MUSEUM is set during the early XXth century - the golden age of the Museum - when the exploration of far-away lands and the subsequent repatriation of historical relics had become commonplace.

Public demand for displays of exotic artefacts is at fever pitch as patrons flock to see the forgotten wonders of the world! In this time of discovery, you'll be playing as the curator of one of the world's great Museums, tasked with putting together a Collection of artifacts the likes of which history has never seen!

Explore the four Continents and bring back relics to display in your Museum. Each Object will earn you points and additionally, at the end of the game, you'll score more based on the size of your different Collections. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins!

But beware: the world will keep turning as you play, and you'll have to contend with various historical events as well as facing the scrutinising gaze of public opinion.

Will your Museum go down in the annals of history? Or will it simply be a footnote?

Components

• 180 Object cards
• 20 Public Opinion cards
• 27 Favour Cards
• 17 Headline cards
• 27 Patron cards
• 4 Player counters
• 12 Public Opinion tokens
• 32 Prestige tokens
• 1 Expert board
• 24 Expert cards
• 1 Embargo Marker
• 1 Customs marker
• 1 Central Board
• 4 Museum Boards
• 8 Gaming aids
• Instructions

Object of the Game

In Museum, players score points by placing Object cards on their personal player boards, which are paid for by discarding other cards.

Players can score even more points by creating Collections! Collections can be based on card color or type, and are made by placing cards adjacently in your Museum.

The player with the most points at the end wins!

Setup

Setting up the main board

1. Place the Central board in the middle of the table.

2. Place the Public Opinion tokens in a pile on top of the newspaper photo to form the reserve.

3. Shuffle the Headline cards and place the deck in its spot on the newspaper.

4. Prepare each of the four Continent decks by Shuffling 5 Public Opinion cards into them. You can modify the "difficulty" of the game by adding or removing Public Opinion cards.
   
   Place the Decks off to one side of the Central board (we recommend that you place each Deck as close as possible to its corresponding spot on the Central Board).

5. Draw two cards from each deck and place them in the allocated spot (represented by that deck's icon) on the Central Board. If a Public Opinion card is drawn, shuffle it back into the deck.

6. Take the Embargo and Customs is out of the box and put off to one side of the board.

7. Shuffle the Favour Cards and place the deck in its spot on the diary.

8. Place the Expert board adjacent to the Central board.

9. Place the Prestige Tokens in a pile on top of the diploma to form the reserve.

10. Shuffle the Expert cards and place the deck in its spot on the left of the Expert board. Then, draw 3 cards and place them on the designated board spaces.

Player Setup

1. Each Player takes a Museum board and places it in front of them.

2. Each Museum board has a corresponding colored player marker. Place these on the "0" space of the score track in the top left-hand corner of the Central Board.

3. Each player draws one card from each Continent deck and one from the Favour deck to form their starting hand. If a Public Opinion card is drawn, shuffle it back into the deck.

4. If the starting cards of a player have a total value of 7 or less, that player may discard their entire hand and draw replacement cards. The discarded cards are shuffled back into their respective decks.

5. Each player draws 3 cards from the Patron deck, chooses one and discards the other two. For details on the Patron cards and how they work, see "Collections".

6. The last player to have visited a Museum becomes the 1st player.

You are now ready to play!

Game Play

Each player's turn is divided into two phases:

• The exploration phase, during which you will be able to add Object cards to your Personal Reserve (your hand).

• The action phase, during which you will be able to improve your establishment!

The Exploration Phase

On their turn players will be getting the first pick of the Objects brought back from the four Continents, drawing one to use during the rest of the turn.

Each object card is composed of:

1. Name

2. Value: As well as the cost of the card, this number represents the number ofVictory Points you score upon exhibiting the card.

3. Masterpiece symbol (cards of a value of 5 only).

4. Civilisation/Color: Used when determining points for a Civilisation Collection.

5. Domain/icon: There are 6 different Domains in the game. Making Domain Collections will earn you additional points at the end of the game.

6. Image

7. Historical text

During their Exploration phase, the player must draw one Object card from any Continent and place it in their hand.

This action is free but mandatory for the active player.

Afterwards each of their opponents, starting with the player on their left, may also draw one card from any Continent for free.

This action is free and optional for other players.

For each opponent that does this the player may take one Prestige point from the reserve.

Prestige points are the currency of Museum, and can be spent during the game to purchase cards and hire Experts.

Once all players have had the chance to draw a card, move on to the Action Phase.

The Action Phase

During the Action Phase, the active player may perform one of 2 actions:

1. Furbish their museum
2. Perform an inventory

A. Furbishing

By Furbishing your Museum, you can choose new items to exhibit and hire staff.

Exhibiting Objects

It's time to fill up your galleries!

You can put items into your Museum in 3 different ways:

• From your Personal Reserve (your Hand)
• From your Common Pool (your Discard)
• From another player's Common Pool

Playing object cards from your personal reserve (your hand)

Players may pay to place any Object card from their Personal Reserve (hand) into their Museum. To place a card in your Museum, you must discard cards equal to its value (or more) from your hand into your Common Pool (your discard).

