How to play
Each player leads a tea caravan from the Gardens at the top of the mountain down to Kettlebridge, the river port at its foot, again and again. Your hand holds tea chests: at the port each different grade sells once. The seed chooses who starts, and play goes clockwise. A turn has three parts:
- Walk. Move your caravan down the Leaf Road, one to three steps (more once your road discs leave your mat). Only occupied sites count as steps: waystations, snags, shrines and the port. Empty plots are skipped. At a fork, choose the high lane or the low one.
- Stop. End your walk on a waystation. At a neutral one or your own, use any of its effects, each once, or run one errand instead. At a rival’s, run one errand. You may also play commissions from your hand. Then say done.
- Draw. Draw back up to your hand size (four at the start). When your deck runs out, shuffle your discard pile.
- Kettlebridge. The port ends any walk that reaches it. Take one tile from each column of the lookout; then sell your hand: each different grade counts once, plus the permits you spend; then ship to a town whose need your sale meets, paying freight downriver, and put a disc from your mat on it. Discard your hand and go back to the Gardens.
- Fees. Each snag you pass costs its toll (a landslip 2, a washout 1, a fog bank nothing). Each rival waystation with a kettle sign that you pass or stop on pays its owner a coin (two in a game of two).
- Workers. Porters pay part of every price at the tea market; artisans build waystations; pilots move your boat at the Rope ferry. Hire them from the hiring board at the cost of their row. Your fourth of a kind gives a bonus, a full row of six scores 3 points.
- The tea market. A market effect gives you a budget of porters. Each chest has two prices, porters plus coins; a porter can also restock the display with two chests. Bought chests go to your discard pile, and finer grades raise your sales and score points.
- Building. Build one of your eight waystations on an empty plot, with enough artisans and coins, or rebuild one of yours as a bigger one. Only you use their effects; they score points at the end.
- The riverboat. Your boat moves downstream past other boats. When it reaches or passes a landing you may tie up there once, for coins and a disc; a harbour master there joins you for one of your workers. Ship to towns upstream of your boat without freight.
- Discs. A disc leaves your mat slot by slot and opens what the slot says: a longer walk, a bigger hand, more permits, new errands. Four brass-ring discs are the only ones the three far towns take.
- Commissions. Play a commission for its reward now: at the end it scores its points if met, or costs its penalty. One you keep scores its points if met, else nothing.
- The closing bell. The bell rings when the last slot of the hiring board fills. That turn ends, every other player takes one last turn, and the game is over.
- Scoring. One point per four coins, your waystations, your town discs and ribbons of town pairs, landings, masters, your finer chests, commissions, snags and shrines taken, full worker rows and the bell. The most points wins.
At the online table
- The plaque says what to do and shows your choices as buttons. Legal stops on the map have a brass ring: tap one to walk there.
- Your mat, the tea market, the hiring board, the lookout, the river and the commissions are panels beside the map (on a phone, tabs under your hand). The one you need opens by itself.
- On a keyboard: Tab and the arrows move over the choices, Enter chooses, D says done, E goes to the errands, 1 to 6 pick a card, [ and ] change the panel, Esc closes it, and M turns the sound off.
- Each part of a turn has a 90-second timer (the port a little more). If it runs out, the table plays safely for you: the nearest stop, the Coin errand, no spending.
- Point at a card, a chest in the market or a disc on your mat, or hold a finger on it, to read what it is worth or what it opens.
- 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 table closes.
Why it is fair
Every shuffle comes from a secret seed. You see its fingerprint when the game starts and the seed itself when it ends, so you can check the deal and every sale. Verify a game.