Buru is live (Governor of Buru)
Update: Buru is live on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 28 days. You may pledge for the standard or the Deluxe edition of the game, or get the Deluxe edition along with the Ambelau expansion. The All-in pledge includes Buru Deluxe, Ambelau, a neoprene mat, wooden resource bowls and sleeves.
Our preview post below was published on March 16.
Buru is a 1-5 player worker placement game in which 14th century Indonesian nobles compete to gain power over the island of Buru and the favour of the King. It will launch on Kickstarter on March 23. (Postponed for May).
The game takes place over 5 rounds, and your goal is to earn the esteem of the islanders (measured in victory points). The game board is divided in 4 quadrants: the Forest, the Shore, the Village, and the Sacred Lake. Each round has 5 phases: Dawn, Morning, Noon, Afternoon, and Dusk.
In the Dawn phase, decrees and Forest cards are revealed for that round. Decrees are tokens that represent orders from the King, and they will be placed either in one of the 4 regions on the board, or on the altar of a spirit near the Sacred Lake.
In the Morning phase, you will place all but one of your workers in any of the regions so that they can later perform the associated action (collect resources in the Forest, recruit islanders at the Shore, put islanders to work in the Village, or pay tribute to the spirits at the Sacred Lake). Each worker token has a number on its flip side. When you and another player place workers in the same region, you will turn the tokens over to reveal which one has the greatest number value. This will determine who gets the most resources of that action spot.
In the Noon phase, the worker you kept aside will get you fish equal to their token number. In the Afternoon phase, workers execute the actions you selected on the board. In the Dusk phase, the board is reset, and if it is the 5th round, you proceed to scoring.
In the solo mode, you will play against the Spirit player(s). The Spirit player doesn't collect resources or islanders, only esteem points, and they always take the best position on the action spaces. (The creators note on BGG that the rulebook is currently missing a second, more robust solo mode).