How to play
- Draw and place. The start tile lies face up in the middle; the other 71 tiles are a face-down stack. On your turn, draw the top tile and lay it next to the valley, turned any way you like, so that every side it shares with a tile matches: lane to lane, village to village, pasture to pasture. A tile that fits nowhere is put out of the game, and you draw again.
- Set a warden. You have 7 wardens. After you lay the tile you may set one of them on a feature of that tile: on a lane as a traveller, in a village as a warden of the walls, on a mill as a miller, or in a pasture as a shepherd. You may do this only if nobody has a warden on that feature yet, as it now runs across the valley.
- Score what you close. When your tile closes a feature, it scores at once, and its wardens go back to their owners. The player with the most wardens on it takes all its points; if players tie for most, each of them takes all the points. Two held features can join into one: that is how wardens end up sharing.
- The end. After the last tile, every feature that is still open scores less (see the table). Shepherds stay in their pastures all game and score only now.
- Pastures. At the end, each closed village pays 3 points for every pasture that touches it, to the holder of that pasture. A village can pay several pastures; a pasture counts each village once. Most points wins; a tie shares the place.
The points
| Feature | Closed during the game | Still open at the end |
|---|---|---|
| Lane | 1 per tile, when both ends end | 1 per tile |
| Village | 2 per tile and 2 per banner, when the wall is closed | 1 per tile and 1 per banner |
| Mill | 9, when all 8 tiles around it are laid | 1, and 1 per tile around it |
| Pasture | — | 3 for each closed village it touches |
At the online table
- Every place where your tile fits has a faint outline. Tap one to hold your tile there; tap it again (or R) to turn it to the next way that fits, then “Set down”.
- Then tap a round spot on your tile to set a warden, or “Skip”.
- Drag to move the valley, pinch or use the wheel to zoom, and “Fit” (F) to see all of it.
- On a keyboard: Tab or the arrow keys go through the places, R turns the tile, Enter sets it down; S skips the warden. M turns the sound off.
- Each choice has a 60-second timer. If it runs out, the table lays your tile for you and sets no warden.
- An empty seat is taken by a bot, always marked as a bot.
Why it is fair
The order of the stack is the only secret. A secret seed shuffles it. You see the seed’s fingerprint when the game starts and the seed itself when it ends, so you can check every tile that was drawn. Verify a game.