Let's talk about how to play Gotlandia. Gotlandia is a boardgame about sheep, pirates, and overly embellished churches. I designed the game together with my son and we are currently playtesting at conventions around Sweden and Denmark. If you think I should show up at your event over the autumn/winter/spring, get in touch.
A race to build magnificent churches
In Gotlandia you play families who compete to build the most magnificent churches while trading and expanding their presence across the island of Gotland. The game ends with war, plague, and loads of pirates as the golden age of Gotland comes to an end.
Gotlandia is a race for victory points and players compete indirectly. The game unfolds over nine to eleven generations representing the period 1100 CE to 1400 CE. Each generation players draw cards from their deck of action cards and play them to settle, produce, build, raid, and sell. Pirates make the sea unsafe and must be dealt with. Prosperous families decorate their churches with gothic portals, baptismal fonts, and triumphal crucifixes, but only the first to do so get the recognition from their peers they crave.
Call the Gotland assembly in Roma to go first and chase away one of those pesky pirates. In the city of Wisby you meet trading partners from near and far and from the monks in Roma you learn new crafts and techniques to bolster your production.
Deck building, area control and worker placement together create a fun mix of strategy, tactics and story telling.
How to play Gotlandia
You can create and play your own copy of Gotlandia. The rules, cards, tokens, player boards, and game board are all available for download. You also need tokens and components. Pillages these from games in your collection or order from your favourite game material store (such as www.spielmaterial.de).
Find an example of how the game plays here. The example shows the first two generations of a three player game. Just enough to teach the rules and see how the juicy choices and thematic flavour come through.
Or you can find me at a convention near you. I have ordered an updated set of cards with the latest changes, and I’m ready for external playtest as soon as they arrive.
Solo play
A recent addition to the rules are rules for solo play. Easy, medium and hard challenges you can take on to prepare yourself to become the greatest Gute of them all.
More posts about Gotlandia.