Gameplay and Prices

Kutná Hora rounds and turns, the six double-sided action cards, how the card stands set every price, the economic-adjustment symbols and the reputation track.

Overview

Kutná Hora is played over a fixed number of rounds: 5 with 4 players, 6 with 2 or 3. There are no goods to hold: wood, permits, silver, ore, beer and food exist only as prices on two card stands and as production on your player board. You pay costs in groschen at today’s price and earn groschen from your production at today’s price.

A round

1. The player holding the starting player marker takes the first turn; play goes clockwise.
2. Everyone takes 3 turns: 2 cards on the first turn, 2 on the second, 1 on the third.
3. When all players have played 5 of their 6 cards, the round ends.
4. Everyone takes all 6 cards back and the starting player marker moves one seat left.

Your turn

Choose a card from your hand, play it face up and do one of its two actions. That card is spent until the round ends, and so is the action you did not choose. Then, on your first two turns, play a second card the same way.

Your cards are open information — anyone may look at what you still hold.

Action cards

Each player has the same 6 cards. Every action appears on two cards, except St. Barbara and the Joker, which appear once.

Card	Top action	Bottom action
1	Rights	Income
2	Plot	Mine
3	Building	Plot
4	Mine	Joker
5	Income	Building
6	St. Barbara	Rights

The pairs above are read from the colours of the card halves in the rulebook’s pictures; check them against your own cards. Each action is explained on The Actions.

Prices

The game has 6 commodities, each priced in groschen on a card stand:

Stand	Commodity	Guild that produces it
Population (orange cards)	Wood	Builders
Population	Food	Grocers
Population	Beer	Innkeepers
Ore (grey cards)	Ore	Miners (and every mine)
Ore	Silver	Metallurgists
Ore	Permits	Scribes

Each commodity has an indicator arm that starts at the far left. The visible number in the arm’s window, on the front card of its deck, is the current price.

Paying in wood and permits

When the game asks for wood or permits you pay their current price in groschen for each one. A cost of 4 with wood priced at 3 means 12 groschen; one permit at 4 means 4 groschen.

Advancing the decks

Whenever an effect shows or with a number, take that many cards from the front of that deck, one at a time, and slide each to the back (never flip it). Every new front card shows new prices. Any effect that raises your ore production also advances the ore deck by the same amount.

A dynamic economy

Prices follow supply and demand:

What happens	Effect on prices
Population deck advances (more people)	Wood, food and beer rise
Ore deck advances (more ore mined)	Ore falls; silver and permits rise
You build a guild building	Its commodity’s arm moves one notch right: that price falls
You build a silver (Metallurgists) building	Silver falls, ore rises (they share one arm)

The Miners’ guild is the exception: its buildings raise your ore production and advance the ore deck instead of moving an arm.

Economic adjustments

Symbols on the population and ore cards:

Price just changed

A star beside a number means that price changed with this card.

The town builds

Demand is so high that the town builds without you. When this symbol appears, move that commodity’s arm one notch right at once, discard the top tile of that guild’s stack on the town hall board, move the stack to the end of its row and slide the others left. If that stack is empty (players hold its tiles but have not built them), still move the arm.

No market

A red X behind a price means there is no market for more of it: nobody may build that guild’s buildings until a deck advance removes the X. Buying the rights is still allowed.

Turn the deck over

Halfway point: lift the whole deck out of its stand, turn it over and carry on. The population deck runs on from 19 to 20, the ore deck from 14 to 15. A deck is never turned a second time; if it must advance past its last card, nothing happens.

Reputation

Your reputation marker starts at 0 on your board’s track, which runs from −5 to 9.

Your reputation	Effect during play
3 or more	Every plot costs only 1 groschen
6 or more	The Joker costs no reputation
At −5 and losing more	Lose 2 points for each step you cannot take
At 9 and gaining more	Gain 2 points for each step you cannot take

At the end of the game your marker’s space scores: