A tactical power struggle for 2 to 5 players, 10 years and up

It is approximately 2200 years ago. China is in the middle of a period of political Instability and on the brink of a change
of power. The imperial government has been severely weakened by the peasant uprisings its demise is sealed.
Who will manage to reunite the provinces and initiate the beginning of a new dynasty?

GAME MATERIALS
57 province cards in 5 colors
1 gameboard with 2 playing maps
(10 in violet, 11 in yellow, 11 in orange, 12 in green, 13 in red) Border Disputes (China, consisting of 9 provinces)

100 houses in 5 colors

(20 each in blue, green, violet, red and yellow)

45 emissaries in 5 colors
(9 each in blue, green, violet, red and yellow)

Ways of Diplomacy (the capital, consisting of 9 districts)

1
Emperor
9
scoring disks
5
markers
for the variants

5
point cards

OBJECT OF THE GAME

By playing cards, players erect their governing houses and get emissaries to the courts of the provinces. In doing so, they obtain
power points for skillful house placement and for successful alliances among their emissaries. At the end of the game, the
player with the most power points wins.

SET-UP OF THE GAME

T he front side of the gameboard shows the Border Disputes playing map, which is suited for 3 to 5 players. The back side
contains the Ways of Diplomacy playing map, for 2 to 4 players. Depending on the number of participants, you play on the
appropriate side; if you are 3 or 4 players, you can choose either of the two maps. Put the gameboard in the middle of the table.

Border Disputes playing map, for 3-5 players

Ways of Diplomacy playing map, for 2-4 players
Each player gets all playing pieces houses and emissaries of one color as his supply. Put one emissary as a counter on space
0 of the scoring track, which is located at the upper edge of the playing map in the form of the Great Wall of China. If you
reach 50 points, you set your counter back on space 0 and continue counting; additionally, you get a point card and put it
down in front of you. If you exceed even 100 points, you get a second point card.
Important: The colors of the playing pieces have nothing to do with the colors of the provinces or districts.
Depending on the side of the gameboard chosen and the number of players, remove the following province cards and put
them back into the box:
Border Disputes
Ways of Diplomacy
5 players: remove no cards
4 players: remove 3 cards of each color
4 players: remove 1 card of each color
3 players: remove 4 cards of each color
3 players: remove 2 cards of each color
2 players: remove 5 cards of each color
Shuffle the remaining province cards. Each player gets 3 cards, face down, and takes them into his hand. Put the rest of the
cards next to the board as a face-down draw pile.
In Ways of Diplomacy, the face-up display consists
If you play on the Border Disputes map, reveal the top 4 cards of
the draw pile and lay them as a face-up display next to the pile.
of only 3 cards.
Put the point cards and the scoring disks next to the gameboard. The 5 markers are only used for the variants; for the basic
game, leave them in the box.
Players agree on who begins. The starting player receives the Emperor; he places the figure in front of him and keeps it until the final scoring.

COURSE OF THE GAME

Important: Wherever provinces are mentioned below, it means districts for the Ways of Diplomacy map.
The starting player begins. Play proceeds clockwise. On your turn, you carry out either A or B:
A) You play 1, 2, or 3 cards from your hand and place playing pieces from your supply in the province of the appropriate color.
After that, you draw new cards until you have 3 cards in your hand again.
B) Or you can discard one card and draw another card instead.

A) PLACING PLAYING PIECES

The color of a province card determines in what province you may place a playing piece. With 4 of the 5 colors, you can choose
between 2 provinces of the same color.
The following rules apply for the placement of playing pieces:
You may place playing pieces only in one province during your turn.
You may place only one piece in a province in which there are no playing pieces yet. If there is at least one playing piece no
matter what color in a province, you may place up to 2 pieces there.
You may place only one playing piece per province card.
You can play 2 cards of the same color as wild cards, which act as any one card of a different color.
As a general reminder, the 3-2-1-rule might prove useful: You may use up to 3 cards to place up to 2 pieces in 1 province.
Add the cards you have played to a face-up discard pile next to the gameboard.
If you dont have any pieces of a certain type left in your supply, you can no longer use them for placement.

