How to Play Century: A New World (2026): Rules and Scoring

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How to play Century: A New World (2026): the third game in Emerson Matsuuchi’s Century series sends two to four players into the Americas of the 1500s. Unlike the card-based Spice Road, it is a worker placement game: you place settlers on locations to gather, upgrade and trade goods, then spend them on Point cards that grant new abilities. A game takes about 45 minutes. Here are the rules.

The goal in Century: A New World

Score the most points from Point cards, Bonus tiles, Exploration tiles and leftover goods when the game ends.

Goods and storage

Goods are cubes in four colors, from lowest to highest value: yellow corn, red meat, green tobacco and brown fur. Your player board stores up to ten cubes. If you end a turn with more, return the extras of your choice.

Setting up Century: A New World

1. Lay out the board and place a random Point card above each Fort location, with Bonus tiles stacked as printed.
2. Shuffle the ten Exploration tiles and cover the marked locations. Some locations are covered only at certain player counts.
3. Each player takes 12 settlers of one color, places 6 on their player board (7 in a two-player game) and keeps the rest in a reserve beside it.
4. Starting goods depend on seat: the first player takes 3 yellow cubes, the second and third take 4 yellow, and the fourth takes 3 yellow and 1 red.

Your turn: Work or Rest

On each turn you choose one of two actions.

• Work: place settlers on one location and take its action.
• Rest: take all of your settlers back from the board onto your player board.

Placing settlers and ousting

An empty location needs the number of settlers printed at its bottom. If another player’s settlers are already there, you oust them by placing the same number plus one, and their settlers return to their owner’s player board. That means a busy location costs more each time, and getting ousted is actually a free Rest for that player’s settlers.

The four kinds of location

• Production: take the cubes shown from the supply.
• Upgrade: for each grey cube shown, upgrade one of your cubes to the next color. You may upgrade the same cube several times.
• Trade: return the cubes shown above the arrow and take the cubes shown below it, as many times as you like.
• Fort: pay the cubes on the card to claim the Point card above it, take the top Bonus tile, or both.

Point cards

Each Point card shows points and one of four New World icons, and each type gives a bonus:

• New Settlers: move settlers from your reserve onto your player board.
• Exploration: take an Exploration tile from the board, uncovering a new location for everyone and often giving you an immediate bonus.
• Native Help: locations with the matching symbol need one fewer settler, though always at least one.
• Tool: gain an extra cube whenever you use a location with the matching symbol.

Bonus tiles score at the end for meeting their conditions, such as collecting pairs of a certain icon. You can hold at most three.

How Century: A New World ends and scores

When a player claims their eighth Point card, finish the round. Then everyone scores their Point cards, Bonus tiles, Exploration tiles and one point per non-yellow cube left in storage. The highest total wins, and ties go to the tied player who took the last turn.

Century: A New World strategy tips

• Native Help and Tool cards are engines. Take them early and they pay off every turn.
• Watch when rivals are likely to Rest. Ousting them right before they would have rested anyway helps them.
• Exploration cards open new locations, so time them when they help you more than others.
• Do not overfill storage. Ten cubes is a hard limit, so plan purchases a turn ahead.

How a typical first game feels

Early turns are about building a cube supply: take corn and meat, upgrade a few, and rest when your settlers run low. By the middle of the game, players race for Native Help and Tool cards, because they make every later turn cheaper. The final rounds become a sprint for Point cards, and watching who is one card from their eighth tells you when to grab the last high-value card before the round ends.

Love trading engines? Read our best engine-building board games and the best worker placement games.

Century: A New World rules FAQ

Do you need the other Century games to play A New World?

No. It stands alone, though it can be combined with Spice Road and Eastern Wonders for a bigger game.

How many players can play Century: A New World?

Two to four. In a two-player game each player starts with seven settlers on their board.

What happens if you have more than ten cubes?

At the end of your turn, return cubes of your choice until you have ten.