In more detail, the game consists of four building periods. Each player has an identical set of fifteen specialist cards, and each specialist comes with two abilities. At the beginning of each building period, you choose a hand of five specialists. If during this building period, you play a specialist that no other player has in hand, you may use both abilities on that card; if two or more players play the same specialist, each of them may use only one of the two abilities. Exploiting the abilities of these specialists lets you collect resources, lay out new landscape tiles (e.g., ponds and pits), and build a variety of buildings, which come in three types:
Processing buildings
„Immediate“ buildings with a one-time effect
Buildings that provide bonus points at the end of the game for various accomplishments
Mastering the balance of knowing the best specialist card to play and being flexible about when you play it — together with assembling a clever combination of buildings — is the key to this game.
The 2021 edition of Glass Road includes previously released promotional material: the Oktoberfest and Adventskalender tiles and the Harlekin card for use in the solitaire version of the game.