Example 1: Barbara has 1 violet and 2 red cards in her hand. She chooses the red province of Wei and plays 1 red card. This
province doesnt contain any playing piece yet; therefore, she may place only 1 piece there on her turn. After that,
she has to finish her turn since she is only allowed to place playing pieces in one province.
Alex has 1 red and 2 green cards. He chooses the red province of Wei as well. Since there is already 1 piece standing
there (from Barbara), he may now place 2 playing pieces. He places the first piece using his red card. Then he uses
the two green cards as wild cards, which allows him to place the second playing piece there.
Doris has 3 yellow cards in her hand. The yellow provinces of Qi and Chin already contain playing pieces. Since
a player may place no more than 2 pieces in one turn, she can use 2 yellow cards to place 2 pieces either in Qi or
in Chin or, instead, use the two cards as wild cards in order to place 1 piece in a province other than Qi or Chin.
There are also special rules for the types of playing pieces you may place:
HOUSES
A house is always placed on an unoccupied house space of a province. House spaces are connected by
roads, which are important in the final scoring. Each house space may contain only one house. If all house
spaces of a province are occupied, you may no longer place any house there.
The Border Disputes playing map has two additional types of house spaces, with special rules:
Port spaces: There are 7 house spaces with an anchor symbol. On such a port space, you can place a house,
following the usual rules. The house is handled like any other house. At the end of the game,
a port scoring takes place that can give you additional points.
Border spaces: There are 6 house spaces that are located on the border between provinces. In order to place
a house on such a border space, you have to play 2 cards, observing the following rules:

You play either 1 card of each of the two bordering provinces

or

2 cards of the same color of one of the bordering provinces.

A house on a border space belongs to both of the bordering provinces; other than that, however, it is handled

like any other house.
It is possible to place one more playing piece on the same turn, provided you use an appropriate card to place it
in one of the two provinces of the border space. For this, you have to observe the usual placement rules.
EMISSARIES
An emissary is always placed on the dragon space of a province. A dragon space can contain several
emissaries, as described below.
The fundamental rule: The majority of houses in a province determines the maximum number of emissaries
allowed on the dragon space of that province. You may not place any emissary in a
province without houses.
If, for example, the province of Wei contains 4 green and 2 red houses, there may not be more than 4 emissaries on its dragon space.
Important: You may place emissaries in a province even if you havent placed any of your own houses there.
Example 2: Doris (blue) is thinking of placing additional emissaries in
the red province of Wei. Alex (green) has the most houses
in Wei. Since he currently has 4 houses there, there may
be no more than 4 emissaries in Wei at the moment. Since
only 2 emissaries are present there, Doris could place 2
more emissaries. To this end, she could play her 2 red cards.
Example 3: Instead, Doris (blue) chooses to place emissaries in the
yellow province of Chin. Together with Barbara (red),
she has the majority of houses there. Each of these two
players has 2houses there, so there may be no more than
2emissaries in Chin at the moment. Since there is no
emissary present there yet, Doris plays 2 red cards as wild
cards and 1 yellow card, and places 2 emissaries. It would
also have been possible for her to place 2 houses or 1 emissary plus 1 house.
Important: When all house spaces of a province are occupied with houses, the active players turn is briefly interrupted, and a
house scoring takes place in that province.

HOUSE SCORING
The player with the most houses in the province gets 1 point for each house in that province, regardless of their color.
The player with the second most houses in the province gets 1 point for each house belonging to the player with the most houses.
The player with the third most houses in the province gets 1 point for each house belonging to the player with the second most houses.
 The player with the fourth most houses in the province gets 1 point for each house belonging to the player with the third most houses.
 The player with the fifth most houses in the province gets 1 point for each house belonging to the player with the fourth most houses.
If a player owns no house in a province, he doesnt score points there. In the case of a tie, all players involved score the same
number of points for that position. The next players score according to their positions directly after that.
The players move their counters forward on the scoring track according to the number of points they received.
After the houses in a province have been scored, that province is marked with a scoring disk.
Example 4: In Wei, Alex (green) has 4 houses, Barbara (red) has 2, and
Doris (blue) has 1. Alex owns the most houses and scores
7 points (4+2+1). Barbara has the second most; she gets
1point for each house belonging to Alex, the player with
the most houses (i.e., 4 points). Doris owns 1 house in Wei;
she owns the third most houses there and scores 1 point
for each house belonging to Barbara, the player with the
second most houses (= 2).

