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How to play
Grounded in Iberia's rulebook — cite-checked answers, not guesses.
Get a straight answer with the exact rulebook passage to back it up.
The easy-to-forget bits, straight from the rulebook.
Infect cities setup
To infect 9 cities, reveal 3 cards and place 3 disease cubes on each, then 3 more cards with 2 cubes each, and finally 3 more cards with 1 cube each.
Starting hand size
Starting hand size depends on the number of players: 4 cards for 2 players, 3 for 3 players, and 2 for 4 or 5 players.
First player
The player who has the City card with the earliest founding date goes first.
Game end (Player Deck)
The game ends and the team loses if there are fewer than 2 cards left in the Player Deck when players are about to draw.
Hand limit
Players may have a maximum of 7 cards in hand; if over, discard or play Event cards until the limit is met.
Purify Water (researched)
If a disease has been researched, you may use cards matching its color to do the Purify Water action in an adjacent region.
Overrun hospital
If a city with a hospital has 4 or more patients of the same color, the hospital is overrun, all patients of that color move to adjacent cities, and an outbreak is marked.
To set up the game of Iberia, follow these steps: 1. **Set out the board and pieces:** Place the board, 4 [HOSPITALS], 20 railroad tokens, and 14 purification tokens within easy reach. Separate the disease cubes by color into 4 supply piles [1.1]. 2. **Place markers:** Put the outbreaks marker on "0" of the Outbreaks Track and the 4 research markers near the Researched Disease Indicators [1.2]. 3. **Infect cities:** Place the infection rate marker on the left-most "2" space of the Infection Rate Track. Shuffle the Infection cards. Reveal 3 cards and place 3 disease cubes of the matching color on each city. Reveal 3 more cards and place 2 disease cubes on each. Reveal 3 more cards and place 1 disease cube on each. Place these 9 cards face up on the Infection Discard Pile. The rest form the Infection Deck [1.3]. 4. **Give player roles and pawns:** Give each player a reference card. Shuffle the Role cards and deal 1 face up to each player with the matching [PAWN]. Remove any remaining Role cards and [PAWNS] from the game [1.4]. 5. **Prepare events and player hands:** Take Epidemic cards out of the Player Deck for now. Shuffle all Event cards and set aside a number based on the player count (4 for 2 players, 5 for 3, 6 for 4, 8 for 5). Add these Event cards to the City cards. Shuffle the Player cards (City and Event cards) and deal starting hands based on the player count (4 for 2 players, 3 for 3, 2 for 4-5 players). Each player chooses a city from their hand to place their [PAWN]. If a player has no City cards, they can place their [PAWN] in any city. Players keep their cards face up [1.5]. 6. **Prepare the Player Deck:** Choose a difficulty (Introductory: 4 Epidemic cards, Standard: 5, Heroic: 6). Remove unused Epidemic cards. Divide the remaining Player cards into face down piles equal to the number of Epidemic cards chosen. Shuffle 1 Epidemic card into each pile. Stack these piles to form the Player Deck, with smaller piles on the bottom [1.6]. 7. **Begin play:** The player with the City card showing the earliest founding date goes first [1.7]. **For Challenges:** * **Influx of Patients Challenge:** Add the Influx of Patients Challenge reference card over the Play section of the board. Only 6 purification tokens are available in the supply, with the remaining 8 divided into 4 stacks of 2, each with a [HOSPITAL] on top. * **Historical Diseases Challenge:** Shuffle the Disease cards and randomly select one to four to play with, placing them to the side of the board.
Rules summaries are AI-generated from the official rulebook and may contain mistakes — check the manual for anything critical.
On your turn, you complete 3 steps in order: 1. **Do 4 actions**: You may do up to 4 actions, selecting any combination from the list below. You can do the same action multiple times, with each counting as 1 action. Your role's special abilities might change how an action is performed. * **Movement Actions**: * **MOVE BY CARRIAGE / BOAT**: Move to an adjacent city connected by a brown line (solid or dashed). * **MOVE BY TRAIN**: Move to a city connected by a continuous chain of railroad tokens. * **MOVE BY SHIP**: Move between two port cities by discarding a City card matching the color of your destination. * **Other Actions**: * **BUILD RAILROAD**: Place a railroad token on a line (not dashed) coming out of your current city. This action is not possible if there are no railroad tokens left in the supply. * **BUILD A HOSPITAL**: Discard the City card that matches your current city to build a [HOSPITAL] there. The [HOSPITAL] must match the city's color. If a [HOSPITAL] of that color is already on the board, move it to your current city. * **TREAT DISEASE**: Remove 1 disease cube from your current city and return it to the supply. * **SHARE KNOWLEDGE**: If you are in the same city as another player and both agree, you can either give them a City card that matches your current city, or take a City card that matches your current city from them. 2. **Draw 2 Player cards**. 3. **Infect cities**. After you infect cities, the player to your left takes their turn.
You win the game immediately once all 4 diseases have been researched.
I couldn't find any rules about "scoring" in the loaded rulebook for Iberia. This is a cooperative game where players all win or lose together based on certain conditions, rather than accumulating individual scores. The goal is for the players to research all 4 diseases to win. Players lose if 8 outbreaks occur, if there aren't enough disease cubes when needed, or if there aren't enough player cards to draw.
The game of Iberia ends in one of two ways: players win together, or players lose together. **Winning the Game:** * Players win immediately once all 4 diseases have been researched, regardless of how many cubes are on the board. **Losing the Game:** Players lose if any of the following conditions occur: * The outbreaks marker reaches the last space of the Outbreaks Track (which means 8 outbreaks have occurred). * You are unable to place the number of disease cubes actually needed on the board. * A player cannot draw 2 Player cards after doing their actions. Specifically, if there are fewer than 2 cards left in the Player Deck when you are about to draw, the game ends and your team loses immediately. The discard pile is not reshuffled.