How to play
The Fernmark is a forest of 27 villages in 11 glades, round the Hall at the Heart. Rivers and roads join them. Boats travel the rivers and carts the roads; a traveller stands on a river or a road, one to a path, and may pass the others on its way. You start with a boat and a cart at the Hall, seven cards in your hand, a few goods and a few coins.
Your turn
- Play a card. Put one card from your hand face up on your pile. Any card in your hand can be played.
- Do what it says. Most cards ask for choices: where to move, where to build, what to buy. Tap Done when you have done enough; you may always do less.
- The market fills. At the end of your turn the cards left in the market slide down to fill the gaps, and the deck fills the top slots.
The cards
- Steward: take back every card you played; 2 coins for each card above 5.
- Builder: one step for each of your travellers on the map, then build a house next to your travellers.
- Reeve: harvest one glade (each house there makes its good, and you take one good more), or collect the coins of every harvested token.
- Chandler: take 2 coins, then buy and sell up to two kinds of goods at the price list.
- Elder: buy up to two market cards; a card costs its goods and the coins of its slot.
- Scribe: buy one market card and pay only its goods.
- Envoy: do the top card of another player’s pile, as if you had played it.
- Settler: place up to two boats or carts (1 grain and 1 tools each) at the Hall or where you have a house, or take 3 coins and 1 for each traveller on the map.
- Crafts: the Miller, Sawyer, Toolwright, Beekeeper and Silkspinner make one good for each of your houses in a village of their good.
A house costs timber and its village’s good, and coins by that good (grain and timber 1, tools 2, honey 3, silk 4) times one more than the houses already there. One house per player in a village. Every card of one kind does the same, whether you start with it or buy it.
The storehouse and the price list
Your storehouse has 12 slots; each good and each spare traveller takes one. What does not fit goes back to the bank, the dearest goods staying. The bank buys and sells at one price: grain 3, timber 4, tools 5, honey 6, silk 7 coins.
The end and the Garland
The end comes when the market cannot be filled because the deck is empty, or when a player builds their fifteenth house. Whoever did it takes the Garland, worth 7 points, and every other player plays one more turn.
The seven stars
Every card shows one star. At the end each star scores once for every card you own (in your hand and on your pile) that shows it. The most points wins; equal totals share the place.
- The Lantern: 1 point for every 8 of wealth: coins, and each good at its price.
- The Otter: 1 point for each of your houses in a village on a river, at most 12 a card.
- The Heron: 1 point for each glade where you have a house or a traveller touches a village, at most 11 a card.
- The Hare: 3 points for each boat-and-cart pair on the map, 1 for every other traveller there, at most 12 a card.
- The Bee: 1 point for each of your houses in a village where another player has a house too, at most 12 a card.
- The Fox: 1 point for every 3 cards you own, in your hand and on your pile.
- The Owl: 2 points for each kind of good you hold 2 or more of, at most 10 a card.
At the online table
- Point at a card, a market slot or the deck, or hold a finger on it, to read what it does and what it costs.
- Tap a card to lift it and read it, then tap it again (or Play). Pick a traveller, then a lit river or road. Lit villages show what a house costs there. On a phone, the map grows round the traveller you pick, so every target is easy to reach.
- On a keyboard: Tab walks the lit targets, Enter chooses; ← and → move in your hand; H your hand, K the market, S the storehouse, ? the stars, F the close view of the map, D Done, Esc puts back what you picked, M the sound.
- Each turn has a 75-second timer. If it runs out, the table plays a safe card for you and spends nothing.
- 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 decides who starts, the good of each village and the order of the deck. You see its fingerprint when the game starts and the seed itself when it ends, so you can check it. Verify a game.