Example 5: In Qi, Barbara (red) and Chris (violet) have 2 houses each,
and Doris (blue) owns 1 house there. Barbara and Chris
both have the most houses in Qi; so each of them scores
5 points (2+2+1). In this case, Doris owns the second most
houses and gets the points for each house of one of the
players with the most houses (= 2).

Important: Even if the houses of a province have already been scored, you may continue placing emissaries there, provided
you observe the placement rules.

B) DISCARDING A CARD

If you are not able or willing to place any piece, you discard one card instead.

DRAWING NEW CARDS

After you have finished your turn, you replenish your hand back to 3 cards. You may draw new cards from the face-up display
and/or from the face-down draw pile in any order or combination you want.
Only after you have replenished your hand cards to 3 is the face-up display refilled, if applicable.
Now, its the left neighbors turn.
DRAW PILE DEPLETED
When the draw pile has been used up for the first time, shuffle the discard pile and put it next to the board as the new draw pile.
If there are still face-up cards on display next to the pile, they remain on the table and are not shuffled into the new draw
pile. If the player whose turn it is hasnt replenished his hand back to 3 cards, he does so now. After that, the face-up display
is refilled, if necessary.

END OF THE GAME

When the draw pile is depleted for the second time, the game ends. The current round is still completed, ending with the right
neighbor of the player with the Emperor. In this final round, players no longer draw new cards.
The game also ends if no playing piece can be placed any more. In this case, the game ends immediately.

FINAL SCORING
In the final scoring, players get points for the houses that havent been scored yet, and for the emissaries and the roads.
1) HOUSE SCORING
Now, the houses in the provinces that have no scoring disk are scored. The scoring is done as described above.
2) ALLIANCE SCORING
Here, its not the emissaries themselves that are scored, but the alliances between the emissaries of two neighboring provinces.
There are 15 possible alliances, numbered from 1 to 15, on the gameboard. The alliances are scored in numerical order.
Important: On the Ways of Diplomacy playing map, alliances are not possible between all the neighboring districts.
For a better overview, put the Emperor on the number of the alliance that is being scored. Then the scoring is done as described
below; and after that, the Emperor is moved to the next number.
An alliance gives you points only if you have the majority of emissaries in both of the provinces involved. If several players have
the most emissaries in a province, all of them have the majority there.
If you have a majority of emissaries in a province, you can even score points for several alliances, provided you have a majority
of emissaries in the neighboring provinces as well.
The player with the majority of emissaries in the two neighboring provinces scores 1 point for each emissary in these two
provinces, regardless of the color. If more than one player fulfills this condition, each of them gets the points. The other players
dont score points for this.
Example 6: The Emperor is placed on the 3. Now, the alliance between
Wei and Chin is scored. In Wei, there are 2 emissaries, 1 in
blue and 1 in red. Chin contains 4emissaries, 2 in blue, 1 in
red, and 1 in green. With this, Doris (blue) has a majority in
Wei as well as in Chin and scores 6 (4+2) points. The other
players go away empty-handed.
After that, the Emperor is moved to the 4. Now, the
alliance between Chin and Shu is scored. In Shu, there
are 3 emissaries, 2 in violet and 1 in blue. Since only Doris
(blue) has a majority of emissaries in Chin and only Chris
(violet) has such in Shu, there is no alliance, and nobody
gets points.
3) ROAD SCORING
For this scoring, a player needs to have 4 or more houses in a continuous
row along a road. Branches are not included in the count.
Such a row of houses may also extend across province borders.
The player gets 1 point for each house in the row; each house may be scored only once
Example 7: In the illustration example above, Doris (blue) has an uninterrupted row of 5 houses in Chin and Shu. The house
on the bottom left in Shu is a branch of the row and therefore doesnt count. So Doris gets 5 points for this row
4) PORT SCORING (ONLY FOR THE BORDER DISPUTES PLAYING MAP)
Here, the houses on the 7 port spaces are scored in addition. In this context, they are handled like a province.
The scoring is the same as with the normal house scoring.
Example 8: Six of the 7 port spaces are occupied. Doris has 4 houses on port spaces, Alex has 2. Doris owns the most houses
on port spaces and scores 6 points (4+2). Alex has the second most houses there and gets 1 point for each house
owned by Doris, the player with the most houses (= 4).
THE NEW EMPEROR
After all scorings have been finished, the player who has the most points wins the game.
In case of a tie, the player who has the most playing pieces (houses, emissaries) left in his supply wins. If there is still a tie, all players
involved share the win.

