How to play
Each family settles a small island in a mountain lake: a home hall by the pond, and 31 empty plots in parcels of halls, cottages, boats, meadows, quarries and lore scrolls. Goods come by water to six jetties, and a floating market stall sells rarer tiles.
- A day. Each day every family rolls two dice, and the lake die brings a crate from the week path to the jetty with its number. The families take their turns in lane order: the rowboat furthest along the lane goes first.
- Use each die once. On your turn, use each die for one thing: take a tile from the jetty with its number, set a tile from your landing on a plot with its number, sell all your crates of its kind, or take two helpers.
- Helpers and silver. Each helper turns a die up or down by one; past 6 comes 1. Once a turn, silver buys one tile from the market stall.
- Setting a tile. A tile goes on an empty plot of its own kind with the die’s number, next to a filled plot. Halls give a free action, boats fetch crates and row you up the lane, meadows score their beasts, quarries pay silver each week, and cottages and lore scrolls each do their own thing.
- Parcels and ribbons. Fill a parcel to score its size and the week bonus. The first family to fill every plot of one kind wins that kind’s first ribbon, the next one the second.
- The end. After five weeks of five days, crates, silver, every pair of helpers and the end scrolls score. The most points win.
The points
| Plots | Points |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 3 |
| 3 | 6 |
| 4 | 10 |
| 5 | 15 |
| Week | Bonus |
|---|---|
| 1 | 10 |
| 2 | 8 |
| 3 | 6 |
| 4 | 4 |
| 5 | 2 |
| Kind | First | Second (3–4 players) |
|---|---|---|
| Halls (3 plots) | 5 | 2 |
| Cottages (11) | 10 | 5 |
| Boats (5) | 7 | 3 |
| Meadows (6) | 7 | 3 |
| Quarries (3) | 5 | 2 |
| Lore scrolls (4) | 6 | 3 |
A sale scores 3 points a crate with 2 players and 4 with 3 or 4, and 1 silver. Every beast scores 1 a head when set, with the heads of the same beast already in that parcel.
At the online table
- Tap a die, then what it does: a lit tile on a jetty, a tile on your landing and then a lit plot, your crates, or the helper bowl. Or tap the target first, and the table uses the cheaper die.
- The arrows by a chosen die turn it with helpers. A move that spends helpers or silver waits for a brass button, so nothing is spent by mistake.
- Point at a tile, a plot or the lake die, or hold a finger on it, to read what it is and what it does.
- On a phone, the Lake and Island switch shows one of the two; the table switches for you when you choose a tile to set down.
- On a keyboard: 1 and 2 choose a die, + and − turn it, Tab moves between lit targets, Enter chooses, Esc backs out; L lake, I island, H helpers, S sell, B the stall, E end your turn, O other islands, M sound. “All my moves” lists every legal move in words.
- Each decision has a 60-second timer (90 seconds for the first of a turn). If it runs out, the table plays for you without spending helpers or silver.
- A game lives on the server: if the server restarts, the table closes. An empty seat is taken by a bot, always marked as a bot.
Why it is fair
The three piles, the lane order and every die of the game come from a secret seed. You see its fingerprint when the game starts and the seed itself when it ends, so you can check every deal and every die. Verify a game.