Soot & Timber — Rulebook & Components Reference

In Soot & Timber, you are a frontier industrialist building an economic empire during the early Industrial Revolution. Starting from a shared Central City, you explore uncharted territory, tread trails into the wilderness, stake claims, extract raw resources, refine them through smoke-belching facilities, and deliver finished goods across an ever-expanding hex map — while the land runs out beneath you and the soot of your industry stains your reputation.

EXPLORE → CONNECT → EXTRACT → TRANSFORM → DELIVER → REINVEST

The player with the most points at game end wins. A typical winning score is 65–75. Points come from:

1. The frontier closes. The tile stack contains a visible Frontier Closes marker. When it surfaces — or round 12 ends — the game enters its final two rounds. 2. Integration is profit. Buying inputs at market and refining them roughly breaks even. Real margins come from owning the whole chain: the camp, the route, the facility, the market stall. 3. Soot is the price of speed. Fuel-burning industry advances your personal Soot Track. Soot costs prestige, blocks settlement growth, and bleeds points at game end. You can grow dirty and fast, or clean and respected — not both for free.

1. Place the Central City tile in the center of the table. It is the only tile on the map — all terrain is discovered through Explore actions. 2. Build the terrain stack for your player count (§23): shuffle the listed number of tiles face-down, then insert the Frontier Closes marker exactly 10 tiles from the bottom of the stack. 3. Place the water overlay tiles, community bag, and resource/depletion tokens within reach.

1. Set the Market Board sliders: every tracked good starts on its printed base price. (Raw goods have fixed printed prices and no sliders.) 2. Shuffle the 60-card multi-use deck. Deal 5 face-up as the card market row. 3. Build the event deck: sort the 20 events into their four season packs (Thaw, Boom, Hardship, Decline), shuffle each pack, stack them in season order, Thaw on top. No blank cards exist in this edition. 4. Shuffle the contract deck by tier; fill the 4-slot contract row with Tier 1 contracts. (Tier 2 contracts shuffle into the deck at the start of Boom; Tier 3 at the start of Hardship.) 5. Reveal 3 public objective cards. These stay out all game. 6. Place the 5 milestone tiles beside the score track.

Prepare N+1 archetype boards. Draft in reverse seating order — the last player picks first.

Each archetype's package (currency, goods, caravans) is printed on its board and listed in §21. All packages are tuned to ≈12¤ of total value — asymmetric in shape, equal in worth.

• Explorer: place on the Central City tile.
• Builder & Caravans: on your player board (they deploy on first use, §4.4).
• Each player draws 3 secret objective cards, examines them, and keeps 2 (discard 1 face-down).
• Each player starts with 1 free warehouse node at Central City.
• Set all Soot Tracks and Prestige markers to their start positions (Prestige: Neutral; the Rancher starts at Good).
• Give the Event Token to the last player in seating order.
• Round 1 turn order: the player who drafted their archetype last goes first; proceed clockwise.

The game lasts 12 rounds plus up to 2 final rounds (§22). Each round has five phases:

1. Event (even-numbered rounds only): the Event Token holder flips the top event card and chooses Option A or B (§16). Odd rounds: skip. 2. Tier 3 demand (Boom and Hardship rounds only): every Tier 3 price rises 1 step. 3. Refill the contract row and the card market row to full. If a Legacy card enters the card row, hold a blind auction for it immediately (§15.3).

That is the whole phase.

Players take 1 action at a time in turn order, cycling repeatedly. Each player has 3 actions per round (4 at 2 players), plus any bonus actions earned.

• When you are out of actions (or choose to stop), you pass and drop out of the cycle for the round.
• The first player to pass takes the Event Token (and will go first next round — see Phase 5). Passing with actions remaining forfeits them.
• Bonus actions (cards, Overtime, upgrades) are taken on your regular cycling turns.