What you need to know:

• You may discard multiple cards to pay for one card.
• You may discard one card to pay for multiple cards.
• You may discard multiple cards to pay for multiple cards.
• You may overpay for a card, but you do not receive any change.
• During their turn, a player may purchase as many cards as they can pay for.

Prestige points can also be exchanged to pay for Object cards. Each Prestige point counts as having a value of 1. You may use one or more tokens when purchasing an Object.

Objects can be purchased using only Prestige points, or you may choose to use a mixture of the two. Used Prestige point tokens are discarded back into the main Reserve.

The Common Pool (discard pile)

When you discard a card, it isn't lost! Think of your Common Pool as your Museum's warehouse: Objects placed there aren't currently being exhibited, but can be taken out of storage at any moment.

Playing a card from your Common pool (your Discard)

Cards in your Common Pool (discard), can be placed into your Museum in exactly the same manner as cards from your Personal Reserve (your hand): by discarding other cards and/or using Prestige points. However, they cannot be used to pay for other cards.

Playing a card from another player's common pool (Discard)

When you place an Object into your Common Pool, it also becomes available to other players...

A card in a Discard Pile may be purchased by any player. To do so, the buyer must first pay the owner one Prestige point.

The buyer then discards Objects to pay for the card as per the normal rules but places those Objects into the owner's Discard Pile, not their own. The purchased Object card is then placed directly into the buyer's Museum.

You may also use Prestige points to purchase cards from another players' Common Pool, but beware: any Prestige points (after the first that must always be paid to the owner) used to purchase an Object from a player are also given directly to that player, which could give them a considerable advantage!

Laying Out your Museum

When a card is purchased a player may put it anywhere in their Museum. Players may move Objects around as they please during the game.

At the end they will have one last chance to reorganize their Museum in order to form different Collections and score as many bonus points as possible!

Players can also gain points by amassing a large single Collection in their Main Gallery (the colored zones on the player boards) or by filling up their Museum completely. For more information see "Ending the Game".

Recruiting Experts

A Museum is nothing without good staff!

During their turn, players can also pay to hire one of the three Expert characters available from the Expert board. To do so a player must pay their cost by discarding Object cards and/or paying Prestige tokens exactly as described above for the purchase of Objects.

The player then takes that character and places them in the Expert space on the left of their Museum board.

• You can have multiple Experts in your Museum.
• You can hire multiple Experts in one Turn.
• Expert effects stack.

Experts provide a bonus to your Museum as shown on their cards. For more information, see the Appendix.

Refilling the Expert Board: After a Character is hired, slide the two other cards to the right to fill any gaps before immediately drawing a new one.

Performing an Inventory (picking cards up)

If they can't (or don't want to) Furbish their Museum this Turn, the player may decide to perform an Inventory.

If they do so, they may take as many cards from their Common Pool (discard pile) as they like and place them back into their Personal Reserve (hand), up to a maximum of 7.

Playing Favour Cards

Favour cards can be played at any time during the player's turn regardless of which action you performed: Furbish or Inventory.

Favour cards represent the growing influence of your Museum. As word of your ever more impressive Collections gets around, your increased notoriety will allow you to make contacts and attract powerful allies whom you can ask for favours.

Their help will give you a decisive advantage over your opponents!

• Only one Favour card may be played per turn and only by the active player.

• Once used, apply the effect described on the card and then discard it.

• Players may only have a maximum of three Favour cards in their hand at any time.

• Players draw a new Favour card for every 10 points they score (as shown on the score track by the Favour icon). See the Scoring section below.

Scoring Points during the game

In Museum, players will be competing to have the highest score at the end of the game.

Each time a player places an Object card in their Museum, they score its value in Points (the value is the number in the top left-hand corner of the card). Players move their Player Token clockwise along the score track each time points are scored.

• Players do not score points for Hiring Experts!
• Points for Collections are not scored until the end of the game.

Masterpieces

Object cards with a Prestige Icon next to their value are Masterpieces. Masterpieces always have a value of 5, which is the highest in the game. These exceptional rarities will draw more visitors to your Museum!

When scoring points for having played a Masterpiece, the scoring player may also take one Prestige point.

Ending The Turn

Once you've done all that you can do (or all that you want to do), it's the end of your Turn! Before passing play to the person to your left, you must first:

• Check your hand size
• Refill the board.

Additionally, each time a full round of the game is played (meaning each time play passes back to the 1st Player), players must:

• Draw a Headline Card
• Draw a new Expert card

Hand Size

There is no maximum hand size in Museum, but if a player possesses more than 7 Object cards in their hand at the end of their turn, they must discard cards of their choice until they only have 7 cards in hand.

However, you may start your turn with more than 7 cards: so even if you already have 7 cards in your hand, you can continue to draw cards during other players' Exploration phases!

Your hand limit does not include Favour Cards (but you may not have more than 3 Favour Cards at any time).

