In Thurn and Taxis, you're a logistics master, building a network of post offices across Bavaria and surrounding regions to accumulate bonus points. The board is a detailed map with interconnected cities via roads, divided into colored regions. Your goal is to create efficient postal routes, connecting adjacent cities. Each route must consist of at least three cities, and you can only work on one at a time. Routes are formed by city cards you collect and arrange in the order of your route.

On your turn, you'll draw a city card from a display of six face-up cards (or the top of the face-down deck) and then either add a card to your current route or start a new one. If the route reaches at least three cities, you can declare it finished and score it. When doing so, you can place post offices in the cities of the route, collect bonus tiles, and even acquire a higher-value carriage, which is crucial for final scoring. Additionally, you have the option to use the help of a postal official for extra actions, such as drawing another card, adding a second card to your route, refreshing the card display, or taking an even more valuable carriage.

Once scored, the route's cards are discarded, and you start a new one on your next turn. The game ends when someone exhausts their supply of post offices or acquires a value 7 carriage. Points are tallied from your highest-valued carriages and bonus tiles, and you lose points for unused post offices. The clever twist of having to add at least one city to your route each turn, or losing the entire route, adds a super fun and strategic planning element!