifications. And now, we dance!