Visby is a short, but challenging game.

Each player has an identical set of 8 cards, each of them with a special effect.

At the beginning of a round the common supply on the board becomes more attractive by adding Seals (Victory Points), wares and improving the ratio to change wares into seals.

All players choose one card from their hand simultaneously and place it facedown in front of them (two cards in a 2 or 3 player game). Then the cards are revealed and the effects become active:

• knights and battery take victory points;
• blacksmith gets wares for each knight/battery played by other players;
• ships and fleets get wares; customer gets seals for ships and fleets;
• merchant changes wares into seals;
• monk gets wares for merchants and number of cards already played.

Players with a monk take all cards back to their hand, others proceed with their remaining cards.

The specific issue is, that the more efficient cards become effective only after those which are not that strong. For example a fleet gets you 3 wares, but the ship gets you all the remaining ones. If there are 10 wares and one opponent played a fleet, you get 7 remaining wares after he has taken 3. If three other players play a fleet and take 3 wares each, you gain only one for your ship.

How effective your card is depends on what the other players do - but you cannot be sure what they do, because all decisions are made simultaneously. But probably you remember, what cards the others have already played.

The game comes in a basic set for two players and can be improved by 1 or 2 expansion packs with material for additional 2 players each (to the maximum of 6 players).