Overview

Flow of play

In Bauer you take your turns at the same time and will try to collect the best combination of cards in order to score the most points. Each round you draw 3 cards from your draw pile. You will choose 1 to play and put the other 2 on the draw pile belonging to the player on your left. The next round you will draw the cards the player to your right put on your draw pile, plus one new card.

On BGA this means that you send cards to the player below you and receive cards from the player furthest down on the screen.

How a game is Set-up

1. The deck is shuffled and each player gets a draw pile of 12 cards. (In a 5 player game you only have 10 cards in your pile.)


2. The remaining cards are referred to as the middle deck.

How to play

Bauer is played in a series of 10 rounds where you do the following 3 steps at the same time as the other players.

Step 1. Each player draws the top 3 cards from their draw pile.

Step 2. From among these 3 cards, choose one of them to keep and put the remaining 2 cards on top of the next player's draw pile.

Step 3. When all players have completed step 2 you will now play your chosen cards by placing them on the table in front of you. Day cards are played face-up and Night cards are played face-down.

Day cards have a Sun icon in the upper right corner while Night cards have a Moon icon.

• Some Day Character Cards have an effect when they are played.

Steps 1, 2 & 3 are repeated until 2 cards remain in each draw pile. These cards will not be played. You will play a total of 10 rounds. (8 in a 5 player game.)

Game end

After the final round, each players Night cards are revealed and scoring happens automatically. The player with most Victory Points wins.

How to score Victory Points

The 4 card types are: Event, Travel, Danger and Characters. They all have Day & Night versions and different ways to score Victory Points (VP). You also score VP from tags you collect.

1. Event Cards

Each Event card score the number of VP shown in their upper left corner.

They can score: 1, 2, 3 or 4 VP.

2. Travel Cards

Travel cards score a total number of VP depending on how many you have:

One=1 VP, Two=3 VP, Three=7 Vp, Four=12 VP & Five =18 VP.

• Each Travel card beyond 5 score an additional 4 VP.

• Night Travel cards score an additional 1 VP each.

3. Danger Cards

Danger cards have 1, 2 or 3 Sword icons in the upper left corner. The player with most Sword icons score 12 VP and 2nd most score 6 VP. You need at least 1 Sword to score any VP. If there is a tie for most, the total 18 VP is divided evenly and no VP is given to 2nd place. If there is a tie for 2nd most, the 6 VP is divided evenly. The scores are rounded up.

4. Theme Tags

There are 5 different Themes. Purple Witch, Blue Knight, Red Troll, Yellow Princess and Green Beast.

Each Day Event, Travel and Danger card provide you with 1, 2 or 3 tags from these Themes. If you have at least 4 matching tags (4 tags of the same Theme), you score 1 VP for each of those tags.

Example: If you have 4 Blue Knight tags & 5 Red Troll Tags, you score 9 VP.

5. Day Character Quests

Quests are found on the bottom part of the Day Character cards. At the end of the game, if you have the Theme tags that are indicated on the card, you have completed the Quest and score the VP shown. The same Tags can be used to complete Quests from more than one Character. Each Quest can only be completed once.

6. Night Character Awards

Night Characters have unique ways to score you VP. See the Night Character reference below.

Day Character Effects Reference

All Day Characters have effects, some happens when you play them and some have other type of effects.

Uggel-Guggel

When played, each players draw pile is shuffled.

Witch of Hulta forest

When played, you may move each players draw pile around the table one step to the left or right. These become your new draw piles.

Brother Martin

When played, play the top card of the middle deck.

Olle Niklasson

When played, draw the top 2 cards of the middle deck. Choose 1 to play and discard the other.

Daga

When played, you may discard another card you have played earlier. If you do, play the top 2 cards of the middle deck.

If you do not discard a card when you play Daga, you can instead discard a card that you would play later and get the same effect. To discard a card on a later turn you must first choose a card to keep from your hand as usual, but instead of playing that card, you may discard it and play the top 2 cards of the deck that round. You must decide if you want to use this effect before the other players reveal their chosen cards.

• You can only use Daga's effect once.

• You can also use Daga's effect if you would play an extra card from Brother Martin, Olle Niklasson, The Yule Goat or Vill Vallareman.

• If you have copied a card with Bella, Adventure Boy or Humpe and discard the card they are copying, you also lose the copy. The copying effect can then be reused. You also lose the copy if you discard the Character that is copying the card.

The Yule Goat

After the last round, you draw the 2 cards that are left in your draw pile. Choose 1 to play and discard the other.

Princess Bella, Adventure Boy & Humpe

When you play one of these Characters, you may either copy a card you have played earlier, or you can wait, and copy a card you play later. If you wait, you decide each time you play a new card if you want to copy it or not. If you have not used the effect by the end of the game you do not get to copy anything.

Princess Bella can copy Day Event cards.

Adventure Boy can copy Day Danger or Travel cards.

Humpe can copy any type of Night card.   

• A copied card is treated as two identical cards, including it's tags. You can not change which card you copy.  

Vill-Vallareman

If you have played this card in an earlier round, you may pick it up and put it into your current hand of cards. If you do, choose an additional card from your hand to play this round.

• You can not replay Vill the same round that you use his effect.

• You can also use Vill's effect if you have 2 cards in hand from Olle Niklasson or The Yule Goat to play both cards in hand and discard Vill.

Tjovik Torgusson

You can complete Tjovik's Quest an additional time for every set of all five Theme tags you have.

Example: if you have 3 tags of each Theme, you score 15 VP.

Night Character Awards Reference

Longleg Skutt

Score 6 VP if you are the player with most Night cards. You do not score any VP if you are tied with another player.

Wing Mother

Score 1 VP for each matching tag you have of one Theme of your choice.

The Silver Knight

Score 1 VP for each card you have of one type. Choose between Event, Travel or Danger.

King Death

Score 1 VP for each Sword icon you have on your Danger cards.

Jock the Giant

Score 3 VP for each set of Adventure, Travel & Danger card you have. To have 1 set you need at least one card of each of those types. Both your Day and Night cards count.

Princess Tuvstarr

Score 2 VP for each Quest you have completed.

• You score 2 VP from Tjovik's Quest for each time you complete it.

The Skogsrå

Score up to 13 VP. Score 1 less VP for each Theme tag you have. You do not lose VP even if you have over 13 tags.

Example: If you have 7 tags you score 6 VP.