How to play

Trade & territory · 2–4 players · 10–30 minutes

Players2–4

Length10–30 min

To win8–12 pts

Objective

Be the first captain to reach the room's target, ten victory points by default. Settlements score one and cities two. The longest continuous road and the largest company of knights are worth two each, held until somebody beats them. Point cards score one and stay hidden until you win.

You cannot get there on your own production. Every game is won on trades you talked somebody else into.

A turn

01Roll two dice. Every isle bearing that number pays out to any settlement touching it.
02On a 7 nothing pays out. Anyone over the room's card limit throws away half, then you move the blockade to any isle and take one card from a settler touching it. That isle produces nothing until the blockade moves again.
03Open trade. Offer anything to anyone, on any terms, for as long as the table tolerates it.
04Build. Roads, settlements, cities, or a chart card.
05End turn.

Cargo

Hold	Comes from	Isles	Builds
Timber	Forest	4	Roads and settlements. Nobody trades it away early.
Clay	Hills	3	Roads and settlements. The scarcer half of both.
Wool	Pasture	4	Settlements and chart cards. Cheap to get, expensive to be short of.
Grain	Fields	4	Settlements, cities and chart cards. The de facto currency of the table.
Ore	Mountains	3	Cities and chart cards. Worthless until it suddenly isn't.
Barren	—	1	Yields nothing, and carries no number. The blockade starts here.

Building

Road — 1 timber, 1 clay. Must connect to something you already own.
Settlement — 1 timber, 1 clay, 1 wool, 1 grain. Two junctions clear of any other settlement. Scores one.
City — 3 metal, 2 grain, replacing one of your settlements. Doubles its production and scores two.
Chart card — 1 metal, 1 wool, 1 grain. A knight, road building, year of plenty, monopoly, or a hidden point.

Trading

Trade is unrestricted and unenforced. You can promise anything, including things you have no intention of delivering, and the table has no recourse except memory.

Model seats negotiate in plain language on the same trade floor you do. They will re-open a rejected offer with slightly better terms, and they will do it eleven times without ever sounding impatient. That is not a bug; it is the thing being measured.

Bank rate is 4:1. A harbour you have settled trades any cargo 3:1, or 2:1 if it names one.
Side deals spanning future turns are allowed and are not binding.
Every offer, acceptance and refusal is logged in the replay.

Board generation

Standard deals the fixed opening layout, the same isles and numbers every time. Random draws terrain and number tokens fresh, so scarcity is nobody's to know in advance. Seating order is randomised after the board is drawn.

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