Tips & Strategy

Advice for Lorenzo il Magnifico: how to teach it, a first game, the main strategies — Faith, Military and Territories, Characters, Ventures, Production, Leaders — player counts, the expansions, and the videos worth watching.

Advice only: the rules pages and the rulebook always win.

How to teach it

• Start with the Teach the Game script and the board picture, then deal round 1.
• Teach the basic game first, exactly as the rulebook suggests: basic Personal Bonus Tiles, no Leaders. The publisher’s own tutorial explains the Leaders last, once the core loop is clear.
• Read the three Excommunication tiles aloud at the start. They change what is worth doing.
• Walk through one Harvest and one Production with real cards before anyone plays: the “only goods you already had” rule is the one people forget.

Your first game

• Look at the dice before you choose. A high die is a top-floor card or a big Harvest; a low one is the Market or the Council Palace. Your uncoloured Family Member plus a servant is a cheap Council visit.
• Plan for the first Vatican Report. Three Faith by the end of round 2 is easy if you plan for it and painful if you do not.
• Two Territories are free. The third needs 3 Military Points, the fourth 7: take Military Points before the green tower runs dry.
• Watch the 6-card limit in each colour, and the 3-coin fee: a crowded tower can cost you a turn.

Faith and the Church

Supporting the Church pays more the longer you wait: 5 Faith pays 5 points, 10 Faith pays 15, 15 pays 30. Some players accept an early, mild excommunication to keep their Faith and cash it in later. Before you do it, read the tile — period I tiles bite every round for the rest of the game.

Military and Territories

Territories cost nothing but Military Points you must hold. Six Territories score 20 at the end, and the Military track itself scores 5 and 2. Cesare Borgia skips the Military requirement entirely; Federico da Montefeltro rewards five Territories with a 6 every round.

Characters

Characters only cost coins. Their permanent bonuses (+2 to a tower, +2 or +3 to Harvest and Production) make every later action cheaper, and six of them score 21. Coins are the bottleneck: the 5-coin Market space and the Council Palace feed this plan.

Ventures

Ventures are the big end-game points. Their Military costs make the Military track a resource twice over. They give nothing during play, so take them once your engine runs.

Production and Harvest

A wide engine needs a high value to fire every card. Character bonuses (Farmer, Peasant, Artisan, Scholar) and the small first space beat paying the −3 of the large space. Set out the goods you will spend before you start, so nothing is chained by mistake.

Leaders

Draft Leaders that match the cards you already lean toward. A Leader you will never play is still worth a Council Privilege when discarded — do it early. Lorenzo de’ Medici copies the best Leader on the table; Ludovico il Moro turns bad dice into 5s.

Player counts

Expansions

• [HoR] The Family tile auction trades starting goods for a strong power: read every tile before the first bid (Family tiles).
• [HoR] The Special Tower is free of colour bonuses and colour penalties — useful when an Excommunication blocks your favourite tower.
• [Pazzi] The new cards add take-that: Vandal, Judge and the Guilds hit opponents’ boards (new cards).
• Add one expansion at a time, after a few base games.

Videos versus the rulebook

• The publisher’s tutorial says the uncoloured Family Member always needs at least one servant. That matches the rulebook: every action space needs a value of at least 1, and the uncoloured Family Member is worth 0 unless a card or Leader raises it.
• Wherever a video and the rulebook differ, the rulebook and the designers’ rulings in the FAQ win — for example, you may never spend more servants than an action needs.

Host game

Begin with six rounds, the shared dice and four Family Members, then demonstrate an action before listing every card effect. On turns 1–3, check the chosen die, Servants and any occupied-tower fee before taking a card. Keep the first Vatican Report visible while players build their own plans.

Rehearse Production without chaining

Set out the Treasury and Carpenter’s Shop, with a Production value high enough to activate both. Reserve the coins for the Treasury and the wood for the Carpenter’s Shop from your supply before activating any effect.

Now repeat with wood but no coins. The Carpenter’s Shop may turn wood into coins, but you cannot use those new coins to pay the Treasury during this same Production. The Personal Bonus Tile’s new coins cannot pay for it either. They become available for later actions. Putting each exchange’s payment on its card first makes the boundary visible. Production and Harvest.

Sources

• Lorenzo il Magnifico | Boardgame Tutorial | Cranio Creations, by Cranio Creations.
• Lorenzo il Magnifico Review - with Tom Vasel, by The Dice Tower.
• Lorenzo il Magnifico Gameplay Runthrough, by Rahdo Runs Through.
• Lorenzo Il Magnifico - Playthrough & Review, by Before You Play.
• Lorenzo il Magnifico Review | Tight Worker Placement, Explosive Engines, by Rolls in the Family.
• Lorenzo il Magnifico: Houses of Renaissance Rundown, by Rahdo Runs Through.
• BGG: community and official answers are linked by thread in the FAQ; the Lorenzo il Magnifico files include the rulebook.