Welcome to Notre Dame

Hey there! Are you ready to step into the shoes of a powerful family in late 14th century Paris? As you play Notre Dame, you’ll have the chance to grow your wealth and prestige by strategically using action cards to spread your influence across the city.

But here’s the real deal: to win the game, you need to make the most of every opportunity that comes your way. You’ll want to influence the banks to give you more money and persuade your citizens to spend more, all in order to boost your prestige. The player with the highest prestige points will take home the victory!

Setting Up the Game

First things first – let’s set up the gameboard. Place it in the center of the table so that everyone can reach it easily. If there are three players, make sure the board has three sides. If there are four players, go for four sides. And if you’ve got five players, set it up with five sides. Once that’s done, each player will choose their own section of the board to call home. And don’t forget to keep the prestige tokens and gold coins nearby!

Once you’ve picked your favorite color to represent you in the game, grab a friend, your trusty carriage, four influence markers, ten additional influence markers, four messages, and nine action cards in your chosen color. Don’t forget to also collect three gold coins and one rat marker.

Before we get started, we need to prepare the person cards. Take all the brown person cards and shuffle them up, then place them facedown near the board. Sort the gray person cards based on their letters on the back. Stack sets A, B, and C on top of one another, with C on the bottom and A on top, next to the persons cards.

To decide who goes first, the group can come up with their own method, and the lucky player will be the bell-ringer.

How to Play

The game is divided into three periods: A, B, and C, and each period consists of three rounds. In each round, there are five phases that should be played in order.

In the first round, I lay out three person cards. I grab two from the brown cards and one from the gray cards. These cards are placed facing up, right next to the other two stacks of cards.

Now it’s time for each player to draw three cards from the top of their action card stack. You get to choose one card that you want to keep, and then you pass the other two cards to the player on your left. Once everyone has passed their cards, you can look at the cards you received, pick one to keep, and pass the other to the player on your left. That card gets added to your hand.

Remember, you can’t look at the cards you received until you’ve passed your cards. And you can’t pass cards that you’ve already added to your hand. Keep your cards a secret from the other players throughout the game.

In the game, each player has three cards in their hand. In phase three, two of these cards are used.

Here’s how it works: starting with the first player, the gameplay moves clockwise around the board. Each player chooses one action card and places it face up in their play area. They then have to follow the instructions written on the card and complete the action.

Once everyone has completed their first action, they repeat the same steps with the other card in their hand. After all the actions have been completed, the cards are discarded and placed face up in a discard pile. The unused third card is hidden underneath the second card.

After players have completed two actions and discarded one card, they have the option to hire one of the people from the person cards to perform a special action. The start player goes first, and the hiring process continues clockwise around the group.

When you want to hire someone in the game, it will cost you one gold coin. But don’t worry, because once you’ve paid, you get to use the special ability of the person you hired. You have the option to hire one person, all three, or you can even choose not to hire anyone at all!

In this phase of the game, we find out how healthy the people in each player’s borough are. We determine the plague values and then move our rat marker along the plague track. The number of spaces we move is based on the plague value.

The End of the Game

After a round is completed, we place the three person cards face up on the stacks where they are needed. The player sitting to the left of the start player gets the bell-ringer. And then we start a new round just like we did before.

Once we have finished all nine rounds, it’s time to score the markers and the game is over. The player with the most prestige points is the winner of the game!