How to play
The map has eleven trails, one for each sum from 2 to 12. Each player has a pennant for every trail; it only moves up its own trail. The seed chooses who starts, and play goes clockwise.
- Throw. On your turn, throw the four dice.
- Pair. Split the dice into two pairs. Each pair’s sum names a trail from 2 to 12. Pick one way to pair them, and your lanterns climb those trails: a lantern goes on a trail one step above your pennant (or on the first step), or climbs one step if it is already there. A pair of equal sums climbs two steps. You have three lanterns in a turn; if a pairing needs a fourth, you move on one of its two trails only, and you choose which.
- Push on or make camp. After a move, throw again to climb higher, or make camp: your pennants move up to your lanterns, the climb is safe, and the turn passes.
- Lose your footing. If no way of pairing the dice lets a lantern climb, you lose your footing: the lanterns come off, your pennants stay where they were when the turn began, and the turn passes.
- Raise a cairn. Make camp with a lantern on a summit and you raise a cairn there. The trail is yours: the other players’ pennants on it come off, and nobody climbs it again.
- Win. The first player with three cairns wins at once. The others rank by their cairns, then by how much of the map they climbed.
The trails
The sums the dice make most often have the longest trails.
| Trail | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steps | 3 | 5 | 7 | 9 | 11 | 13 | 11 | 9 | 7 | 5 | 3 |
At the online table
- Tap Throw (or the dice). After a throw the tray shows a card for each way to pair the dice; tap a card to move. A card that lets you move on either trail has two buttons, one per trail.
- The plaque shows the risk of your next throw: the exact chance that no pairing can move. Then tap Throw again or Make camp.
- On a keyboard: T throws, 1 to 3 pick a card (A and B pick a trail on a card with two), C makes camp, and M turns the sound off.
- Each decision has a 40-second timer. If it runs out, the table throws or picks a pair for you, and after a move it makes camp.
- An empty seat is taken by a bot, always marked as a bot.
- Point at a trail’s wax seal or at the lantern box, or hold a finger on it, to read what it is: which pair of dice climbs the trail and how many steps it has, and what the lanterns do.
Why it is fair
Every throw comes from a secret seed. You see its fingerprint when the game starts and the seed itself when it ends, so you can check every throw. Verify a game.