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In the latest German edition of Citadels, there is an action card Circus Tent. It is played from your hand without paying any gold (and in addition to your normal building action). It's text says:

You can put the Circus Tent in front of you. At the end of the game it counts as a building without points and without color. It cannot be destroyed by the Warlord.

Is it possible to have more than one of these in your city? This is not allowed for "normal" districts, but the card only states that it counts as a district at the end of the game.

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  • Have the German base rules changed in the new edition? In the old edition, the Hans im Glück rules did not forbid the building of multiple identical districts, but the Fantasy Flight Games edition did.
    – Samthere
    Commented Dec 10, 2012 at 15:33
  • I only have the new edition and there it is explicitly written, that each district may only be built once per city.
    – Tim
    Commented Dec 10, 2012 at 21:12

3 Answers 3

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I would say technically yes, but that it wouldn't be as much of an advantage as it initially seems. Going from a purely literal interpretation of the rules you are right that the Circus Tent is an action and doesn't count as a building until the end of the game. That would lead me to say that during play having more than one is allowable. However, having two (or 3 as there are 3 in the deck) of your city elements leading to ending the game being worth no points and not counting toward any of your bonuses (except perhaps the 4 points for being the first to complete 8 buildings) seems to limit the usefulness of such a tactic. Especially since they would have been worth one point in your hand at the end of the game anyway.

With all that said, it is enough of a rules interpretation required issue that disallowing it would not be any sort of stretch either as it may very well have not been intended to be used that way regardless of how it was worded. Also, I think once this tactic is used in a game or two I believe it would be revealed rather quickly whether allowing this is unbalanced or not.

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  • Thank you for your answer. The player who wanted to do this was not aiming for victory but wanted to end the game with a few extra points (without having any money). The game would have been over a round later anyhow. Thanks also for pointing out, that action cards on the hand bring one point at the end of the game. I completely missed that when reading the rules. This makes (a little) less profitable.
    – Tim
    Commented Dec 9, 2012 at 21:54
  • To me, they have a single useful purpose -- they let a person accelerate the end of the game when they are currently ahead, but know that this won't last (or have strong suspicions it won't last).
    – Viktor Haag
    Commented Dec 10, 2012 at 16:30
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I'd be inclined to say no for two reasons: first because allowing more than one of them seems to make them a bit too powerful; secondly, because unless the text on the card explicitly says you can build more than one of them, I'd suspect the intention should have been that no, you couldn't.

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  • I also do not think that this was not the intention (and I do not really understand why one would want to play this card if it is not near the end of the game). But it seems that it is not really forbid by the rules.
    – Tim
    Commented Dec 9, 2012 at 21:56
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I just noticed, that the rules explicitly allow multiple circus tents in one city.

It is also noted, that only one of them may be built in every players move (even if he is the architect), because only one action card per round is allowed.

Sorry for missing this when reading the the rules before.

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