VARIANT FOR BORDER DISPUTES: FORTIFICATIONS

In the set-up of the game, each player gets 1 marker for his supply. In this variant, the markers are considered
fortifications and count as playing pieces. A fortification is always placed on an unoccupied house space,
but never on a border space. To place a fortification, you have to play 2 cards in the color of the respective
province. After that, you additionally place 1 house on top of the fortification, without having to play another
card for this.
Important: You must place a house on the fortification. If you dont have any house left in your supply, you may not place
afortification.
In the house scoring, a player scores twice as many points for a province in which he has a house with a fortification.
In the road scoring, a player scores twice as many points for a row of houses in which he has a house with a fortification.
n the port scoring, a player scores twice as many points if he has a house with a fortification on a port space.
Example 9: Doris has 3 yellow hand cards. She plays 2 of them and places her fortification on an unoccupied house space in
Qi. Then she places 1 house on top of the fortification. Even though she still has another yellow card, she has to
end her turn now, because she may place no more than 2 playing pieces on one turn.

VARIANT FOR WAYS OF DIPLOMACY: MARKET PLACES

In the set-up of the game, each player gets 1 marker for his supply; in the two-player game, each player gets
2markers. In this variant, the markers are considered market places and count as playing pieces. A market
place is always placed on an unoccupied house space. To place a market place, you have to play 2 cards in
the color of the respective district. After that, you additionally place 1 emissary on the market place, without
having to play another card for this. The rule regarding the maximum number of emissaries on the dragon
space of a province doesnt play a role here. Market places are not included in the house scoring.
Important: You must place an emissary on the market place. If you dont have any emissary left in your supply, you may not
place a market place.
Important: Emissaries on market places are not counted among the emissaries on the respective dragon space during the game.
Before the final scoring, all emissaries on market places are put on the dragon spaces of the respective districts and are
included in the alliance scoring.
Example 10: Doris (blue) cant place any emissary on the dragon space of the
green district, since no more than 3 emissaries are allowed to be
there at the moment. It seems that nobody can take the majority
away from Barbara (red) any more. Nevertheless, in order to keep
her chance of scoring for neighboring districts in the alliance
scoring, Doris decides to place her market place. To this end, she
plays 2 green cards and additionally places one of her emissaries
on the market place. Before the final scoring, this emissary is put
on the respective dragon space. Now, together with Barbara,
Doris has the majority of emissaries in this district.

Find more information on the authors website: www.michaelschacht.net

Designer and artist: Michael Schacht
English translation: Sybille & Bruce Whitehill, Word for Wort.
2014 ABACUSSPIELE Verlags GmbH & Co. KG, Frankfurter Str. 121, D-63303 Dreieich.
Made in Germany. All rights reserved. www.abacusspiele.de
Distribution in Switzerland: Carletto AG, Moosacherstr. 14, CH-8820 Wdenswil.

