Europe Imagined

Explore a realm of dreamed European places. Claim its locations, overcome its Legends and outwit rival Explorers. Renown is scored as events happen. At game end, add Atlas, Legend-Hunter and Relic bonuses. Highest Renown wins. There is no elimination, random booster purchase, hidden resource total or retrospective route optimization. This electronic prototype runs locally in a browser with no account.

The electronic game contains four named Explorers and their four 20-card decks; 28 Legends; 32 locations plus Wayfarer’s Gate; eight permanent claims per player; numeric Lantern, Reserve, Renown and lifetime Legend tracks; round and action-use indicators.

Lantern and Renown totals are not capped at eight, ten or fifty. Current-turn Lanterns and Reserve are kept separately. No physical components or printing are needed.

Hands and deck order are private. Hand size, party, exhaustion, Relics, pawn positions, claims, Renown, current Lanterns, Reserve and lifetime Legend counts are public. Face-down Legend identity is private as described below; its tile and presence are public. The picture-is-the-board pillar means unambiguous road exits, types and visible game state, not face-up hands.

1. Place the Gate in the centre. All pawns start there. It has four exits, no location type, no Legend, no Renown, and cannot be claimed or rotated.
2. Each player selects an Explorer and that Explorer's 20-card starter deck. Put the starred signature Companion into play Ready. Shuffle the other 19 cards and draw five. Start with zero Renown, zero current Lanterns and zero Reserve. Take eight claim markers.
3. Shuffle the 32 location tiles. With two players, remove T06, T11, T13, T15, T16, T28, T29 and T31 first; 24 remain. Reveal three as the Discovery Row. The remainder is the Discovery Deck. Set aside a location discard area.
4. Shuffle all 28 Legends together as the Legend Deck. Set aside a public retired-Legend area; Legend cards never enter personal decks or personal discard piles.
5. Set round 1. Lantern Levels by round are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8.
6. Randomly choose the first Gate-key holder. Set all lifetime Legend counts to zero.

Starting with the Gate-key holder, players each take one turn clockwise. At round end pass the key clockwise to the next player and advance the round. Finish after round 8, or at the end of the first round in which the Discovery Deck becomes empty, whichever comes first. A final-round flag, once set, stays set. Empty means the last tile leaves the deck, even if there are still tiles in the Row. Every player still gets their one turn in that round.

DAWN
Reset all players' per-actual-turn usage marks; retain once-per-round marks until the round advances. Return your old Reserve to spent supply; it does not add to this turn's Lanterns. Ready your exhausted Companions except where a specific ongoing restriction still applies. Take the current Lantern Level. Draw one card, or Rodrigo's two. Resolve other Dawn effects after these steps, in your chosen order. From round 3 onward, draw one additional Underdog card if your Renown is strictly lower than every rival's at Dawn; a tie for lowest gives no Underdog card. Extra Dawn draws stack.

ACT
Take any number of legal actions in any order, subject to costs, timing and limits below. You may stop at any time, even if you could act. Finish one action and its triggers before starting another. No player must Explore.

DUSK
Resolve any remaining end-of-turn effects, then discard to your hand limit. Keep up to your Reserve limit from your unspent current Lanterns. Return the rest to spent supply. Turn-duration bonuses expire. Reserve cannot be spent during your own turn and unused old Reserve was lost at Dawn. You may choose to keep less than your limit, including zero.

TRAVEL — 1 Lantern per step. Move to an edge-adjacent tile through matching road exits. Any number of paid steps is allowed.

SAIL — normally 2 Lanterns, or 1 if you own the departure or destination Harbour. Move from the Harbour or Wonder your pawn occupies to any DIFFERENT Harbour or Wonder on the map. Ownership is not required; it affects discounts only. Wonders count as Harbours for the entire Sail action, including eligibility, costs and prohibitions, but remain Wonders for claims, type bonuses, Atlas and other non-Sail effects. No road connection is required.

You may Sail at most ONCE during your turn, from all sources combined. Free Sails, Fair Wind, Explorer powers, Companions and Relics consume this same allowance. No effect bypasses it unless a future rule explicitly changes the cap. Sail is not permitted outside your own Act phase. Travel and Stride are not Sail. Cost reductions never make a cost negative; when multiple effects set a Sail cost, use the lowest applicable cost. A prohibition on Sail overrides a permission or discount. Count the use only when a legal Sail actually happens.

