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Die Säulen von Venedig (Pillars of Venice)
Authrs: Christian Fiore & Knut Happel
Publisher: Goldsieber
Year: 2006


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Building in Venice needs some preliminary work as the ground in the lagoon is very swampy. So, firstly tar poles are stuck in the ground, and then a nice palace is built on top of this carrying structure. Fame and honour will fall upon us when we participate in this project as tar workers, councillors, architects and other professions. We are going to build a beautiful and famous city and take valuable points in return!
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The map board depicts an untouched lagoon, where the Canale Grande already has been dredged, so no building is allowed here. A plywood gondola is placed randomly somewhere on the channel; the precise position is of no importance. Each of the players already gets two city tiles, and five blindly dealt profession cards; at the beginning of a round they choose one secretly and reveal it simultaneously.
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The starting player begins by performing his played card; if this is the tar worker (‘Pechtunker’) he may place an amount of poles stated on the card on the board, starting with a position next to the Canale Grande, or in future turns, starting from there or adjacent to an already placed pole. Some marker discs in the players colour, again stated on the card, are placed on these or other poles.
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The councillor ('Ratsherr') may take city tiles up to the amount of stones on the played card, and the architect, well he may build ontop of already placed poles, and this is nice because it earns points, just as many as stated on the placed city tile. So on each profession card is stated how much may be taken or placed; when taking a city tile the tile on top of the stack is taken, no choosing favorite tiles here! The profession cards have different values; for instance not each architect ('Baumeister') can build the same value of tiles.
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A bonus of one point is given for each part of a city tile that matches an already built part of another city. There are two types of terrain: buildings and, let’s say squares - in fact they are empty. When building on a site with marker discs, these are removed, and the owner gets 3 points for every disc removed, except when the disc is of the same player who built the city tile.

This way it is possible and allowed to build atop poles that other players placed, but you should be careful to indiscriminately build over other players marker discs as this gives them ‘free’ points.

After all players have performed their action, the played card goes to the player on the left, and a new round starts with choosing a role card from their hand. When at any time in the game a player performing the tar worker takes the last tar pole from the stock, play ends immediately and the player with the most points has won.
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Well, nothing new here, one might think, and: is this all there is? Ehrm, no, not at all! There are many more profession cards that add flavour to the game. The starting player card allows a player to draw one blind card from any players hand, before the players have chosen their profession card. In return the player gets another profession card. This comes in handy when a player is in search of a much wanted card he lacks himself.

And that might as well be one of the role cards such as the gondolier, that allows a player to put a marker disc on the gondola. Having this disc on the gondola brings a player two points for every city tile built next to the Canale Grande, also and especially if built by other players. While the other players sluggishly place their buildings on the poles that also cost a turn to place, the gondolier meanwhile reverberates his light-hearted song; life is beautiful when one has taken care of his business and allows one to let others do the work.
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Similarly this goes for the lawyer ('Advokat') , only in play with six players, who enables it to build a city tile over other players markers  without letting them score for it; we knew it already and the prejudice is proven right once again, say ‘lawyer’ and you say ‘of the devil’ right after it (at least in a Dutch saying).

The saboteur also does what he promises: a player may destroy a random city tile, and place two marker discs of his colour on any two of the now empty poles. By playing the spy a player may look in the hand of cards of any other player, choose one and play it immediately. In this case the spy immediately goes to the robbed player. When playing the beggar ('Bettler') a player may copy any other card, except the spy card.
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