The transferring of this central idea to a zoo with animals

instead of the color cards delighted the Spiel des Jahres
e.V. jury so that it awarded Zooloretto the main prize
in 2007.
Since then, more and more new animals have entered
the successful zoo, be it in a small expansion or as an
independent game.
Many drafts and approaches are required to create a good
design. Some need to ripen and are revisited only later.
Others gain new pace by combining them with a second
idea. A few of Michael Schachts early ideas were released in
his Spiele aus Timbuktu anthology. This way, stand-alone
games as well as expansions and sequels found their place in
make-it-yourself sheets for cutting out.
If you browse through the early Spiele aus Timbuktu,
you will find, for example, the roots of Mondo (2010).
The simultaneous, frantic search for suitable tiles from
a common supply already challenged players in Zock
(1999). In Contra (2001), two players compete in
placing fitting square tiles with different landscapes.
The combination of frenzied activity and landscape
building constituted the game family around
Mondo.
Design finds its place
everywhere. Michael Schachts
versatile ideas are not only
contained on a large scale in his
games, but also on a small scale
in giveaways at fairs, in variants
in catalogs and magazines, as
well as online in the game
offerings on his own website,
Boardgames-online.net.
We players congratulate
Michael Schacht on his
authors anniversary and look forward to the next
25 years full of ideas rich in design.

HAN, the double anniversary game! For 25 years, Michael

Schacht has been working as a game author; and exactly
25years ago, ABACUSSPIELE was founded. This period for
all of us in the company has been characterized by an
extremely good, cordial and successful collaboration. I
thank you very much for this, dear Michael, and wish you
all the best for the future!
Joe Nikisch

25 YEARS OF GAMES BY MICHAEL SCHACHT

Everything started with a self-programmed build-up game
as a freeware for the Commodore Amiga (Nach der Flut).
The first board game followed in 1992, as a make-it-yourself
sheet in Spielerei magazine (Taxi). Since 2005, Michael
Schacht has been inventing games full-time; to
now, he has achieved more than 200
publications.
His characteristic feature is the
accomplishment of a high degree of
fun and excitement using simple means.
Besides the Game of the Year award in
2007 (Zooloretto), other big successes
were the Family Game of the Year in
Denmark and in Norway (Mondo and
Tohuwabohu), as well as the Best Card
Game (Coloretto).

DESIGN FINDS A PLACE EVERYWHERE

Michael Schacht thinks up games. Therefore, in Germany he
is called a game author or game inventor. But the English
term fits much better: In that language, he is a game designer.
This expression is reminiscent of his roots as a graphic designer.
He pursued that profession for 15 years before he was able to
make developing games his main profession.
A new key idea takes center stage in any design. This applies
to games, too. For instance, how about sorting ones cards
in a trick-taking game but then only being allowed to play
the leftmost or the rightmost card? The jurors of the game
designer competition organized by the Hippodice Spieleclub
e.V. were so enthused about this clever idea that they
selected Blindes Huhn as the winner in 1997.

ONCE AROUND THE WORLD

A good design provides

a perfect starting point
for a further creative
development.
Michael Schacht has
managed time and
again to establish new
game families. A success
story that has already
lasted for more than
ten years began in 2003 with the
card game Coloretto. The essence of the playing appeal is
the dilemma:
Do I select from an existing display of color cards, or do I
add a randomly drawn card to the display? If I wait too long,
I might have to collect undesirable cards also!

Towards the end of the 1990s, I took note of his name for
the first time. With Kontor, if not before, the name Michael
Schacht became permanently established as a game author
in my memory. The reason for this was his richness of ideas.
Kontor wasnt just a one-dimensional game, it was an
entire compilation of games with variants and scenarios.
And that publication was far from all, since Michael Schacht
continued working on his game and developed additional
ideas. Curiously enough, his publisher wasnt having much of
it and released only one expansion (Das Exportlager). At
that time, expansions were not yet discovered as marketing
ideas. However, they were really worth playing. The author
took the business into his own hands by self-publishing the
expansions under his label Spiele aus Timbuktu and selling
them at a knocked-down price: The Event cards for Kontor,
for example, cost no more than 95 German Pfennige; that is,
just under 50 euro cents.

