How to play
Two river towns spend one year side by side. In Thaw, High Sun and Leaf-fall they build yards, commons and studies, raise marvels, and walk the old parish bounds with banners.
- Draft four marvels. Four marvels lie face up. The start player takes one, the other town takes two, and the last goes to the start player. Then four more: the other town takes one, the start player two, and the last goes to the other town. Each town now has four marvels to raise later.
- Take a free card. Each season lays 20 cards in a spread of overlapping rows, some face up and some face down. On your turn, take one card that nothing lies on. When a face-down card is uncovered, it turns face up for both towns.
- Build it, sell it, or raise a marvel. Build the card by paying its cost, and it stays in your town. Or sell it for 2 coins plus 1 for each market you own. Or tuck it under one of your marvels and pay the marvel’s cost to raise it. Only seven marvels are raised in a game; the last one goes back to the box.
- Pay with what you make. Your yards and crafts make materials, and they are never used up: they count toward every cost, every turn. A missing material is bought from the bank: 2 coins, plus 1 for each piece of it that the other town makes. A card whose link symbol you already own is free.
- Lore marks. Each study shows one of seven lore marks. Your second copy of a mark lets you take an insight from the shelf. A town that holds six different marks wins at once.
- The boundary stone. Every banner pushes the stone one step toward the other town’s gate. The first time it reaches a toll on a town’s side, that town pays the toll. If it reaches the gate, the town that pushed it there wins at once.
- Three seasons. After Thaw, High Sun and Leaf-fall, most points wins; on a tie, more points from commons cards. The town on whose side the stone stands chooses who starts the next season.
The stone at the end
The town on whose side the stone stands scores nothing for it; the other town scores by the step:
| Steps from the middle | Points |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 point |
| 2 or 3 | 3 points |
| 4 or 5 | 5 points |
| 6, 7 or 8 | 7 points |
| 9 | the town that pushed it wins at once |
Tolls: on each side, 2 coins at step 2 and 4 coins at step 5, each paid once. Also at the end: 1 point for every 3 coins.
The seven kinds of card
| Yard | Makes timber, clay or stone. |
|---|---|
| Craft | Makes glass or linen. |
| Commons | Points at the end. |
| Study | A lore mark. |
| Market | Coins, cheaper materials, or one of several materials. |
| Watch | Banners that push the stone. |
| Moot hall | Leaf-fall only: coins or points for things counted. |
At the online table
- Tap a free card to lift it. The tray above the spread shows what it costs and offers Build, Sell or Raise a marvel; tap the card again to set it back.
- Point at a card, a column of your town or an insight, or hold a finger on it, to read what it is, what it does and what it costs.
- The table finds the cheapest way to pay and buys what you lack; you never pick materials.
- On a keyboard: the arrow keys go through the free cards, Enter lifts one, B builds, S sells, R raises (then 1 to 4), Escape sets it back. T, O, L and P open your town, the other town, the shelf and the sold pile. M turns the sound off.
- Each choice has a 60-second timer. If it runs out, the table builds a card that costs you no coins, or sells one.
- A game takes about 30 minutes. 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
A secret seed deals the whole year at the start: the draft sets, the three spreads, the cards set aside and the order of the box. You see the seed’s fingerprint when the game starts and the seed itself when it ends, so you can check the whole deal. Verify a game.