• Terrain Tiles50, each of 3 hexes
• Scoreboard1
• Resource Tokens100
• First Player Token1
• Scoring Counters1 per player
• Knights7 per player
• Villages14 per player
• Strongholds2 per player
• Cities5 per player
• Expansion PartsLeave in the box

Each player also gets a reference sheet. For your first game, leave the expansion parts in the box: the 5 purple Mysterious Location tiles, spell tiles, magic tokens, control tokens and hero cards.

1. 1
   Build the board. Take 9 random terrain tiles per player and fit them together in any shape. For a first game, make it about as wide as it is tall.
   
2. 2
   Lay out resources. Put all resource tokens beside the board as a shared supply.
   
3. 3
   Choose a colour. Each player takes 5 cities, 2 strongholds, 7 knights, 14 villages and a reference sheet.
   
4. 4
   Set the scoreboard. Place every scoring counter on the 0 space.
   
5. 5
   Pick the first player. The youngest player chooses who starts. That player takes the first player token, and play runs clockwise.
   
6. 6
   Place starting cities and knights. as described below.
   

Starting Placement

• Each placement is one city and one knight on the same space.
• Going clockwise, each player places 1 city and knight.
• The last player places 3 in a row, on three different spaces.
• Going back anti-clockwise, every other player places 2 more.
• Everyone ends with 3 city-and-knight spaces. All other pieces stay in your supply.

Only if you're playing with the Sorcery expansion (see How to play).

• Build the board with 9 tiles per player as usual, including the number of Mysterious Location tiles shown above.
• Each player takes the 5 control tokens in their colour. Draw 5 random spell tiles and lay them face up; return the other 4 to the box. Put the magic tokens in a shared supply.
• Starting cities may not be placed next to a Mysterious Location. Later New City actions may.

Heroes: deal each player 4 hero cards. Keep 2 secretly and return the rest.