King of Siam: setting up the game

Give out the Action Cards. The game comes with four identical sets of action cards, eight cards to a set. Each player in the game gets one set.

Draw the Play Aid Cards. Each player randomly draws a play aid card, and takes two follower tokens of the type depicted in the card’s upper-left corner.

Set up the Home Province followers. Put two followers of each faction (the factions are Lao, Rama, and Malay) in the home province of that faction.

Set up followers in the other provinces. Each non-home province receives four randomly chosen followers. The home provinces get two more randomly chosen followers.

Set up the Common Pool. The remaining followers that were not set up in any province are placed in a common pool in the lower-right corner of the game board.

Set up the Province Tiles.The Province Tiles are shuffled face-down and then placed face-up in the numbered boxes on the left side of the board.

All done. The game is now all set-up and ready to play. The game can have two, three, or four players (with four, play is in two teams of two).