1. Pay food upkeep: 1 food per camp you own + your share of settlement upkeep (§11.4) + 2 food per Tier 3 facility you own. Pay using food goods anywhere in your warehouse network or on your caravans (food values: §20.1). 2. Shortfall: pay 2¤ per missing food to the bank (the "company store"). If you cannot pay, you must tear down facilities and/or abandon camps of your choice until you can. 3. Frontier Tax (rounds 4, 8, 12): pay 1¤ per camp you own. Unpaid: abandon 1 camp per unpaid 1¤.

• Every renewable camp (Farm, Ranch, Lumber Camp) produces 1 of its good onto its tile.
• Camps on water overlay tiles additionally produce 1 Fish.
• A camp tile holds a maximum of 2 goods; excess production is lost. (Haul or lose it.)
• Semi-renewable stacks (Furs, Herbs): every 3rd round (rounds 3, 6, 9, 12), add 1 token to each stack that still has at least 1 token.
• Exclusive community pacts (§17.4) pay out now.
• Non-renewable resources never auto-produce — they require the Extract action (§7).

1. New turn order: the player who passed first goes first next round, second passer second, and so on. 2. Check game end (§22). 3. Hand limit: discard down to 7 cards.

The round track is divided into four seasons. Effects apply to every round in the season.

Final rounds triggered after round 12 use Decline effects (rivers open).

Your three agent types physically occupy the map and determine where you may act. Your people must be present where work is done.

Agents move only via the Move action (exception: the Explorer auto-moves onto each tile it explores). Agents must already be in position when you take an action requiring them.

Spend 1 action to move any number of your agents, each up to its full speed, in any order. This is the only movement action — there is no separate transport action.

• Laden caravans (carrying goods) pay 1 fuel each when moving on roads or rail (trails and rivers are fuel-free) and tolls of 1¤ per distinct rival route owner whose segments they cross (your own segments are free). Fuel is paid from the caravan's own load or from any warehouse node on its path.
• Unladen caravans, Explorers, and Builders always move free — no fuel, no tolls.
• Loading and unloading goods at any point of the move is free.

Whenever your Explorer or Builder moves through wilderness, place trail markers on every hex it crosses. Trails are permanent, free, and usable by all players. This is how the route network begins: your agents tread paths into the land, and the wagons follow.

When your Explorer and Builder occupy the same hex, the Builder pays −1 resource on any building action there (minimum 1 total resource). The Explorer surveys the site and reduces waste.

1. Shared upgrade #19 — Jedediah Wilkes, the Trail Boss (2 Lumber + 1 Leather + 1 Processed Foods + 2¤): gain 1 agent of your choice. ⌈N/2⌉ copies in play. 2. City training: each City-tier settlement may train +1 caravan for any player (3 Grain + 2¤, 1 action, once per City per game).

The map is a frameless hex grid growing organically outward from the Central City.

~25% of tiles bear a printed resource site (its depletion stack is placed when a camp is founded there; stack sizes in the Components doc). Water overlays (placed when drawn with a tile) add a river: the explorer gains 1 Fish, the hex supports river transport, and any camp there produces +1 Fish per round.

Cost: 1 action | Agent: Explorer adjacent to an open map edge.

1. Draw 2 terrain tiles (Prospector: 3). Choose 1 to place adjacent to your Explorer's hex. Or instead: take a tile from the Surveyed Territory row, paying 1¤ to the player who surveyed it (your own tiles: free). 2. Place the unchosen tile(s) face-up in the Surveyed Territory row (max 3 tiles; excess returns to the bottom of the stack). Mark them with your color — they're your surveys. 3. Your Explorer moves onto the new tile automatically (this is not a Move; no trail is laid by this step — the tile is the path's end. Trails are laid by Move actions). 4. Draw 1 token from the community bag. Community token: place it on the new tile. Blank: nothing. 5. Collect: the terrain grant + 1 of the site's resource (if the tile has a site) + 1¤ per already-explored tile adjacent to the new tile beyond the first. During Thaw, double everything collected in this step. 6. If the Frontier Closes marker is revealed, set it on the score track — the endgame is now armed (§22).

