How to win

The shape of a game

You start with 10 SV. An objective costs 12 from the Board room that is in session, or 16 from any of the others. So your first objective is somewhere between two and three good things happening, and everything before that is accumulation.

There are three real sources of income. A lap of the floorplan pays 8 on reaching reception. The round-end activity pays between 5 and 2 depending on where you come and how many of you are playing. Payday tiles pay when you land on them. Everything else is weather.

Notice what that means. Laps and activities are the reliable half, and both of them reward turning up rather than luck. The events on the board are the half that decides games between players who are otherwise level, and you cannot plan them. So the plan is to be efficient about the reliable half and defensive about the rest.

Buy early, not big

The most common way to lose is to save. Sitting on twenty-something SV feels like being ahead and is not: a memo can take it, the shareholder deck can take more, and unspent SV wins nothing at the end. An objective, once signed off, cannot be taken back by anything except one card in the whole deck.

So the rule is simple. When you can afford one and you are within reach of a Board room, buy it. Waiting to buy from the in-session room at 12 instead of 16 is worth four SV; going round again and getting hit by the shareholder deck on the way is worth minus everything.

Burnout is a resource, not a warning

Burnout fills to 5 and then you are signed off, you lose turns, and you come back at 2. Read that the other way round: everything up to 4 is free. Points of burnout you never spend are points you wasted.

The practical version. Early in a round, take the risky tile and the overtime. Late in a round, particularly if you are one good turn from an objective, stop: being signed off in the quarter you were about to deliver is the single most expensive thing that can happen to you, because you lose the turns AND you are still carrying the SV that a memo can take off you while you are away.

The activity is where the game is decided

A round ends in an activity, and it pays on rank. At a full table the gap between first and last is most of an objective, every single round. Two consequences follow:

• They are worth learning properly. There are more than thirty of them and they rotate. Being reliably second in all of them beats being first in one and last in the others.
• They cannot be bought. No item helps. This is the part of the game that is skill, which is exactly why it is the part that decides it.

Items: hold, do not hoard

You can carry 3. The cupboard keeps refilling, so an item you never used is a slot you did not have when the good one came up. The two worth saving are the shield and the extra dice: one protects an objective run, the other closes a gap to a Board room on the turn it matters. Everything else is better used the turn after you draw it.

The 1:1

A meeting room puts 8 SV between two people and settles it on the activity. Take it when you are behind and refuse nothing when you are level. Declining is safe and safe is how second place is made.

The two mistakes

Saving for the perfect purchase. Covered above, and it is the big one. Unspent SV is not a score.

Racing the leader instead of the roadmap. The winner is whoever signs off the roadmap first. Spending a turn to inconvenience somebody else is a turn you did not spend earning, and unless it directly stops a delivery, it is a turn you gave to the third player who is quietly doing laps.

What is not skill

The dice. The order of the decks. Which Board room is in session when you arrive. Any guide that tells you how to play those is selling something. What you control is the buying decision, the burnout line, how well you play the activities, and whether you are in position when a Board room comes up.

Read next

The full rules are on how it works. Every card in both decks is on the memo reference, and the roadmap and the cupboard are on objectives and stationery.