Amritsar: The Golden Temple

About this board game

Amritsar: The Golden Temple is a board game for 1–4 players that takes about 120 minutes, placing you among the personalities who helped Maharaja Ranjit Singh rebuild the sacred Golden Temple in Amritsar, India.

The Golden Temple, also known as Sri Harmandir Sahib, is one of the world’s most famous pilgrimage destinations and a sacred place for the Sikh community. After being demolished several times, it was rebuilt with marble, copper, and 750 kilos of pure gold. In the game, players contribute to this reconstruction while competing to gain the most prestige.

At the heart of Amritsar: The Golden Temple is a clever worker-placement system based on the sowing mechanism found in classic mancala games. Coordinate your different workers with your own elephant to carry out the tasks needed for the project. The quality of that coordination determines whether you can perform one, two, or three actions on your turn.

Your available activities include gathering resources from the quarry and the market, progressing along different paths of knowledge, improving your personal board, and seeking assistance from your mahout, the elephant rider. Above all, you will make donations to the temple, pursuing prestige points as the reconstruction advances.

• Coordinate workers and an elephant through a mancala-inspired sowing system.
• Collect resources from the quarry and market.
• Advance on knowledge paths and improve your personal board.
• Ask your mahout for help and make donations to the temple.

With its historical setting and distinctive action system, Amritsar: The Golden Temple challenges players to organize their efforts effectively. When the game ends, the player with the most prestige is declared the winner.