How to play
Cogsmere is a guild hall of clockmakers by a lake. You are a journeyman. Each day you work in one of its five rooms: you fetch parts, take drawings, build clocks on the bench line and prove them in showcases. You start with 15 points, and the most points at the end wins.
A day
- Choose a room. Each player moves the journeyman to a free seat in another room than yesterday. The upper seat gives 2 hours, the lower seat 3 (in the Counting House 1 and 2).
- Work. From the top of the hall down, each player works in the room they chose. A task costs 1 hour. You may add saved hours, but never use more than 4 hours in a day.
- A meeting. When the proving hand reaches a bell mark, the guild meets at the end of the day.
In any room you work in, you may also pay 1 hour (or give back a book) to train one step up that room's track. Step 3 gives the room's certificate, which opens a lock on your mat. Step 5 makes you an expert and gives an honour.
The five rooms
- The Stores: Play an order slip to fill the drawers with parts (and save 1 hour), collect the parts of one drawer onto your rack, or swap a part with the swap tray at no cost.
- The Drawing Loft: Take a drawing from the display onto your desk. Each drawing shows a clock model and a part. The two right columns give a book or a saved hour.
- The Bench Line: Fit a part to a model. Its clocks move one place down the line, and a clock pushed off an exit scores points and goes to the proving shelf.
- The Proving Room: Claim a clock from the shelf with a drawing of its model and put it in a showcase for its bonus. Or refine a drawing with its part: 2 points, and that part is worth more at the end.
- The Counting House: Name one other room and work there again: the only way to use a room two days in a row.
The Guildmaster
From day 2 the Guildmaster walks one room down each day. There she judges the players lowest on that room's track: with 2 or fewer of what the room asks for, you lose 1 point, and 1 more for each saved hour below 5. Then she does the room's task. In the Counting House she holds the weekly reckoning: your clocks in showcases score for the parts refined on their model.
The guild meeting
In a meeting each player must play one aim card. Put a voice token from your ledger on the best free space of a card, and score its points for each time you meet it, up to the space's multiplier. The meeting ends when everyone passes in a row.
The end
The game ends after the day on which the week marker and the cycle marker are both far enough along. Then you score the masterwork feats you meet, saved hours, voice tokens, books and chits, the clocks in your showcases, your place on each training track, and your proven drawings at the value of their part.
At the online table
- Play with 2 to 4 at a table, or alone against the two colleagues of the solo game.
- A room choice has a 45-second timer, a work turn 90 seconds. If it runs out, the table plays a safe move for you and spends nothing.
- An empty seat is taken by a bot, always marked as a bot.
- A game takes about 75 minutes. A game lives on the server: if the server restarts, the game ends.
Why it is fair
A secret seed decides who starts and the order of every pile. You see its fingerprint when the game starts and the seed itself when it ends, so you can check it. Verify a game.
Playing online for the first time?
Our guide compares the ways to play online, with steps for each. Read the guide to playing online.