Let’s Play Rialto!! @Phoenix Comics & Games

Venice, the city of bridges and gondolas. Your goal is to gain power and influence: you want to become the éminence grise of Venice. Assign councilmen in the town districts, build precious bridges and buildings, but keep your eye on your finances and the Doge!

Rialto is an easily accessible tactical board game that uses Area Influence, Bidding, & Open Drafting. The goal is to earn the most victory points, which are awarded for a variety of things. The game board displays the six districts of Venice, and players earn VPs for placing council members into these, for building bridges and placing gondolas to connect the districts with one another, and for building advantageous buildings.
The game is played over six rounds, with each round consisting of three phases:

1. Acquire cards: Each player takes a set of cards.
2. Play cards: Players use cards to perform certain actions.
3. Activate buildings: Players may take advantage of their buildings and use their powers.

In phase 1, sets of eight cards are displayed (with six cards face-up and two face-down). Each player takes one set, then reduces his hand to seven cards. A card shows one of six specific characters (Architect, Merchant, etc.) or is a wild card.
Phase 2 consists of six sub-phases in a fixed order, one for each character. In each sub-phase, players choose whether or not to play one or more cards of that specific character. Each card allows them to perfom that character's action, for example:

• Take one piece of gold for each Merchant card you play.
• Place one council member into the current district for each Council card you play.
• Take a building with a value equal to or lower than the number of Architect cards played. The higher its value, the better its function.

Whoever plays the most cards in each such sub-phase receives a bonus of one free action of that type. In case of a tie, whoever is farthest along the "Doge" bar gets the bonus – and of course to advance on the Doge bar, players need to play Doge cards.
Phase 3, players may take advantage of their buildings. For each piece of gold paid, a player may use one of his building's ability.
Players collect VPs both during the game – from special buildings and by building bridges between districts – and at the end of it – for majorities of council members in each district. The value of each district evolves during the game: Each district is adjacent to four other ones, and at the end of the game, they will be connected either via bridges or gondolas. A bridge increases the value of the adjacent districts by 3-6 victory points, whereas a gondola increases this value by 1 point. The player with the most council members in a district earns VPs equal to the district's total value, the player with the secondmost council members earns half this value, and so on. While it's important to establish majorities in the districts, it's also crucial to control their values by cleverly placing those bridges and gondolas.
New players are welcome, and the host is happy to teach if you haven't played before.

2 - 5 players
45-60 minutes expected play time, depending on turnout and player familiarity.
BGG Link
22-min How-to (Drive Thru Games)

A few important details:

• This event is scheduled to start at 10:00 AM PLEASE be on time!
  Please factor traffic & parking into your commute and if you will be late post in messages or the Discord.
• Speaking of… It's Cap Hill, so parking can be a challenge. Sorry, it's a walking neighborhood! Phoenix Comics & Games is only about a block from the First Hill Streetcar (Broadway & Denny stop), less than a block from the Capitol Hill light rail station, and very close to several bus lines, though.
• Purchasing something isn't a strict requirement, but it's nice to do since we're using the space. Please support the business if you can!
• If you need to cancel please do so as soon as you know. People on the waitlist and playing that day will appreciate it!
• Signing up for this event means other people are counting on you to attend; board games have both a minimum and a maximum player count, so with a limited number of seats available at the table, I want to be sure for everyone's benefit that those seats actually have people in them when the session starts. Last-minute cancellations (less than 12 hours), no-shows, and late arrivals (more than 15 minutes) without good reason will be marked as no-shows for the event and should expect to be automatically moved to the waitlist for any and all future events they join which are hosted by me.
• I open signups for most of my events 1-3 days before pressing the "announce" button here on Meetup; if you want to know about that when it happens and have the opportunity to claim a seat before others, you can join the Seattle Board Games Discord server, where I'll post to let users there know as soon as RSVPs open as well as posting polls for future meetups!