Istanbul - Big Box (French)

Istanbul Big Box contains Istanbul Basic Game, Istanbul - Moka and Bakchich and Istanbul - Missives and Seals.

There is unrest in Istanbul's big bazaar as merchants and their assistants rush through the narrow streets trying to outdo their competitors. Everything has to be well organised: wheelbarrows have to be filled with goods in the warehouses and then quickly transported by the assistants to different destinations. Your goal? To be the first merchant to collect a certain number of rubies.

In Istanbul, you lead a group of one dealer and four assistants through 16 locations in the bazaar. In each of these locations you can carry out a specific action. The challenge, however, is that in order to undertake an action, you have to move your merchant and an assistant, and then leave the assistant behind (to handle all the details while you focus on more important matters). If you want to use this assistant again later, your merchant must return to this location to pick it up. So you need to plan carefully in advance to avoid being left without assistants and therefore unable to do anything.

In more detail, during a round, you move your merchant and his suite of assistants one or two steps through the bazaar, and then either leave an assistant there or pick up an assistant left earlier, and finally perform the action. If you meet other merchants or certain people on the spot, you may be able to take a small additional action. Possible actions are as follows:

• Pay to increase the capacity of your wheelbarrow, which starts the game with only two storage capacities for each good.
• Fill your wheelbarrow with a specified good up to its limit.
• Acquire a special capacity, and the earlier you do this, the easier it is to acquire.
• Buy rubies or exchange goods for rubies.
• Sell specific combinations of merchandise to earn the money you'll need to do everything else.

When a merchant has collected five rubies in his wheelbarrow, players complete the round and the game ends. If that player is the only one who has reached that goal, he wins immediately, otherwise ties are broken by the money in hand.