EXPLORE — 1 Lantern. From the tile occupied by your pawn, choose a road exit facing an empty grid space. Take a Discovery Row tile and rotate it so its exit matches that road. Place it in the space and move onto it. Other touching edges may mismatch. Refill the Row to three or as many as remain. If the new tile has a Legend icon, draw ONE Legend onto it; a Wonder's +2 Might reminder modifies that one Legend, not the number of Legends. Look at the drawn Legend: if it is a Trickster, only the discovering player looks, then places it face-down. Other Legends are face-up. Placement triggers and movement-entry triggers resolve after the tile, pawn and Legend are in position. Legends do not bar entry or onward exploration.

RECRUIT — pay a Companion's printed Lantern cost and put it from hand into your party Ready. Party limit is four, or five for Sigrún. If full, dismiss a current Companion before recruiting. An ordinary dismissed Companion enters its owner's personal discard pile. A dismissed tamed Legend enters the public retired-Legend area, not any deck. Resolve recruitment triggers after entry. Taming is not recruiting; “when recruited” does not trigger on taming.

MANEUVER — pay the printed cost, resolve the card completely, then discard it. Most Maneuvers are Act actions. Boost and Meddle cards instead use their combat windows below. A resolving card is not yet in the discard pile and cannot shuffle into its own draw effect. Pay costs before benefits. You cannot play a card that requires a mandatory named action if that action has no legal target or its allowance is already used. Turn the Hour is a specific exception: pay 1 Lantern, optionally make one free legal Reroute within your normal allowance, then draw 1 whether or not you Reroute. You may decline the Reroute; the card remains playable if no legal target or allowance remains. Boarding Party requires a legal destination, a legal rival Duel and enough Lanterns for its card and declaration costs before play. Resolve other instructions as far as possible only after a legal play; an optional instruction may be skipped if explicitly optional. A draw, Ready or movement instruction does not itself create an extra action window during combat.

CLAIM — pay the current tile's printed Renown. It must be unclaimed and Legend-free, and you must have a claim marker available. Place it, gain that tile's Renown, and resolve claim effects. Forged Charter waives only the tile's Renown payment, not its own card cost or these conditions. Claims never change hands, return to supply or block passage. You cannot claim a rival's tile, or reclaim your own for points.

CHALLENGE — 0 action cost. Face the Legend on your tile, at most once per particular Legend per turn. Declaring consumes that attempt even if you abandon. You may challenge different Legends in one turn if you reach them and can act.

DUEL — 0 action cost before modifiers. At most one Duel declaration as attacker per turn, including one granted by Boarding Party. Target a rival on your tile whose current Renown is equal to or greater than yours. This Honour check occurs at declaration. Pay any declaration surcharge, such as Night Watch of Wien, now. Defending does not consume your own-turn attack allowance.

REST — 0 Lanterns, once during your turn, while on a Shrine. Choose either Ready one eligible exhausted Companion or draw one card. Forest Hermit also permits this same Rest action on a Forest; it does not grant a second use. Cantor replaces the effect of your single Rest with two resolutions, choosing Ready or draw separately for each. It does not trigger additional Rest actions.

REROUTE — 2 Lanterns, once during your turn. Rotate one unclaimed, Legend-free tile with no pawn on it by 90, 180 or 270 degrees. All tiles must still connect to the Gate afterward through roads. Never rotate the Gate. Ilse pays 1 and may include a tile with a Legend, but still not a claimed or pawn-occupied tile. Thousand Clocks Keeper sets the cost to zero and raises your total allowance to two Reroutes that turn. Turn the Hour optionally grants a free Reroute, not an additional allowance; its draw still happens if you do not Reroute. Illegal rotations are undone without cost or triggers. A legal rotation counts even if it changes no connection.

Tiles lie on a square grid. Connections require a shared full edge with a road exit on each side. All exits inside a tile connect. Diagonals never connect. Cards do not move except for rotation; scroll the map to reach additional locations. Pawns may share spaces and freely pass through claims and Legends.

If your current tile has NO exit facing an empty grid space, Explore is unavailable. Do not discard the Row under the map-refresh rule. You may Travel toward another frontier, use a legal Reroute, take another action or end your turn. If there is at least one such open exit but none of the available Row tiles fits at any of those exits, you may once per turn discard the available Row to the location discard area and reveal up to three replacements. This refresh costs no Lanterns. Do not recycle discarded location tiles. The Doge's Cartographer is a separate printed once-per-turn ability and does not require a blocked placement; its refresh also uses the finite deck and can trigger the final-round flag.