(This resolves the old contradiction cleanly: Phase 4 production is for renewables only. If it comes out of the ground in lumps, you dig for it.)

Cost: 1 action | Agent: your Caravan at your camp.

Remove 2 tokens from the camp's depletion stack (Decline season: 1) and load them onto the Caravan (and/or the tile, max 2 on tile). Apply modifiers (Ruthless Exploitation +2, archetype/upgrade bonuses, prestige effects).

Goods sitting on a tile load onto your Caravans for free during any Move action that passes through. Extract is for pulling from the ground, not for picking things up.

When the last token of the last active site of any non-renewable resource is removed from the map: that raw good's printed price permanently rises +3, and all tracked goods using it as an input gain a permanent +2 price floor above their minimum. The frontier remembers what it lost.

• Tier 2 facilities (Sawmill, Smelter, Tannery…) are built in settlement facility slots via Build Structure (costs in Components doc).
• Tier 3 facilities live in the Central City's slots (§12) — and each City-tier settlement may host 1 Tier 3 facility.
• The builder owns the facility. Non-owners may use a facility by paying the owner a usage fee: 2¤ (settlement) / 3¤ (Central City). Owners use their own for free. Fees may be renegotiated in goods by mutual agreement.

Cost: 1 action + inputs + use costs | Agent: none.

Choose any number of facilities you own or rent (pay fees now). Each chosen facility fires once (cards/upgrades can add firings). For each: consume its inputs and its use cost (fuel or food). Inputs and use costs must be present at the facility's location — or anywhere in your warehouse network if the facility's location is one of your network nodes. Outputs appear at the facility.

The Industrialist's passive grants +1 output per owned facility fired.

Every player has a Soot Track (0–10).

• Generating soot: whenever facilities you fire consume fuel as a use cost, advance your Soot Track 1 step per 2 fuel spent (round up) for that Refine action. (Food-cost facilities are clean — note that the luxury trades burn no coal.)
• Thresholds: the first time you reach 4, lose 1 Prestige. The first time you reach 8, lose 1 more.
• Growth limit: you may not take the Upgrade Settlement action while your Soot is 6 or higher. Polluters don't get parades.
• Game end: −1 point per 2 soot on your track.
• Cleaning up: the Scrub Soot action (1 action, Builder at any location where you own a facility or at Central City, pay 1¤ per cube, remove up to 3) — or the Sanitation Works shared upgrade (auto-remove 1 per round).

Buying and selling happen only at market locations: the Central City, any Market Town, and any River Port.

• Selling from the field: a Caravan carrying goods at a market location.
• Selling/buying from storage: if a market location is one of your warehouse nodes, trade directly from network stock — no caravan needed. (Tier 3 goods can't be warehoused, so they always arrive by caravan or are sold where they were made.)
• Purchased goods appear at the market location where bought.

• Raw goods (13 of them) have fixed printed prices. They never move (except Scarcity Cascades). The market drama lives downstream.
• Tracked goods (15 refined goods) each have a sliding price track with printed min / base / max.

One Market Transaction = buy or sell one good type, up to 3 units (Merchant sells up to 5).

All units in a transaction trade at the same (pre-movement) price; the track moves once, afterward.

Selling at a market location 4 or more hexes from the Central City: +2¤ per unit. Distant markets pay for scarcity. (That's the entire distance rule.)

Each Tier 3 good has one printed arrow to one input. When you sell Tier 3 goods (once per transaction, regardless of units): that input's track rises 1 step. Steel→Pig Iron, Glass→Coke, Precision Instruments→Copper Wire, Tools & Equipment→Steel, Luxury Goods→Cloth.

Fulfilling delivery contracts never moves any track.

Camps are your private claims — exclusive extraction rights on a tile. Only the owner's caravans may extract there.

Found Camp: 1 action + 1¤ + resources | Builder at target hex. (Prospector: no ¤.)

