Once the base game feels familiar, add this layer. Every player is dealt a secret goal for the shape of their world — a river running down from the highlands, a range of peaks, a stretch of coast — and spends the game quietly steering their expansion toward it. The map stops being a place to spread and becomes a place to compose.
Setup & scoring
- Deal two, keep one. Shuffle the objective cards and deal two to each player, face down. Look at both, keep one, and return the other to the box unseen. Choose before the card draft if you can — the objective you keep should inform the hand you build.
- Keep it hidden. Your objective stays secret for the whole game. Nobody is told what anyone is chasing.
- Reveal together. At the end of the game, after the base score is counted, every player turns their objective face up at the same moment and adds its points if they completed it.
An objective pays 2 points for every arrangement you hold, and nothing if you hold none. Count each tile of the middle terrain that has both its ends beside it: a tile may serve as an END for more than one arrangement, but each middle pays once. There is no penalty for failing. Every pattern is exactly three tiles, and every tile must be one you occupy — a tile with at least one of your units standing on it. Empty tiles, and tiles held only by a rival, never count.
Every objective pays 2 points for every arrangement you hold. For scale, a finished game usually scores somewhere between twenty and thirty. Two cards pay about 1.3 points a player over a whole game, and slightly under half of all players score nothing at all from them — so an objective is a shape worth steering toward when the map offers it, and never worth wrecking your position over.
All twelve ask for the same thing in different terrain: three tiles you occupy in a chain, the middle one touching both ends. They are alike in shape so that the choice you make when you keep one is about your hand, not about which card is easiest. If you drafted Ocean, the Fjord and the Lookout are close; if you drafted Plains, the Mountain Pass is.
Seeking bots across 58–116 games per card put all twelve between 29% and 65% achieved under the current placement rules — the tightest spread this deck has tested at. Foothills and Watershed are the two easiest, both around 65%; Sheltered Water the hardest, at 29%. Which one is close for you depends on the hand you draft far more than on this spread — deal-two-keep-one means the choice is which chain fits what you already hold.
Twelve cards is enough for four players to be dealt two each with four still unseen, so no table ever sees the whole deck.
Your objective is secret; your map is not. Every chain uses ordinary, useful ground, so the early tiles of one look like plain expansion — but the third tile is the tell. A rival who guesses right can settle the space you needed, and a chain broken at the last tile is worth nothing. Build the ambiguous end first.
The objectives
Foothills
Where the stone gives way to soil.
A mountain, next to a forest, next to a plains.
Watershed
Every drop from here reaches the sea.
A mountain, next to a plains, next to an ocean.
Highland Rivers
Snowmelt finds its way down.
A mountain, next to a forest, next to an ocean.
Fjord
Deep water between two shoulders of rock.
A mountain, next to an ocean, next to another mountain.
Mountain Pass
The one way through, and everyone knows it.
A plains, next to a mountain, next to another plains.
Coastal Chain
Two shores and the water between.
A plains, next to an ocean, next to another plains.
Clearing
Open sky in the middle of the wood.
A forest, next to a plains, next to another forest.
Mountain Lookout
One peak, and the sea on either hand.
An ocean, next to a mountain, next to another ocean.
Riverbank
Soft ground, and everything grows.
A plains, next to a forest, next to an ocean.
Timberline
The last trees before the rock.
A forest, next to a mountain, next to another forest.
River Delta
Where the water spreads and slows.
An ocean, next to a plains, next to a forest.
Sheltered Water
Wooded on both sides, calm between.
A forest, next to an ocean, next to another forest.
Going further
Two variants once the layer is second nature:
- Open objectives. Deal two face up beside the map, shared by everyone, each player scoring it if they build it. A gentler, more readable game — good for teaching the patterns.
- Keep both. Deal two and keep both, each still worth its full value. More points in play and a broader target, at the cost of some focus.