The map can seal. If no Explore is currently legal anywhere, normal Travel, Sail, Reroute, combat and other actions remain available; there is no forced Row burn, invented road, extra turn or immediate ending. Players may pass their Act phase. The ordinary eight-round or deck-empty ending still applies. Record positional locks and fully sealed maps in the tests; handling them deterministically does not establish that they are fun or balanced.

If the Discovery Deck is empty, refill only with any remaining tiles, leaving a short or empty Row. Existing Row tiles may still be explored in the final round; an empty Row makes Explore unavailable. No location discard is reshuffled.

When a personal draw is required and the personal deck is empty, shuffle that player's personal discard pile into a new deck. If both are empty, skip only the impossible draw. Resolve multi-card draws one card at a time. Missing cards do not create debt. When asked to discard more than you hold, discard all you hold; “discard down to N” never makes a player draw up to N. The affected player chooses their discards unless specified otherwise.

The fixed set has at most 14 Legend-icon tiles, so its 28-card Legend deck cannot empty through ordinary exploration. If it nevertheless is empty when instructed to draw, skip the impossible draw and flag a setup/rules error in the record. Do not recycle earned, retired or unresolved Legends. Looking at the top N cards uses only cards actually present and changes no deck-empty flag.

Only Lanterns explicitly committed directly to a fight add +1 Strength each. Lanterns paid for an action, declaration surcharge or card do NOT also add Strength or Might. For example, paying 1 Reserve for Whispered Rumor raises Might by 2, not 3. Paying 1 for Lantern Flare gives its printed +2, not +3.

Your current Lanterns pay your own-turn actions and combat. Reserve pays only during other players' turns: Meddle, Duel defence and effects explicitly naming Reserve. A defender pays their Boost card costs from Reserve. A rival cannot lend Lanterns or cards to the challenger. Gaining Lanterns on your own turn adds to current Lanterns, not Reserve. Paying a Renown cost requires the full amount: Faust's Contract cannot be activated at zero Renown. Losses imposed by Curses stop at zero, but zero is not a waiver of an activation cost.

A Companion must be Ready to commit its Strength. Committing turns it sideways; a Companion cannot commit twice to the same fight even if later readied. Its printed Strength modifiers count only when it is committed. Explorer and Relic combat modifiers apply without committing a Companion. “Legends only” and “Duels only” restrict commitment. A Ready Berserker must be committed to every Duel its owner fights; an exhausted Berserker cannot be committed.

Exhaustion does not switch off passive text, triggered abilities or permitted activated abilities. Reserve-limit bonuses, Sail restrictions, Toll, card-draw triggers and similar text continue while exhausted. Explicit “Ready” requirements and effects that keep a card exhausted override this general rule. Unwind the Mechanism keeps its target exhausted until that owner's next Dawn; ordinary Ready effects cannot ready it before then. Remove that restriction at that Dawn before readying it normally.

An unqualified activated “once per turn” ability may be used only in its controller's Act phase. An ability explicitly mentioning a Challenge or Duel may be used in its relevant window, including defence, once in each actual player's turn. A trigger saying “after” or “when” resolves each time its specified event occurs unless capped. “Once per rival Challenge” resets for each distinct declaration; Lorelei's once-per-round Meddle resets only when the round advances. Track usage publicly with a small mark beside the card. Ready does not reset uses. If a Relic changes hands, its spent use stays spent until the relevant turn or round ends. Action limits belong to the player, not to individual cards.

No generic interrupt or response stack exists. Unless explicitly permitted in a combat window, activated abilities and ordinary Maneuvers wait for your Act phase. Resolve simultaneous mandatory triggers in clockwise order starting with the active player; each controller chooses the order of their own triggers. Finish them before the next action. A triggered card must be present immediately before its triggering event to see it: Huldra does not draw for its own entry, but an existing Huldra draws when another Legend is tamed. A newly stolen Relic cannot retroactively modify the Duel that stole it. Recalculate ongoing party and Reserve limits when their sources leave; if necessary dismiss down to the party limit or return excess Reserve immediately.

Ghost Ship of Lisboa's successful Sail trigger grants +1 to each Challenge or Duel its controller fights for the remainder of that turn. It does not create a Boost card or a Sail action. With the global Sail cap it cannot accumulate from repeated sailing. Tilting Lance's +2 is a continuous modifier against Legends on Castles and Wonders, not a repeatedly activated Boost.