\* Mining Camps on a Stone site work like Quarries; the Quarry is cheaper to crew but needs the iron tooling.

On founding: +1 food upkeep, score +1 public point, and +2 public points if it is your first camp of that category. When founding on a site, place its depletion stack.

Abandoning a camp (tax, shortfall, or voluntarily as a free action): remove the token; the site and any remaining stack stay for whoever claims them next. Founding points are not lost.

No refurbishment exists. Camps work until the ground gives out.

Settlements are publicly owned shared infrastructure: anyone with route access may build facilities in their slots and trade there. Founders profit from everything that happens afterward.

Cost: 1 action + 3¤ + resources | Builder at target hex.

On founding: choose 1 of the type's 2 printed specializations (permanent; listed in Components doc) and score founding points by season: Thaw/Boom +4, Hardship +3, Decline +2. Early civilization is worth more.

Place your Charter marker on the settlement you found:

• The bank pays you 1¤ every time another player builds a facility there or uses a facility there (in addition to any usage fee that facility's owner collects). The Crown rewards those who open the land.
• You may reserve one facility slot for yourself for 3 rounds (place a reserve marker).

Upgrade Settlement: 1 action + resources | Builder present | your Soot must be ≤5.

City privileges: may host 1 Tier 3 facility, and may train caravans (§4.6). Any player may perform upgrades, not just the founder — the points go to whoever does the work.

Each settlement costs 2 food per round: 1 paid by the founder, 1 split among facility owners there (most facilities pays; tie or none → founder). A settlement whose upkeep goes unpaid produces nothing and hosts no transactions next round (mark it Struggling).

The shared starting hub. 4 Tier 3 facility slots (3 at 2P). First come, first served — slots are claimed by building.

All Tier 3 facilities: 2 food upkeep to their owner. Non-owner use: 3¤ fee. The Central City is a market location and everyone's free warehouse node. (Note: the Luxury Manufactory burns no fuel — the clean-hands route to Tier 3.)

• Build Route: 1 action + resources, no agent required, extending from any hex containing your route, trail, agent, camp, or the Central City. First builder owns each segment.
• Tolls: 1¤ per distinct rival owner crossed per Move (not per segment). Your own segments are free. The Railroad Baron's Switching Yard raises their tolls to 2¤.
• Roads may be upgraded to rail by paying the rail cost (replace segments).

• Nodes: Central City (free, everyone) + up to 2 built Warehouses (Build Structure: 2 Lumber + 1 Stone, at any settlement or your own camp).
• Free intra-network movement — goods teleport between your nodes; no action, no caravan, no fuel. This is your back-office logistics.
• Tier 3 goods cannot be warehoused. The fine goods travel by caravan, in public, like everything precious.
• No discarding. Goods leave your possession only by selling, consuming, trading, or losing the place they sit.

Every card serves triple duty:

Plus: discard 2 cards = +1 action (once per round). Hand limit 7, enforced at end of round.

Option A: take 1 face-up card from the 5-card market row. Option B: draw 2 blind, keep 1, discard 1.

10 unique, bordered cards shuffled into the deck. Played for ability: removed from the game permanently — each is a once-ever historical moment at this table. Spent as currency/wild: they recycle like any card.

When a Legacy card is dealt into the market row: all players secretly fist-bid currency, reveal simultaneously. Highest bid pays the bank and takes the card; ties break to the tied player earliest in current turn order. Everyone else keeps their bid. (A 0 bid is legal.)

• 20 event cards, zero blanks, pre-sorted into four 5-card season packs (Thaw events fire in Thaw, and so on).
• Events fire in Phase 1 of even-numbered rounds only (six events per game; 2P variant: §23).
• The Event Token holder (the previous round's first passer) reads the card and chooses Option A or B for the whole table. Holding the token is the reward for disciplined passing — spend your actions well and you steer the weather.

Full card list with all A/B options: Components doc.

