A printable Istanbul log lives or dies on the one record nobody keeps: the ruby count itself, because Istanbul is not won on points at all, it is won on rubies, and rubies arrive from five different places across the bazaar at different times for different costs. The first player to collect 5 rubies triggers the end of the game, with the current round completed before anyone counts, and ties are broken by leftover lira, then leftover goods, then leftover bonus cards. You can buy a ruby from the Gemstone Dealer, earn one by completing your wheelbarrow at the Wainwright, earn one by collecting both tiles of one mosque, earn one by delivering goods to the Sultan's Palace, and a handful of other routes exist through the board. Nobody at the table argues about whether a move happened; they argue about how many rubies each player actually holds, which source each one came from, and whether the fifth ruby really arrived before the round ended.
The assistant move is where the argument starts, because every action costs an assistant and assistants run out. On your turn you move your merchant and the stack of assistants under him one or two places orthogonally, never diagonally, and you must end on a different place than you started. If one of your assistants is already at the target place, you pick him up onto your stack; if none is there, you leave the bottommost assistant from your stack behind at that place. If you can neither pick up nor leave an assistant, your turn ends immediately, with one exception: the Fountain returns any number of your assistants to your stack and is the only place where you need no assistant present and pay no other merchant. If another merchant is already at your target place, you must pay each such merchant 2 lira or your turn ends on the spot, and the Fountain is exempt from that payment too. The log records, per turn, where the merchant went, whether an assistant was dropped or picked up, and how many assistants remain in the stack, because a stranded assistant is a lost turn.
The worked scoring line is the part buyers actually check before they trust the sheet. Take player A, who ends the game with 5 rubies: 2 bought from the Gemstone Dealer, 1 earned by completing the wheelbarrow at the Wainwright with the third extension, 1 earned by collecting both tiles of one mosque, and 1 earned by delivering goods to the Sultan's Palace, for a total of 5. Player B has 4 rubies: 2 bought from the Gemstone Dealer, 1 earned by collecting both tiles of one mosque, and 1 earned by delivering goods to the Sultan's Palace, for a total of 4. The line reads: A, dealer 2 plus mosque pair 1 plus Wainwright 1 plus Sultan 1, total 5, against B at dealer 2 plus mosque pair 1 plus Sultan 1, total 4. A triggers the end of the game by reaching 5, the round is completed, and A wins by one ruby, and every one of those rubies came from a different place on the board.
The counterfactuals are what make the log worth printing rather than scribbling. If A had never paid the 7 lira for the third wheelbarrow extension at the Wainwright, A would sit at 4 rubies and tie B at 4, and the game would be decided by the tie-breaker instead of the ruby count, which is why every extension purchase is logged against the wheelbarrow it completed. If B had bought one more ruby from the Gemstone Dealer, B would rise from 4 to 5 and tie A, and the winner would come down to leftover lira, which is why the log keeps a running lira column beside the ruby column. And if A had left an assistant stranded two places from the Gemstone Dealer and missed the final dealer visit, A would stay at 4 rubies and lose outright, because in Istanbul the ruby you did not reach is worth exactly as much as the ruby you never bought.
That is why the sheet sells as a download rather than as a blank score pad. A blank pad records a final total nobody can audit; a worked ruby-and-assistant log records the decision the table actually argued about, with each player's rubies by source, assistants dropped and picked up, and lira on hand all on the same line, so the endgame falls out of the sheet instead of out of a twenty-minute recount. Print it, update one line per turn and per ruby, and the next time someone says they reached five rubies first, the answer is on the paper, not in anyone's memory.
This is an unofficial fan-made log sheet, not affiliated with or endorsed by Pegasus Spiele or Alderac Entertainment Group. Istanbul is a board game designed by Rüdiger Dorn.
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