1. Declare a Challenge against the Legend on your tile. Mark that Legend attempted this turn.
2. In clockwise order from the challenger, each rival has one Meddle window. They may play legal Meddle cards, use explicitly permitted Meddle powers and spend Reserve directly for +1 Might per Lantern. Card costs are separate. Across ALL rivals and sources, added Might is capped at +3 for this Challenge. Do not commit direct Reserve beyond the remaining cap. A card with a larger printed bonus may still be paid in full, but only the remaining amount applies and the excess is lost. No refunds. Once each rival has acted or passed, close Meddle; no return window.
3. Flip a face-down Trickster. It stays face-up afterward, whether overcome, failed or abandoned. The original discoverer was allowed to look when placing it; later private looks require card text.
4. The challenger now chooses either abandon or commit. Abandon spends none of the challenger's combat resources, gives no Curse, but consumes the attempt. Rivals' Meddle expenditures are not returned. Or commit selected Ready Companions, direct Lanterns, permitted combat abilities and Boost Maneuvers, in an openly declared total. You may play multiple affordable Boosts. Normal Act actions cannot interrupt this window.
5. Compare total Strength against printed Might, plus the Wonder's +2 if applicable, plus Meddle. Equality succeeds. There are no dice or later surprise responses.

SUCCESS
Gain the Legend's printed Renown and +1 if it was overcome on a Forest. Increase your public lifetime Legends-overcome tally by one, permanently. Claim the tile without paying its Renown cost if it is unclaimed and you have a marker; gain its Renown and claim effects normally. With no marker, the tile remains unclaimed but you still receive Legend rewards. Resolve claim triggers. Take the Legend's lower-band reward; it is not a choice between Tame and Relic. A Tame joins your party exhausted; dismiss a current Companion first if required. A Relic enters your public Relic area. Resolve reward-event triggers. The upper encounter band no longer acts. No new Legend respawns on the tile.

FAILURE
All committed costs and exhaustion remain. Apply the printed Curse, resolving instructions in printed order. The Legend stays face-up on the tile. If told to exhaust N Companions, the affected player chooses up to N Ready Companions and exhausts them; already exhausted ones do not absorb the instruction. Other missing resources are handled as above. Resolve failure triggers after the Curse. No second attempt against this Legend this turn.

The encounter is informed resource commitment, not a hidden failure gamble: after Meddle and reveal, a player may abandon free. Choosing to fail may be tactically possible. This rule is deliberately preserved from 0.2; the tests must establish whether it produces satisfying tension.

1. Declare a legal target sharing your tile, check Honour, pay declaration surcharges and mark your one attack used. Resolve declaration triggers such as the Pied Piper before commitment.
2. Attacker commits selected Ready Companions and direct current-turn Lanterns openly. Apply mandatory Berserker commitment. Lock this selection; no more Companions or direct Lanterns may be added later.
3. Defender commits selected Ready Companions and direct Reserve Lanterns, then may play affordable Boost Maneuvers and explicitly fight-timed abilities. Their selection is then locked. Ordinary Act Maneuvers are not responses.
4. Attacker may now play affordable Boost Maneuvers and explicitly fight-timed abilities, but cannot recruit, Ready, move, add Companions or add direct Lanterns. There is no second defender response.
5. Compare final totals. Higher wins; tie goes to defender. Castle Stronghold gives its owner +1 for each owned Castle on the fight tile or edge-adjacent to it; diagonal tiles do not count and a road connection is not required for this support. It applies even with no committed Companions.

Winner gains 2 Renown and any applicable win bonuses. If the attacker wins, choose ONE: steal one actual Relic from the loser; force the loser to retreat one legal road step to a tile chosen by the winner; or have the loser discard two cards. Do not choose theft when the loser has no Relic or retreat when there is no legal step; the discard option remains available even with fewer than two cards. Never steal a tamed Companion, Explorer, claim or historical Legend credit. A defending winner instead sends the attacker one legal road step of the defender's choice, if possible. There is no extra theft/discard choice for a defending win. The loser then draws one consolation card. Resolve remaining after-Duel triggers, including Clockwork Knight readying after defence.

RETREAT
Retreat is forced road movement, not Travel or Sail: it costs no Lanterns, never consumes the Sail allowance, and does not trigger “after you Sail”. It DOES trigger entry effects such as Toll. A Duel retreat is exactly one connected edge step, never an arbitrary adjacent disconnected tile. A Curse's affected player chooses the retreat route. For a printed two-tile retreat, take two connected steps without revisiting a tile; if two are impossible, take one, and if none are possible remain in place. An inability to retreat does not change the fight result or refund anything. Pawns, claims and Legends do not block retreat. Forced movement does not open another Duel or Challenge window.