The frontier is not empty. Trading Posts and Tribal Capitals (drawn from the community bag during exploration) are sovereign neighbors, not resources.

Gaining prestige: +1 per Community Interaction; certain events and upgrades.

Losing prestige: −1 for founding a camp adjacent to a community; −1 at Soot thresholds 4 and 8; −1 per Ruthless Exploitation action; certain events.

Cost: 1 action + currency by prestige | Agent: Explorer or Builder at the community tile.

Ingredients: any mix of Cultural Artifacts and Specialty Materials (special goods: never warehoused with bulk goods, sell flat 5¤ at any market, feed Luxury recipes and certain contracts). Each interaction: +1 Prestige and +1 Favor with that community.

Track Favor 0–3 per community per player. At Favor 3, form an Exclusive Pact: each Production phase you gain 1 ingredient from that community — and no other player may interact with it while the pact stands. A pact breaks (Favor resets to 2) if your Prestige falls below Neutral.

A 4-slot public row, refilled each Market Update. Claiming is a free action (max 2 held; Merchant upgrade: 3). Fulfill as a free action by having the listed goods at the listed destination: consume the goods, collect the printed points + currency. Price-neutral; abandon anytime without penalty. Tier 2 contracts enter the deck at Boom, Tier 3 at Hardship — the frontier's appetite matures.

Five public tiles, 3 points each, claimed permanently by the first player to achieve them:

1. First Rail Link — rail path connecting the Central City to any settlement 2. First Town — first to upgrade any settlement to Town 3. First of the Fine Goods — first to produce any Tier 3 good 4. Frontier Magnate — own 3 camps at distance 4+ from the Central City 5. The Full Chain — in a single round, produce a Tier 3 good and the Tier 2 input it consumed

• Public objectives (3, revealed at setup, scored at game end): most/first-style conditions, 4 points to the leader, 2 to the runner-up (ties: full points to all tied).
• Secret objectives (keep 2 of 3 dealt): revealed and scored at final scoring only.

Trading is free (no action) any time during the Action phase among any players. All trades are public. Verbal promises are non-binding — this is the frontier.

Binding Trade Contracts (free action, max 2 open per player): written, enforceable delivery agreements. Non-delivery penalty: 2¤ per undelivered unit, paid immediately when the deadline round's Upkeep begins.

Overpaid food is not refunded in change — feed wisely. Company store: any food shortfall costs 2¤ per missing food (§3, Phase 3).

Borrow 5¤ (free action, max 3 outstanding; 2 at 2P). Repay 7¤ (free action). Each loan still outstanding at game end: −6 points. Cheap money early, a millstone late — like all frontier credit.

Rounds 4, 8, 12: 1¤ per camp. Can't pay? Abandon 1 camp per unpaid 1¤.

Every starting package ≈12¤ in total value. Camps/Settlements columns are founding limits. Each archetype's 3 unique upgrade tiles cost 1 action + 2¤ + listed resources (Components doc).

Passive: −1 resource per Build Route action (min 1). Start: 4¤ • 2 Iron Ore, 1 Timber • 3 caravans • 4/4 camps/settlements.

Upgrades: Rail Depot (once per round, Build Route costs no action), Switching Yard (your tolls 2¤), Express Line (your caravans pay no fuel on rail).

Passive: your settlements have +1 facility slot, and your Founder's Charter pays 2¤. Agent: Builder moves 3 in wilderness. Start: 4¤ • 2 Grain, 2 Stone • 2 caravans • 3/5.

Upgrades: Land Office (camps −1 resource, settlements −2 resources), Municipal Planning (Towns/Cities you upgrade: +2 points), Revenue Office (your Charter also pays on every sale at your settlements).

Passive: +1 output from every facility you own when it fires. Start: 2¤ • 1 Coal, 1 Iron Ore, 1 Timber, 1 Stone • 2 caravans • 4/4.