Kathrin Nos

In 1999, he took up the idea of manufacturing games made

of cardboard, which players then had to make into playable
games by using scissors, and he produced Zock!, his first
self-published game under the label Spiele aus Timbuktu. In
the following years, many more games were released in this
series; later on, some of them were also published as card
games or board games by other companies.
What followed was the socalled Railroad Trilogy, with
the much-noticed Mogul.
Besides the 11 make-it-yourself
games, numerous expansions
of the games published
by other companies, such
as Kontor, Knatsch, and
Kardinal & Knig, were released
as well. Within four years, a collection box was needed to
accommodate all the games and expansions. In 2005, the
same box format was used for the game Gods.
Two years later, the last make-it-yourself sheet was
released, on the occasion of the 22nd Spielerei anniversary.
Gondoliere was a further development of the game
InterUrban, published by Winsome Games. And again, he
was immediately willing to collaborate. Since then, numerous
games by him have been released in Germany and abroad
every year, and there are only very few companies nowadays
that havent yet published a game by Michael Schacht. He
covers all types of games, from childrens games to casual
family games to strategy games.
Michael and I became acquainted in 1991 at Frankfurt
spielt and since then never lost contact. And Im glad that
he has always remained the cheerful, baseball-cap-wearing
companion over all the years and his successes.

He was even more inventive when he came up with

Kardinal & Knig, published one year later. This time also,
Goldsieber could not be persuaded to publish more than
a single expansion (Der Vatikan). In this case, Michael
Schacht had even more ideas up his sleeve. Maybe the most
interesting one was a card game version, which he offered
on a cardboard cut-out sheet containing
the complete game materials, including
the game box. Interestingly enough,
two years later, this version made it
into Ravensburgers product line as an
independent game: Richelieu und die
Knigin. Interesting also because the
multi-player game had now turned into
a pure two-player game.
After Kardinal & Knig had disappeared from the market
and was re-published as China, Michael Schacht even went
one better. He changed the setting and also tweaked the
game flow. And then he came up with the fascinating idea of
developing new playing maps for the online version of the
game: Every month, he provided new settings. Players could
play in the Arctic, on Mars, and in the London tube system,
for example. The playing fun was boundless.
Only one thing was denied to China: an award. This success
had been reserved for the original version of the game.
Kardinal & Knig made it on the Spiel des Jahres selection
list as well as to place 8 of the Deutscher Spielepreis.
Knut-Michael Wolf

SPIELE AUS TIMBUKTU

In the early 1990s, game author Michael Schacht came into
the world of play. And with a bit of pride, Id like to point out
that his first published board game, Taxi, was released in
Spielerei magazine as a make-it-yourself game. Even back
then, Michael Schacht was a straightforward and helpful
person, a virtue that has been characteristic of him over all
the years.

Karsten Hser

THE VIRTUAL GAME AUTHOR

Michael Schacht counts among the most active game

authors on the Internet. He runs elaborate websites for his
success titles Zooloretto and Mondo, studded with lots
of information, variants, and downloads.
Boardgames-online.net
provides a platform
with many of his titles
that you can play for
free in solitaire mode
or against other likeminded players. China
and Kardinal & Knig
are available there as well, and maybe also HAN will be in
the near future.
The authors website www.michaelschacht.net bundles
all online activities and comes over in an especially
playful fashion. On the starting page (which changes with
every visit), you can heartily poke around, find secret
compartments, scare up spiders, or meet the author himself.

There are numerous gameboards, variants, and expansions for

Kardinal & Knig and China, the two predecessors
of HAN:
AD 850, America, Arctica, Big in Japan, Das Duell, Influence
cards, Embassies, Going Underground, Border Disputes,
Hellenia, Life On Mars, a mini expansion, Priest & Emperor,
Scandinavia, Soviet Union, Starmania, Venezia (all for China).
App (Web of Power), Duell, a card game, a PC game, Richelieu,
Der Vatikan, a pewter figure (all for Kardinal & Knig).