How to play
Craft guilds of the Kilnmere, a lake country, set up works in its towns: looms, workshops and kilns that make goods to sell, and peat cuts, forges and apiaries that make the peat, copper and honey the others need. Link the towns, sell at the four market gates, and score your links and flipped works at the end of each age.
- Two ages. First the Ferry Age: links are ferries on the lake and the rivers. Then the Road Age: links are roads over the hills. Each age has a fixed number of days; every day each player takes one turn, in turn order.
- A turn. A turn is two actions (one each on the very first day). Every action costs a card from your hand; at the end of your turn you draw back to eight while the deck lasts.
- Peat, copper and honey. Peat comes from the nearest peat cut linked to where you need it, else from the peat market through a linked gate. Copper comes from any forge, else the copper market. Honey comes from your own apiary, a linked rival’s apiary, or the jar on the gate you sell to, which gives a bonus.
- Flipping. A work flips when you sell its goods; a peat cut, forge or apiary flips when its last cube is used. A flipped tile raises its owner’s income, and only flipped tiles score.
- Income and loans. At the end of each day you get coins equal to your income level, or pay it when it is below zero. The next day’s turn order goes from the player who spent the least coins to the one who spent the most.
The seven actions
- Build: set down your lowest tile of one industry in a free slot. A town card builds in its town; an industry card builds that industry in a town on your network. Pay its coins, peat and copper.
- Link: lay a ferry on a water lane (3 coins) in the Ferry Age, or a road (5 coins and 1 peat) in the Road Age, next to your network. A second road in the same action costs 10 coins, 1 peat and 1 honey more.
- Develop: take your lowest tile of an industry off your mat for 1 copper, and a second one for 1 more.
- Sell: sell the cloth, tools or stoneware of a work that is linked to a gate buying them. It needs its honey. Sell again in the same action while you can.
- Loan: take 30 coins; your income drops three levels.
- Scout: discard three cards for a Compass card (any town) and a Guild seal card (any industry), when you hold no wild card.
- Pass: discard a card and do nothing else.
The end of an age
- Each link scores, for its owner, the link points of the flipped tiles in the towns at both of its ends (a gate has its own).
- Each flipped tile scores the points printed on it.
- After the Ferry Age the ferries go back and every level 1 tile leaves the map; the others stay.
- The Road Age deals everyone eight new cards. After it, the most points wins; a tie goes to the higher income, then the most coins.
At the online table
- Tap an action, then a card (the one you need least is lifted for you), then a ringed town or lane, and “Set down”.
- On a phone, tap the map to look closer; “Whole map” goes back. Your mat, the markets, the other seats and the log are tabs under your cards.
- On a keyboard: B, L, D, S, N, C and P choose an action, 1 to 7 a card, F goes to the ringed towns and lanes (Tab to the next), Enter chooses and Enter again sets down, Escape steps back. K opens the markets, T your mat, M turns the sound off.
- Each action has a 90-second timer. If it runs out, the table passes for you.
- Point at a card, a column of your mat, the income strip, a market or a gate, or hold a finger on it, to read what it does.
- An empty seat is taken by a bot, always marked as a bot.
A game takes about 60 minutes. A game lives on the server: if the server restarts, the table closes.
Why it is fair
A secret seed deals the gate tokens, the first turn order and both decks. You see its fingerprint when the game starts and the seed itself when it ends, so you can check the deal. Verify a game.