Upgrades: Efficient Furnace (−1 fuel per use cost, min 1 — and less soot is the point), Vertical Integration (after Refine, free-load outputs onto your caravans present), Master Engineer (+1 action per round, usable only for Refine or Move).

Passive: Explore draws 3 tiles, keep 1; exploration grants are always doubled (stacking with Thaw for ×4); camps cost no currency. Agent: Explorer moves 3 in wilderness. Start: 3¤ • 1 Timber, 1 Stone, 1 Iron Ore, 1 Grain • 2 caravans • 6/2.

Upgrades: Prospecting Gear (draw 4), Deep Survey (+2 depletion tokens on every site you camp), Claim Stakes (your next 3 camps cost no resources).

Passive: sell up to 5 units per Market Transaction. Start: 8¤ • 1 Grain, 1 Timber • 2 caravans • 4/4.

Upgrades: Market Intelligence (hold 3 contracts; peek the top 3 of the contract deck anytime), Commodity Futures (each Market Update, move any one track 1 step), Trade Empire (buy at listed price, not +1).

Passive: +1 production at your Farms and Ranches. Starts at Good Prestige. Start: 2¤ • 2 Grain, 2 Livestock • 3 caravans • 5/3.

Upgrades: Agricultural Mastery (your food upkeep −2, min 0), Livestock Empire (each Ranch may produce 1 Leather instead of Livestock), Provisioner (sell any quantity of food goods to the company store at a flat 2¤ each, no action).

Stage 1 — The Frontier Closes: triggered when the Frontier Closes marker is drawn from the tile stack or round 12 ends, whichever comes first. Announce it. The stack may still be explored to its end.

Stage 2 — Final Rounds: finish the current round, then play exactly 2 more rounds. Hard cap: round 14 ends the game regardless.

Total = Public Track + End-Game Public + Hidden

1. Most secret objective points → 2. Higher portfolio → 3. Lower soot → 4. The player who triggered Stage 1.

\* 5–6P requires the Outer District module: a tile attached to the Central City at setup providing +2 Tier 3 slots; any player may unlock it (4 Cut Stone, 1 action, +2 points).

2P Market Flux: each Market Update, flip 1 card from the 15-card Market Flux deck: the named track rises 1, the paired track falls 1. Two players can't churn 15 markets alone; the ghost economy does it for them.

Add any combination after your group knows the base game. Component lists in the Components doc.

When any player builds rail, they may issue shares in that line (one certificate per 3 segments). Other players buy shares at 4¤ (paid to the line's owner). Whenever tolls are paid on a line, the bank matches the toll and the total splits among shareholders (round in owner's favor). At game end each share = 1 point + 1¤ portfolio. Turns the toll network into table-wide finance.

Tier 2/3 facilities each require 1 worker meeple (hire: 2¤ at any settlement, +1 food upkeep each). In Hardship, a Labor Demands check each round: every player pays 1¤ per worker or that worker strikes (facility idle) until paid double. The Luxury Manufactory's workers never strike — best wages in the territory. Adds the era's human cost.

A scripted rival company driven by a 12-card deck: it explores along the cheapest open edge, snaps up the most valuable Surveyed Territory tile (denying it), claims one Central City slot at fixed rounds, and scores a printed schedule. Full flowchart in the Components doc. Fixes 2P map sprawl and provides a solo benchmark game.

Three setup cards that pre-seed the tile stack and add a scenario scoring rule: The River Delta (double water overlays; River Ports +2 founding points), The Mountain Pass (mountains cluster in one arc; first rail through the pass: 5 points), The Long Valley (plains corridor; frontier premium starts at 3+ hexes). Replayability with zero new mechanics.

Partners share warehouse networks and pay no tolls to each other, but score separately; final score is the lower of the two partners' totals. The frontier's cruelest scoring rule, and its best teamwork test.

