How to Set Up Crown of Emara

Hi! It’s Ryan from Nights Around a Table. Here’s how you set up Crown of Emara.

Randomly assemble the country and city locations. The boards are double-sided – one side has rich, saturated artwork, but it can be tough to see the relevant icons. The other side is desaturated with popped-out iconography. The desaturated side might be a better bet for your first game.

Put all of the four resources in their respective countryside quadrants, and stack the bread near the grain.

Put the counter tokens on their respective spots in the castle, cathedral, and construction site. These tokens are double-sided – make sure you use the side with your proper player count on it. In a 2-player game, rotate the stone and cloth counters in the castle to 2. In the Cathedral, rotate the wood and grain markers to 2. And in the construction site for a 2-player game, rotate both markers to the next number in sequence.

Separate the advisors into A and B decks, and shuffle them both. Deal 8 cards from the A deck out to the city – two advisors per quadrant, and then put the rest of the deck back in the box. Pop the B deck face up nearby.

Put the rank board on the table, and sort the ranks into separate decks with the lowest-scoring cards on the bottom, and then on up in ascending order. Place the decks on the board from Baron to Count to Prince to Marquess to Duke.

Everyone gets a player board and the wood pieces and card deck in their colour. Put your 4 craftsmen along here. Split out the reference card from your deck, shuffle the remaining 9 cards, and draw 3 of them for your starting hand. Shuffle and place the event deck nearby.

Randomly pick a starting player. That player’s two councillors start on the two spaces indicated on the event card, and everyone else in clockwise order places their two councillors on the next available space going clockwise around those circles. Everyone gets one starting resource according to wherever their country councillor begins the game. Assemble the score track, and put your citizen marker on zero. Put your building marker on the number indicated by the event card. The rulebook suggests putting your buildings on 35 for your first game, to make it a little easier. Alternatively, you can just start your buildings on the same mutually agreed-upon space.

The rulebook mentions two variants if you know the game inside out:
First, you can randomly mix up the country and city locations during setup.

The other variant has you playing with your full hand of 9 cards. After everyone plays three cards, those cards go back in your hand and you have the full selection of 9 cards again.

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!

[Music – Board Game Boogie by Ryan Henson Creighton]