Minecraft: Builders & Biomes – How To Play

Hi there and welcome to watch it played my name is Rodney Smith and in this video We’re going to learn that two four player game Minecraft builders and biomes designed by Ulrich Blum and published by Ravensburger who helped sponsor this video

If you’re familiar with the Minecraft video game, then you know, it allows you to build world’s limited only by your imagination but it can also be a dangerous place full of zombies skeletons and Exploding creepers here. You’ll play out your own adventures

But in board game form so join me the table and let’s learn how to play To set up shuffle all the tiles with this back and divide them into 16 Face down stacks made up of four tiles each leaving a bit of space between each stack

Like I’ve done here the tokens with this back you’ll now shuffle and then place facedown at the end of each row So it looks like this when you’re done Nearby set this block base along with the support structure and then fill it with the included blocks

When you’re done remove the support leaving a random but nicely organized stack in its place each person now picks one of the player boards randomly and chooses a color collecting the related experience point counter Which they’ll put on the zero space of this experience point track that runs around the outside edge

Everyone also takes the five weapon tokens in their color shuffles them and places them into a pile near their board Now choose one of these player skins for your character, which you’ll put into a base matching your color

You’ll then place it into the central crossing point of the grid. And in this video we’ll pretend we have two players Finally arrange the overview cards So everyone can easily see them and this will include a reminder of the turn actions and the three different scoring phases of the game and

That’s the setup in Minecraft builders and biomes each player will be gathering resources to create structures of their own in Several of the Minecraft environment and if you’re looking for some adventure along with your architecture, there’ll be monsters you can fight as well

Your completed buildings and the monsters you defeat will gain you experience points and the player with the most by the end of the game wins The game is played over a series of turns starting with the player who most recently found a diamond

While playing the video game version of Minecraft or if you’d prefer you can just let the youngest player go first Or just pick randomly after that turns are taken in order going clockwise Around and around the table and on your turn you’ll take exactly two actions

There are five different actions to choose from and you must pick two different ones to perform on your turn So let’s go back to the table and learn what they are One option is to collect blocks And you do this by taking exactly two of them from the cube here

But you can only take blocks that are free on their top and are at least two other sides So we couldn’t take this one for example, because although it’s free on top it only has one open side

This means at the start of the game the first cube I take will have to come from a corner Now with this one gone my second cube I could pick a different corner or either of these or even the one down here

And if you want you can always rotate the base to make it easier to see around the cube while playing The cube is made up of five types of blocks sixteen wood 14 sand twelve stone ten obsidian and twelve emerald and we’ll see how these are used a little bit later

Another action you can instead take is to move your character from zero to two spaces in this game The spaces are the points where paths cross in the grid of tile stacks and weapon tokens For example, this is a space and this is a space

So if I was moving two spaces, I could go here or perhaps I might go straight ahead like this Over the course of the game a single space can have any number of players in it no matter where you travel though

Once you’re done you reveal the weapon tokens or top tiles of the stacks on the four corners of your final position now some of these may already have been turned over from a previous turn and if so, Then you just leave them as is as we’ll see shortly

Tiles and tokens can be removed from the grid and if entire stacks are ever gone You still count the crossing points that were originally between them as spaces when you’re moving Okay time to discuss a new action called building to do this

You must have your character next to the corner of a tile Showing the structure that you want to build and you must already have the block showing in its bottom right corner in your personal supply You then spend them by returning them to the game box

Now you’ll notice here this requires wood and sand I actually don’t have sand but green emerald blocks are special Because they can be used as any other kind of block So to build this structure I could spend these two blocks treating the Emerald as sand after

Paying the cost move the building to any spot on your board which as you can see is Divided into nine spaces each with its own biome, which is a type of environment that you’ll see pictured there There are four possible types Mountains. Snowy Tundra

Desert and forest and you can place your tile on any one of the spaces The biome types do not have to match and as you gain new ones later You can even build on top of other buildings that you might have added previously to your board some structures You build will show this

Experience point symbol and if so as soon as you add them to your board you gain that much experience and anytime you gain experience during the game you Move your marker the appropriate number of spaces along the track here among the face-up tiles in addition to buildings You may also find

Monsters known in the game as mobs and if you’re in a space next to one you can use an action to fight them To do this gather up your stack of weapon tokens and shuffle them into a facedown pile Revealing three. These will either show weapons or Poisoned potatoes the potatoes do nothing

But for each weapon add together the hearts showing on them if The total number of hearts is less than the number of hearts showing on the mob you are attacking Then the attack has failed and the mob just stays where it is

However, if the total number of hearts you reveal is equal to or higher than the mobs you defeated it you’ll take it from its stack and then put it next to your board you then gain the experience points showing here by its experience point symbol so in this case three any

Weapons you revealed are then put back into your weapon pile to be shuffled and used during your next attack action There are several types of mobs you’ll encounter but each fit into two main categories

Any showing this symbol can be discarded after you perform your two actions during a turn to gain an additional Action and you can even trade in more than one to gain several bonus actions and these bonus actions Can be ones that you already performed this turn? so for example

