Salamanca

About this board game

Salamanca is a strategic board game for 2–5 players that plays in about 80 minutes. Set in 16th-century Spain, it challenges ambitious noble families to reclaim the dry hinterlands and expand their holdings around their castles.

Players use cards from their hands to obtain tiles and carry out powerful actions. Tiles include buildings, landscapes, and privileges, and each one can be placed on tactically important spaces on the board. Ownership markers can also be added to buildings, helping players establish control over the developing countryside.

Careful placement is essential. By positioning landscape tiles next to the proper buildings, players can form valuable regions that generate doubloons. Farmers work the fields, while especially successful areas may attract monks who found influential cloisters.

• Use cards to acquire tiles and gain actions.
• Place buildings and landscapes to develop profitable regions.
• Mark buildings with ownership markers to support your plans.
• Disrupt opposing holdings with plague stones and other actions.

The province is full of opportunity, but it is also shaped by intrigue. Tax collectors can fleece landowners, and locust plagues may cause entire tracts of land to be lost. Players must keep a cool head as they balance expansion, clever card play, and interference with their opponents’ plans.

In Salamanca, every parcel can change the value of the surrounding land. The winner is the player who has collected the most doubloons when the game ends and earns the title of Duke of Salamanca.