Village — claim cost and Renown 1; Market draws two on claim.
Forest — claim cost and Renown 1; always begins with a Legend; Hunting Ground adds 1 Renown for overcoming a Legend here.
Harbour — claim cost and Renown 2; two of six begin with a Legend; Sail eligibility and ownership discounts.
Bridge — claim cost and Renown 1; Toll gives its owner 1 Renown each time a rival enters.
Shrine — claim cost and Renown 2; two of four begin with a Legend; any visitor may Rest under the global limit.
Castle — claim cost and Renown 3; always begins with a Legend; Stronghold as above.
Wonder — claim cost and Renown 5; always one Legend at +2 Might; counts as a Harbour only for Sailing.

Toll triggers once per actual entry by a rival, including Travel, each Stride step, Sail and retreat. Remaining in place, rotating a tile, claiming it under an existing pawn or looking at it is not entry. Multiple sources giving one tile Toll do not duplicate the same Toll. Troll's Toll replaces a Bridge's normal award with 2; it does not add an additional 2. An earned claim stays even after its owner leaves. Effects requiring a Harbour for claim bonuses do not count Wonders.

EXPLORER REFERENCE
Ilse Varga, the Lamplighter: Reroute costs 1 and can affect Legend-occupied tiles without pawns or claims. Signature Clockwork Finch draws one after a Reroute. Hand 7; Reserve 3; party 4.
Teodoro Marés, the Tidewalker: Sail costs 1, or 0 if he owns departure or arrival Harbour; global once-per-turn cap still applies. Claiming a Harbour gives +1 Renown. Signature Lantern Gull draws one after Sail. Hand 7; Reserve 2; party 4.
Sigrún Hallvard, the Huntress: +1 Strength against Legends; party limit 5. Signature Grey Hound of the Hunt has Strength 2, +1 in Forests when committed. Hand 7; Reserve 2.
Rodrigo Valdés, Keeper of the Burning Library: draw two at Dawn; claimed Shrines and Castles give +1 Renown. Signature Marginalia Imp, once per actual turn during its owner's Challenge or Duel, can discard a card for +1 to that fight. Hand 8; Reserve 2; party 4.

After the final round's last Dusk, add:
• Atlas: +1 per different claimed type, plus +3 if all seven types are represented.
• Legend-Hunter: if the highest LIFETIME Legends-overcome tally is at least 1, award +3 to every player tied at that highest tally. If everybody has zero, nobody receives this bonus. This is the explicit 0.2.2 amendment; positive ties are unchanged.
• Current Relics' end-game effects, such as Dragon's Hoard. A stolen Relic's end-game reward belongs to its current holder, not its original finder.

Highest Renown wins. Ties break by lifetime Legends overcome, then number of current claims, then shared victory. Taming, dismissal and Relic theft never transfer or erase lifetime overcoming credit. Scores may decrease from Curses but never below zero. No end-game route tracing occurs.

In 0.2's round-three example, Sigrún commits Hound 2, Huldra 2, Troll-Child 3 and her Explorer's +1 for 8. Ilse's Whispered Rumor costs one Reserve and raises the Golem from Might 8 to 10, not 11. Two directly committed Lanterns bring Sigrún to 10. She overcomes the Legend, claims its Castle and reaches 9 Renown as described. She has two current Lanterns left and may reserve them, but for this example voluntarily keeps zero at Dusk.

Teodoro later attacks on that Castle with Oarsman 1, Gull 1 and one direct Lantern: Strength 3. Sigrún's Companions are exhausted and she has zero Reserve, but her owned Castle gives Stronghold +1. The comparison is 3 against 1, not 3 against 0. Teodoro wins, gains 2 Renown, chooses her legal one-road-step retreat, and Sigrún draws one card. The earlier outcome and Renown totals are unchanged.

Human playtests are still needed; automated rules checks do not test enjoyment. A finite, consistently ruled game is not yet a balanced or enjoyable game. Watch sealed maps, free-abandon incentives, permanent Relic strength, late-turn complexity, uneven Explorer tempo, zero-cost effects and kingmaking through finite Tolls. Do not assert that Might 9 cannot fall before round 5: a favourable Sigrún opening can beat it in round 2. Nor does the tile exit mix guarantee expansion. Balance targets remain hypotheses; change one deliberate lever at a time after observing games, except a clearly recorded repair that is necessary to finish play.