How to Play Caylus

Give each player all the houses and worker tokens of one color. For each player, place a flat token of her color on the first space of each of the four favor tracks, the zero victory point space and somewhere under the bridge. Then take the remaining flat token for each player, mix them up in your hands and randomly assign them to the turn order track.

Shuffle the pink buildings and place them randomly in the first six spaces. Place the large and small white tokens (bailiff and provost, respectively) on the last pink building. Give each player two food, one wood and five gold. You are now ready to start the game.

Give each player income of two gold, in addition to one gold for every residence he owns. Starting with the first player on the turn order and continuing down the turn order, each player may pay one gold to place a worker token on any unoccupied building space on the board or the castle. Once the last player in the turn order takes a turn, return to the top of the order and continue placing workers.

Place your flat token beneath the bridge on the first open space of the bridge. Once you have done this, you may not place any more worker tokens during this turn. In addition, all other players continuing to place worker tokens must pay one extra gold per token. This fee is increased for each player that passes, so in a four-player game, once three players have passed, the last player must pay a total of four gold for each additional worker token she wants to place.

Activate the buildings with worker tokens in order down the road, starting with the six buildings set into the board before the bridge. When a building is reached with a worker token, the player who owns that worker takes the action written on the building and then reclaims her token.

Move the provost once you have passed the first six buildings. Starting with the player who first passed, each player may move the provost up to three spaces in either direction, paying one gold per space. Once each player has had a chance to move the provost, return to Step 5 to activate the buildings after the bridge.

Stop activating buildings when you reach the space with the provost on it. If a worker is on that building, it is activated, but no further buildings are activated.

Build in the castle by paying one food and two other different goods to build a piece of the castle. Players who placed a worker on the castle space may build as many pieces as they can afford. Whoever builds the most pieces each turn gains one favor, with ties going to the first player who placed a worker on the castle. To gain a favor, move one of your favor tokens forward one space and carry out the action on that space. Any player who places a worker in the castle but cannot afford to build there loses two victory points.

Move the bailiff. If the provost is in front of the bailiff, move the bailiff two spaces down the road. Otherwise, move the bailiff one space down the road. When the bailiff reaches a scoring space, players who have built two pieces of castle in the current section gain a favor, and all further building must take place in the next section.

End the game after the third scoring space is reached and all favors are accorded. Whoever has the most victory points wins!