Refilling The Board

At the end of the turn, the Objects taken during the Exploration phase are replenished. To refill the board, draw cards until there are two available from each Continent.

Public Opinion

When you draw cards to refill the board, you may reveal a Public Opinion card!

These cards mean that the Press has started to notice that a lot of artifacts are being taken from a certain Continent and too few of them are being exhibited. The resulting bad publicity could have terrible consequences for our curators...

When a Public Opinion card is drawn, the card is left in place on the board for the turn and a Public Opinion token is added to the Continent. These tokens can lose you points at the end of the game based on the cards in your discard pile.

At the end of a player's turn, any Public Opinion cards on the board are discarded before the board is refilled.

Drawing a Headline Card

At the beginning of the first player's second turn, and for each of their turns thereafter, a new Headline card is revealed. The new card cancels any existing ones.

The effect described on the card affects all players and takes precedent over any rules described in this booklet. There is no Headline card on the first round of the game: draw your first Headline card on the 1st player's second turn.

If the card effect states that the number of Object cards available is increased/decreased; place the Customs token on the board as a reminder. If an Object card has to be removed to comply with these new limitations, it is the card closest to the Headline deck that is replaced on the top of the deck concerned.

If the card effect states that cards are no longer available on a Continent, the cards currently present on the Continent slot are removed and placed on top of the corresponding deck.

Place the Embargo Token on the location of the relevant Continent as a reminder.

Drawing a new Expert card

Place the rightmost card on the Expert board into the discard pile, slide the two remaining cards to the right and place a new Expert in the first slot.

End of the Game

The first player to reach 50 points signals the end of the game. That player finishes their turn and then all other players get one final turn.

A. Reorganising Your Museum

Once all players have finished their final turn, each of them has one last opportunity to arrange the cards in their Museum into Collections before moving on to the final scoring.

Collections

There are three types of Collections in Museum: Civilisations (Colors), Domains (Icons) and Patron (mixed).

• Civilisation Collections

  Civilisation Collections (colors) represent one of the 12 Civilisations present in the game:

  • Inca
  • Mayan
  • Polynesian
  • Greek
  • Roman
  • Celtic
  • Phoenician
  • Egyptian
  • Mesopotamian
  • Chinese
  • Indian
  • Japanese

  They are comprised of at least 3 cards of the same color.

  You cannot create several Collections of the same Civilisation.

• Domains

  Domain Collections represent one of the 6 Domains present in the game:

  
  
  

  A Collection must have at least 3 cards with the same Icon but different colors (Civilisations).

  You cannot create several Collections of the same Domain.

• Patrons

  A wealthy Patron has suggested that you fill your Museum in a certain way! If you succeed, their donation will be generous indeed...

  
  
  

  Patron Collections are composed of various Civilisation/Domain/ Continent card Collections as shown on the Patron card chosen by each player at the start of the game (see step 4 of player Setup).

  Each card will require you to assemble one or more Collections and then award points based on the level of completion.

B. Organising Your Collections

In order to count as part of the same Collection, Object cards must be orthogonally adjacent to one another, whether horizontally or vertically, just like the corridors and galleries of a real Museum!

As long as this is respected Collections may take any "shape" players wish, branching off in different directions, going around corners, etc. Additionally, a Collection may cross another Collection if the card(s) on which they intercept correspond to both Collections.

Final Scoring

Players gain bonus points for the different Collections they will have amassed during the game. One by one, players count up their final score, moving through the different steps below:

• Civilizations

  Players earn points for each set of Civilisation cards they have collected. Civilization Collections are composed of at least 3 cards of the same color.

  
  
  

  The exact amount of points scored depends on the size of the Collection as shown in the table on the gaming aids.

  
  
  

• Domains

  Players earn points for each set of Domain cards they have collected. A Domain Collection is composed of at least 3 cards that possess the same Domain/icon but different Civilizations/colors.

  The exact amount of points scored depends on the size of the Collection as shown in the table on the gaming aids.

• Patrons

  

  Players earn points for the cards they have collected corresponding to those required by their chosen Patron card.

  The exact amount of points scored is indicated on the Patron card.

• 

  Prestige

  Each remaining Prestige Point that a player has at the end the game is worth 1 victory point.

• Galleries

  Players score additional points based on the layout and the number of cards in their Museum.

  The colored zone on the player's Museum board is the Main Gallery. If all these colored slots are filled up with one unique Collection, then the player scores additional points as shown on their Museum board.

  If the player fills up every Object slot in their Museum, they score additional points as shown on their Museum board.

  If a player manages to do both, they score additional points as shown on their Museum board.

• Public Opinion

  

  At the end of the game players can lose points based on the cards in their discard pile that correspond to Continents possessing Public Opinion tokens.

  Each player determines which of the cards in their discard pile are from Continents possessing at least one Public Opinion token.

  Each of these cards causes the player to lose points equal to the number of tokens on the card's respective Continent.

  Use the score track to tally up each players total. Should a player exceed 100 points, continue to move their token around the score track, adding 100 to the final total.

  Once all players have calculated their final result, the player with the highest score wins!

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