Play three linked games. Legacy cards played for ability go into the campaign envelope — gone for all three sessions. Depleted sites stay depleted: record them, and in later sessions those tiles enter play already exhausted. Campaign winner: most total points across all three. The frontier doesn't heal between visits. That's the whole point of the title.

PHASES: 1 Market Update (event on even rounds; T3 +1 in Boom/Hardship; refill) → 2 Actions (cycle 1-at-a-time; first passer takes Event Token, goes first next round) → 3 Upkeep (food; shortfall 2¤ each; tax rounds 4/8/12) → 4 Production (renewables +1, tile cap 2, semi-renew +1 on rounds 3/6/9/12) → 5 End (check end; hand limit 7).

ACTIONS/ROUND: 3 (2P: 4). Bonus: 2 cards = +1 (1×/round) • Overtime +1 with +2 food (1×/round).

SEASONS: Thaw 1–3 explore ×2 • Boom 4–6 sell +1 • Hardship 7–9 food +1/player • Decline 10–12 extract −1, rivers frozen 10–11.

MOVE: all your agents, 1 action. Explorer/Builder: 2 wilderness (blaze public trails). Caravans: routes only — trail 1 (2 w/ livestock) • road 2 • rail 4 • river 4. Laden on road/rail: 1 fuel; rival segments: 1¤/owner.

MARKET: at Central City / Market Towns / River Ports. Buy or sell, 1 good, ≤3 units. Sell at listed (each unit), then −1/unit (T3: −2). Buy at listed +1, then +1/unit. Frontier premium: +2/unit at 4+ hexes out. Raw goods: fixed prices.

BUILD COSTS: Road 1 Timber+1 Stone per 2 segments • Rail 1 Iron+1 Timber per segment • Warehouse 2 Lumber+1 Stone • Camps ~2 resources +1¤ • Settlements ~6 resources +3¤.

SOOT: +1 per 2 fuel burned in use costs (round up). At 4 & 8: −1 Prestige. At 6+: no settlement upgrades. End: −1 pt per 2. Scrub: 1 action, 1¤/cube, max 3.

LOANS: take 5¤, repay 7¤, max 3. Unpaid at end: −6 pts.

END: Frontier Closes marker or end of round 12 → +2 rounds (hard cap 14). Winning ≈ 65–75.

RULEBOOK • SECOND PROTOTYPE EDITION • RD-26 THROUGH RD-58

The frontier is rich but finite. Spend it well.

All meeple shapes are distinguishable by silhouette alone for color-blind accessibility.

Site tiles ≈ 28% of the stack. Per-player-count pools (35/50/65/80) are drawn blind from the full shuffled set — site density stays proportional.

Placed per the tile's printed river icon when explored (10 of the 130 tiles carry the icon: 4 Plains, 3 Forest, 2 Swamp, 1 Hill) plus 6 placed by event/scenario effects. A water-overlay hex: grants 1 Fish on exploration, supports river transport (capacity 4, free, unlimited distance, frozen rounds 10–11), gives +1 Fish/round to any camp on it, and satisfies "river-adjacent" requirements for itself and its 6 neighbors.

Raw prices never move except Scarcity Cascades (+3 permanently when the last active site of that resource empties).

Design intent: at base prices, refining market-bought inputs roughly breaks even after use costs — the margin lives in vertical integration, the +2 frontier premium, Boom pricing, and demand timing. Tier 3 tracks move −2 per unit sold (thin markets).

Cultural Artifacts and Specialty Materials: gained only from communities. Not warehoused against capacity (keep behind your screen). Sell at a flat 5¤ at any market (no track), feed Luxury recipes, and satisfy specific contracts. 12 tokens of each.

(Soot column = soot generated per firing at the listed fuel use, i.e., ⌈fuel/2⌉ — printed on the tile so nobody computes.)

All T3: 2 food upkeep to owner; 3¤ non-owner usage fee.

