Mille Grazie

Overview

From the english rules: "Get ‘em up and hand over the dough!!" Alongside fragrant lavender fields, picturesque alleys lined with cypresses show you the way – straight into the hands of marauding bandits. In the serpentine canyons of the gorges and under cover of shady pinewoods, sly outlaws are lurking for the purpose of urging moneyed noblemen, together with their irritated courtesans, out of their well-cushioned travel coaches in order to re-distribute their possessions. Therefore, experienced aristocrats take long detours and hire expensive escorts in order to avoid the daylight robbers. But the eloquent bandits are no fools. They besiege the byways also, and so, from behind inconspicuous curves, the thanks of the light-fingered crooks might be heard unexpectedly as they call out, "Millie Grazie." The players are alternately noblemen and robbers. Whereas the noblemen want to head from town to town without being waylaid, the robbers lurk on the side of the road to prey on them. A nobleman tries to fulfil task cards, that can be found in one town and shall be brought into another town. Before he moves his pawn 4 or 5 streets from town to town, each other robber (the other players) decide on their ‘ambush compass‘ one street on which they lurk. If the nobleman uses a road on which robbers are lurking, the nobleman is waylaid and robbed. A robber who is successful gets victory points. The nobleman robbed loses a number of task cards (if he has bad luck it's just the task one step away of fulfilling). If a nobleman reaches a town with a task card he should bring to that town, he gains the victory points printed on the task card. Before moving at all, but after the robbers decided secretly the street they are lurking, the nobleman has the choice to hire a guard for exactly one street on his way. On that street he is safe and cannot be robbed, though he can only move 4 streets, not 5 as he is allowed without guard. The first to reach 30 victory points wins the game.