Blueprints to Construct The Red Cathedral

Welcome, aspiring architects!  Join us as we take a quick look at how to set up and play a new game from Devir:  The Red Cathedral.

In The Red Cathedral we assume the roles of architects who construct the iconic St. Basil’s Cathedral, and each player will construct different parts of the monument.  And through harnessing the influence of the clergy and the different guilds in the city, we will try to outshine our opponents and gain the favor of the tsar.  When the work of building the cathedral is finished, the player who has earned the most prestige will be the winner!

Game Set Up: 

Choose a color and take a personal workshop board, 6 banners, and 4 ornaments (1 door, 2 arches, and 1 cross).  Place 4 of the 6 banners and the ornaments in the workshop.  Set up the main market board according to the following photo.

 

Place the resource tiles at random.  Shake the dice in your hands and drop one in the square opposite the cross, then continue around the circle until each resource tile has a die in front of it.

 

 

Take a Building Plan card and place it next to the board.  This card will determine the starting structure of the cathedral.  Note that some Building Plan cards correspond to player count.

The cathedral will consist of 3 different sections:  bases, middle sections, and domes.  Sort the Cathedral cards by section and randomly draw them to construct the cathedral according to the Building Plan.  Then return the rest of the cards to the box. Finally, take the workshop tiles and place them randomly on top of the building cards of the cathedral.

 

How to Play:

During your turn, you must carry out one of 3 basic actions:

 

1. Claim a cathedral section: To claim a section of the cathedral, take a banner from your workshop (possibly opening up an inventory slot), and place it on top of an unoccupied base card of the cathedral. Remove the resource tile from the base card and place it in an open inventory slot in your workshop.  It is placed face down unless you can pay the cost in rubles, in which case it is played face up and you immediately get the benefits of the tile.

 

2. Build sections of the cathedral: Each time you use this action you may deliver up to 3 materials to a building section you’ve claimed in the cathedral, to either build or decorate it.  If all of the required materials have been delivered, it’s considered complete and you receive recognition points and possibly rubles.

 

 

3. Acquire resources from the market: Visiting the market and managing resources are the nucleus of The Red Cathedral.  To visit the market, follow these steps:

• • Announce which die you will use from the Market
  • Move that die in the direction of the arrows according to the value on its face
  • Leave the die in the space where it lands
  • Take the action indicated by the space
  • Lastly, roll all of the dice that are in that section where the die landed, and put them back in their spaces

 

 

Once the die completes its movement, you may perform any of the following actions one time, in any order desired:

• Obtain resources from the market:  Take the resources shown on the resource tile next to that space, according to the value on the die.  You may take fewer resources than indicated but not more.
• Use influence:  There are 3 guilds (artesans, merchants, and cartwrights) plus the clergy, and each group corresponds to a different season of the year, represented in a different quadrant of the board.  The quadrant where the die lands determines which group’s influence you can use.

 

 

When using the influence of the group, you can perform one of the two actions indicated on their cards.  Some actions have a cost, others don’t.  Actions marked with a lightning bolt can only be used once, while actions with the infinity symbol can be used as many times as you wish.

• Activate a workshop tile: Si el jugador que ha movido el dado tiene previamente asignada una loseta de taller en la casilla correspondiente al color de dicho dado, puede obtener inmediatamente el beneficio que indica. En el caso del dado blanco se deberá escoger cuál de las dos acciones desea utilizar.  If you have a workshop tile assigned to the color that matches the color of the die that was moved, you may immediately claim the benefit shown on that tile.

We hope that this overview to The Red Cathedral has provided a useful introduction to this new release.  For more information, look out for the next article, “Blueprints to Play The Red Cathedral”.