RAW            TIER 2                      TIER 3
Timber ──┬──► Lumber ────────────┬───────► Tools & Equipment
         └──► Charcoal(fuel)     │              ▲
Stone ───────► Cut Stone         │              │
Grain ───────► Processed Foods   │   Steel ─────┤
Livestock ───► Leather ──────────┘     ▲        │
Furs ────────► Cloth ──────────────┐   │        │
Iron Ore ────► Pig Iron ───────────┼───┤        │
Coal ────────► Coke(fuel) ─────────┼───┘──► Glass
Copper ──┬───► Copper Wire ────────┼──────► Precision Instruments
         └───► Bronze ─────────────┘
Silica ────────────────────────────────────► Glass
Herbs / Gold / Cultural Artifacts + Cloth ──► Luxury Goods

Categories (for first-of-category +2): Extraction / Forestry / Agriculture — first camp in each of the three categories pays the bonus (max +6 across the game).

Format: Name ×copies (¤ currency value) — ability text. Every card is also 1 wild resource.

Claim free (hold 2; Merchant upgrade 3). Fulfill free with goods at destination: consume goods, gain reward. Price-neutral. "Frontier" = any settlement 4+ hexes from Central City.

Copies per tile: 2P ×1 • 3–4P ×2 • 5–6P ×3.

Each board prints: passive, agent bonus (if any), starting package, camp/settlement limits, soot & prestige tracks, agent staging slots, and 3 unique upgrade slots (1 action + 2¤ + cost; 1 pt each).

Full passive/upgrade texts: Rulebook §21. All packages ≈12¤ at printed prices (verify on change: currency + Σ goods).

• Bag tokens (18): 6 Trading Posts, 4 Tribal Capitals, 8 blanks. Drawn once per Explore.
• Community tiles: when a token is drawn, place the matching cardboard medallion on the explored tile. Communities are never removed and their hex cannot host camps or settlements.
• Favor tracks: each medallion has 6 notches (one per player color) running 0–3; a pact flag slot at 3.
• Ingredient tokens: 12 Cultural Artifacts, 12 Specialty Materials.

Each card names a riser and a faller among the 15 tracked goods (each good appears once as each). Flip 1 per Market Update: riser +1, faller −1. Reshuffle when exhausted.

Pairings: Lumber↑/Coke↓ • Cut Stone↑/Cloth↓ • Charcoal↑/Steel↓ • Leather↑/Pig Iron↓ • Coke↑/Luxury Goods↓ • Processed Foods↑/Copper Wire↓ • Pig Iron↑/Charcoal↓ • Copper Wire↑/Cut Stone↓ • Cloth↑/Glass↓ • Bronze↑/Lumber↓ • Steel↑/Processed Foods↓ • Glass↑/Bronze↓ • Precision Instr.↑/Leather↓ • Tools & Equip.↑/Precision Instr.↓ • Luxury Goods↑/Tools & Equip.↓

15 vertical slider tracks grouped T2 (10) / T3 (5), each printing min/base/max and any demand-link arrow; a fixed-price chart for the 13 raws; the Scarcity Cascade reminder.

Public score 0–100; round track 1–14 with season bands, tax icons (4/8/12), event icons (even rounds), river-freeze icons (10–11); milestone tile slots; public objective slots; Frontier Closes marker slot.

Token supply is intentionally finite — production-tile caps (2) and warehouse caps make shortages rare; if a good runs out, it cannot be produced until tokens return.

Each Trust turn (after all players pass): flip an automa card → (1) it explores the open edge nearest the Central City, taking the highest-printed-value Surveyed row tile if one exists (no payment — it's a trust); (2) on camp icons, it claims the best unclaimed site within 3 hexes of its network (place Trust camp; that site is dead to players); (3) on rounds 4 and 8 it seizes one Central City T3 slot (slot becomes unbuildable). Trust score: 3 per camp + 5 per seized slot + printed round bonuses; beat it to win the solo game.

COMPONENTS SPECIFICATION • SECOND PROTOTYPE EDITION Every number in this document is a playtest hypothesis. Change them when the table tells you to.