Century Golem is a re-theme of the game Century: Spice Road, where in this version you are trying to collect and trade Gems to acquire cards with Golems to earn victory points.
Set-Up
Separate the cards into their different types, Point Cards with purple backs featuring a golem, Merchant Cars with a blue back featuring a crystal Design, and Caravan Cards which have a light brown back with a wooden design featuring wheels.
Shuffle the Point cards into a deck and deal 5 face up into a row in the middle of the play area, placing the remaining deck face down at the right end of the row.
Find the copper tokens and place two per player in a pile above the leftmost card in the point row (furthest from the face-down deck). Then find the silver tokens and place two per player above the card second from the left (the card next to the one with the copper tokens).
Look through the merchant deck and find the 10 cards that feature a purple border on their faces, there will be 5 cards in two types one called Create Two which will have two yellow crystals in the top left corner and feature art of an explored finding two crystal clusters, and Upgrade Two which has two grey crystals with an arrow above it in the top left corners featuring art of a dark haired woman with magic coming out of her hand and two crystal clusters that are half yellow and half green. These are the two starting cards, give one of each to each player, returning any remaining to the box.
Shuffle the rest of the merchant cards into a deck and deal a row of 6 cards below the Point card row placing the remaining deck face down to the right of the row.
Place the 4 crystal colours in the diamond-shaped bowls in the play area in order of value from lowest to highest Yellow > Green > Blue > Pink
Take as many caravan cards as players in your game, making sure to include the caravan with a crystal symbol in the top right of the card within the ones you are using, and return any remaining to the box. Shuffle these together and randomly deal one to each player, which ever player ends up with the caravan with the crystal symbol is the starting player. Each player places their caravan card face up in front of them.
Give each player their starting crystals to place into their caravan based on the list below, turn order going clockwise around the players:
1st Player - 3 Yellow Crystals
2nd and 3rd Player - 4 Yellow Crystals
4th and 5th Player - 3 Yellow Crystals and 1 Green Crystal
You are now set up and ready to play the game.
Game Play
Century Golem Edition is played over a series of rounds until the game end is triggered. Each player takes one turn a round starting with the player with the first player and continuing clockwise.
On a player's turn they can take one of four actions:
Play - play a card from their hand.
Acquire - gain a merchant card.
Rest - take all previously played cards back into their hand.
Claim - claim a point card.
We will look deeper into each action below.
Playing a Card
On your turn, you may choose to use the action play a card. This card will be a merchant card located in your hand and will be played face-up on the table in front of you and you can then perform the action that the card shows.
There are three types of merchant cards; Crystal Cards, Upgrade cards, and Trade Cards.
Crystal Cards allow you to take the crystals shown on the card from the supply and add them to your caravan.
Upgrade Cards allow you to upgrade crystals based on the number of crystals shown. For example, the starting card upgrade two allows you to upgrade a crystal one level two times as it shows two grey crystals in the top left corner. This means that you can either upgrade two different crystals one level each or use the effect on one crystal to upgrade it one level and then immediately upgrade it another level.
Upgrades follow the value order of the crystals, so a yellow would upgrade to a green, a green would upgrade to a blue, and a blue would upgrade to a pink. A pink Crystal cannot be upgraded.
If there are more upgrades on a card than you can or would like to take you do not need to do every upgrade on the card.
Trade cards allow you to exchange a number of crystals shown on the card to gain different crystals. You must have the needed crystals in your caravan to be able to use these cards. The card will show crystals above an arrow, these are the crystals you need to return to the supply. The crystals shown below the arrow are what you take in exchange from the supply.
A trade can be done as many time as you are able to on the same turn. For example, if you have 6 yellow crystals in your caravan and play a card that allows you to exchange two yellow crystals for a blue crystal you can choose to exchange 2 yellow crystals for 1 bue crystal, or 4 yellow crystals for 2 blue crystals, or 6 yellow crystals for 3 blue crystals.
Acquire Action
On your turn you can choose to acquire a new merchant card from the merchant card row. The card on the very left end of the row (furthest from the deck) is always free but if you want a card further into the row you must place a crystal on each card before it. For example, if you want the third card in a row you must place a crystal on the first and second card.
When acquiring a card if there was any crystals on the card you picked those crystals go into your caravan and the card goes straight into your hand.
Once a card is picked fill the gap in the row by shifting the card leftwards to fill the gap leaving a gap next to the deck which you fill by drawing a new card.
Rest Action
When taking the rest action on your turn you declare you are taking a rest action and then gather all your face-up played cards and bring them back into your hand. You can do this no matter how many cards are in your hand or on the table.
Claim Action
At the start of your turn if you have crystals in your caravan that match the cost on a point card you may choose to claim it by returning the required crystals to the supply then taking the card from the Point row and placing it face down next to your caravan.
If you claimed the card below either the copper or silver tokens you also take a coin from the supply above the card you took and add it to your area.
When re-filling the row shift the card leftwards to fill gaps till the gap is next to the deck and add a card from the deck to the gap. If the last coin was taken from the cooper token pile that turn and there are silver tokens left, shift the pile of silver tokens to where the copper tokens were.
Caravan and Crystal Limits
A player's caravan card has spaces for up to 10 crystals. If at the end of a player's turn they have more than 10 crystals they must discard down to 10 crystals by returning crystals of their choice to the supply.
The crystal supply is not intended to be limited, if you run out of a colour of crystals you can find and use a substitute of your choosing.
Game End and Scoring
The game end triggers when a player takes their 5th point card in a four or five-player game or their 6th in a two or three-player game. Once this happens you will finish that round of play so everyone has an even number of turns.
Once everyone has had their last turn players figure out their final score:
Revealing and totalling up points shown on the Point cards they claimed.
Adding points for each copper and silver token they claimed. Copper being worth 3 points each, silver being worth 1 point each.
Each non-Yellow Crystal in a player's caravan is worth 1 point.
Whoever has the highest score at the end of the game is the winner. If there is a Tie the last player to take their turn wins.