Description

In Wunderkammer you take on the role of a Collector on the hunt for strange and exotic items to populate your Cabinet of Curiosities.

You will compete in seven rounds of auctions, trying to procure rare and unusual pieces like marvelous mechanisms, bizarre artifacts and eerie medical oddities.

Setup of the game is relatively quick and straightforward. First, each player is dealt an equal number of Money Cards, of which there are four denominations. Then a deck of Item Cards is placed in the middle of the table, within everyone's reach. Points Tokens, Priority Tokens and the Dealer Token are placed near the Item Deck as well.

Each round consists of four Phases:

1. Evaluation Phase
A number of Item Cards equal to the number of players are turned over. During this phase players assess the value of the cards relative to how it can earn points for their personal set of Item Cards, called the Cabinet.

2. Auction Phase (auction mechanic)
During the Auction Phase, players will use their Money Cards to make bids to acquire one Item Card for their Cabinet. However, in this style of auction, players don't declare a bid on a specific Item Card, rather they bid to win the highest 'Priority' among their competitors. Priority is the order in which each player chooses an Item Card in the next Phase. This means that a player cannot be entirely certain what card their opponents are trying to obtain.

Starting with the Dealer of that round, each player takes a turn to either bid or pass. If they bid, then they will place an amount of money greater than the last player's bid on the table.

If the player instead chooses to pass, they may not participate for the rest of that round's auction.

Passing is actually what determines Priority for the round: the first player to pass in the Auction Phase will be the last player to choose an Item Card during the Curation Phase. The second player to pass will be the second last to choose a card, and so forth. Priority tokens help keep track of this order.

When all of the players but one have passed, the Round will transition to the Curation Phase.

3. Curation (Tile Mechanic)
In the Curation Phase, each player will choose one of the Item Cards in order of Priority, as determined in the Auction Phase. When all of the players have chosen a card, they will add it to their Cabinet by placing it on either the leftmost or rightmost end of the series (in the case of the first round, they will simply place the card in front of them). Item Cards are never placed above, below other cards in the Cabinet. Furthermore, once placed in the set, cards may not be moved or rearranged in any way.

In order to earn points, a newly placed Item Card must share one or more Category icons with its adjacent neighbour(s). For every shared Category between adjoining cards, one point is earned.

4. Appraisal Phase
In the Appraisal Phase, players will count the number of categories shared between the newly added Item Card and its adjacent neighbour(s). For every shared Category, a point is earned; the player will then take an appropriate number of Point Tokens and place them between the two cards to track score.

After the Appraisal Phase has ended a new round begins (unless it was the seventh round, see below). The player that won the highest Priority in the last round becomes the Dealer for the new round (and receives the Dealer Token).

After the seventh round the game ends, and players add up all of the Point Tokens in their Cabinet. The player with the most points wins!