How to Play Manila

Manilla is a fairly simple game to learn how to play. There are three boats, each which carry one of four goods. All you have to do is invest in the right goods and hope your boat makes it to port. Sound fun? It is!

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Manila board game
• 2 to 4 opponents

How to Play Manila

1. Shuffle the good shares. Each player is randomly dealt two good shares, face-down. Players look at their own holdings, but these are kept secret from other players. Each player also receives 3 person markers and 30 pesos.

2. To start the round, players bid on the Harbormaster role. Whoever ends up bidding the highest must pay that many pesos to the bank. He or she then becomes Harbormaster for this round. The Harbormaster may buy one share of any good at the market price (always a good deal at the beginning of the game), and chooses which good does not get on a boat this round. The Harbormaster places the other 3 goods on boats, and arranges the boats anywhere on the spaces from 0 to 5 such that the total of the three spaces is 9.

3. Next, the Harbormaster places a person on any space on the board, paying the cost in the circle. These spaces generally have the potential to give a larger cash benefit at the end of the round, but sometimes have other effects (such as the Pilot, which allows a player to move boats during the round). Once the Harbormaster has placed her person, the next player clockwise, places a person. Continue clockwise until each player has placed a person.

4. The harbormaster rolls all three dice, and each boat moves according to the number on the corresponding color die. If this is not the third and final time you have rolled this round, players on the pilot spaces may then move a boat forward or backward one or two spaces.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 twice more, for a total of three iterations.

6. Once the harbormaster has finished three rolls, assign the boats. Any boats not reaching space 13 are sent to the repair yard. All boats passing space 13 are sent to the docks, and the value of the good on that boat is increased by 1. Boats landing exactly on space 13 are attacked by pirates, and if a player has a person on Pirates, that player gets the full value of the goods and then chooses whether the boat goes to docks or repairs.

7. Players on non-pirated boats that reached the dock split the value of the good on that boat. Players on docks or repairs get paid only if at least that number of boats ended up in the correct place. The insurance player must pay for each boat on the repair yard. Once this is all done, the next round starts again from Step 2.

8. Game ends when the value of one good reaches 30. At that point, all players sell their goods for value, and whoever has the most coin wins.

Tips & Warnings

• If playing with only 3 players, give each player an extra person token.