I could collect blocks and then build and then trade in this monster to build again and Each mob used for this bonus is then returned to the box now if a monster Doesn’t show this symbol but has a variety of other symbols here instead it cannot be traded in for bonus actions

But it can score you bonus points at the end of the game as we’ll see later this brings us to the final action We need to go over Collecting weapons which you can do if you’re in a space buy a weapon token

Simply pick one of them up and add it to your pile the more weapons. You have the better chance. You’ll draw something Good during a fight and the less likely you’ll draw a useless poisoned potato in fact without extra weapons in your pile

It will be impossible to fight some of the bigger mobs and many of the weapon tokens You pick up will provide you with additional abilities during a fight. So let’s take a look at how those work

Every time you draw a bow during a fight this symbol here means you draw an extra token beyond the three that you would normally Reveal if you flip the golden hoe Then you immediately gain 2 experience points the stone pickaxe does two damage and then you gain a block from the cube

Following the normal rules for collecting them Finally if you flip over TNT during a fight You can choose to detonate it or ignore it if you ignore it It will do no damage and go back into your pile after the attack But if you choose to use it

It causes a whopping five hearts of damage as shown here and then it is returned to the box and with that you now know all the actions and the various ways to gain building tiles and weapon tokens and

During the game. There will be three scoring rounds where you’ll gain experience based on the way You’ve added buildings to your board the first round of scoring happens when the final block has been collected from the top layer of the cube and it is

Possible that some cubes from the lower levels will have already been taken but the first round of scoring only Happens once the entire top layer is gone the second round of scoring will happen Once the second layer is gone and the third round of scoring will happen

Once the last block from the third layer has been taken after the third round of scoring the game ends But the important thing to understand is that the player who removes a block causing a scoring round to happen first Completely finishes their turn before any scoring is done

It’s even possible that a player through collecting blocks will take the last ones from more than one layer at a time During their turn and if that happens once their turn is finished You’ll score all of the related layers one after the other in their usual order

Now each scoring round is begun by the player who just finished their turn So let’s go back to the table and I’ll show you how this works First the player will pick any one biome and then identify the largest group of connected spaces from it on their board

Each type of biome can be identified by the picture on it But also by the icon in its top left-hand corner as we saw earlier This is a forest now to be connected the spaces must share at least one full side You do not count spaces touching only on a corner

Now as you can see, your board comes pre printed with biomes already and those can be counted in your groups as well For example, if I chose forest my largest group would be made up of these four connected squares

Also, if you like the biome type you choose can be one that has only a single square In this case, though It makes sense for us to pick forests after Identifying the largest group of the biome type you chose

You’ll use the scoring card labeled a and then gain a number of points as shown For each space in your connected group from the related biome now We chose forests and we had a group of four of them That will gain us three points for each for a total of twelve points

And as you can see Some biomes are more rare and therefore are worth more points after a player has scored their biome the next player in clockwise order picks a biome they wish to score and Gains points for its largest group and you’ll continue like this

Once around the table and then you return the scoring card labeled a to the box and the game will continue as usual Starting with the player who is supposed to take their turn next before the scoring round began When the second round of scoring is being resolved

You’ll use tile B and ignore the biomes and instead pick a type of Material either wood sand stone or obsidian which are represented by these Symbols you then look for the largest group of connected squares on your board with buildings made from your chosen resource

This will be indicated by the middle icon on the tiles and you’ll notice that the space is pre printed on your board Do not have these symbols So they will never contribute to your score during this round in this case

My largest group of connected buildings that share the same resource our stone which is a total of 2 tiles and these score 5 each for a total of 10 points Once the second round of scoring is done as before you remove the related tile labeled B from the table

When it’s time for the third scoring round, it follows the same rules as the other rounds but now you’ll use scoring tile C and each player picks a type of dwelling which is represented by the final symbol on building tiles either decorations dwellings

Animal houses or bridges once the third scoring round has been completed The game ends and it’s time for every player to gain any experience points They’re owed from defeated mobs that they collect Once with this symbol in the top left-hand corner are worth no points at the end of the game

But any that show a symbol paired with experience points give you the points shown for each of that symbol found Anywhere on your board those spaces do not have to be connected. For example, this mob gives me two points for every forest biome

I have and I have three of them for total of six points The mob here gives me to experience for every desert biome I have I have one two, three four of them for another eight experience once everyone has collected any points

They were owed from mobs the player with the most experience wins Now if there’s a tie the tied player with the most blocks remaining in their supply wins And if there’s still a tie the tied players share the victory The game also offers this variant for beginners or young children to help simplify

Scoring rounds after picking what will score on your board rather than finding the largest connected group You can just count all spaces that match no matter where they are Otherwise, that’s everything you need to know to play minecraft builders and biomes if you have any questions But anything you saw here?

Feel free to put them in the comments below and I’ll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance you’ll also find forums for discussion pictures other videos and lots more over on the game’s page at

BoardGameGeek, and I’ll put a link to that in the description below and if you found this video helpful, please consider giving a like Subscribing and clicking that little Bell icon. So you get notification any time we post a new video but until next time Thanks for watching