Start here
Each round you play a meld — a small run of cards. The meld competes for the trick, and then every card in it becomes something: a settler, a new tile, an attack — or a coin. Win the trick and you act first. Come last and you pocket a coin.
- Card phase. Everyone plays a meld face down, then all are turned over at once. The highest total wins the trick.
- Map phase. In trick order, each player spends their meld card by card — settling units, exploring new tiles, attacking rivals or cashing cards for gold — and takes their free actions: moving, fortifying, and improving their hand.
- Grow. Units leave your board a tier at a time. Each tier you empty lets you play a bigger meld, research a stronger card and hold a taller wall.
When someone has placed their last unit, finish the round, then play one more, and the game ends. Most points wins: one per unit on the map, plus your victory row, plus your two map objectives — small patterns of terrain that score when you hold them.
01 The idea · 02 Components · 03 Setup · ✦ A worked round · 04 The round · 05 Melds · 06 Spending your meld · 07 Free actions · 08 The recycle · 09 Research and trade · 10 The victory row · 11 End of the game · 12 Map objectives · — Glossary · — Quick reference
The idea
In Blink, the cards you play do two jobs at once: they compete for the trick, and they are the budget your civilization spends. A pair is two things done; a run of four is four. You never choose an action separately from the cards.
Behind every card sits one plain question: is it people, or is it gold? Spent on the map, a card settles a unit, opens new ground or strikes a rival — always on terrain matching its suit. Cashed, it is a coin, and coins buy walls and better cards. Gold is tight, and good players cash cards constantly. The player who reads when a hand is people and when it is money — and when to spend a trick rather than win it — comes out ahead.
Components
- 80 civilization cards — four suits (Plains, Forest, Ocean, Mountain), ranks 1–20
- 60 terrain tiles — 15 each of Plains, Forest, Ocean and Mountain
- 80 population units — 20 in each of four player colours
- 4 player boards — each with a reserve of five tiers, a gold area, a victory row of five slots, and spaces for your discard and your shown objective
- 4 player aids — one each: the round, your options and the numbers at a glance
- 12 map objective cards (§12), with their own back
- 40 gold coins — if you run out, treat the supply as unlimited
- 4 initiative markers — one black, three plain: set to finishing place each round, the black marker always 1 for the trick winner, then 2, 3 and 4 in order
Optional modules and expansions are published separately.
Setup
- Split the cards. Divide the 80 cards by rank into a starting deck of ranks 1–11 (44 cards) and an upgrade deck of ranks 12–20 (36 cards), whatever the player count.
- Draft your hand. Shuffle the starting deck and deal 10 cards to each player. Pass 6 to your left, then 4, then 2, each time from the ten cards you are holding — what you kept plus what just arrived. A card kept earlier is not locked in; pass it on if something better comes. The ten you end with are your hand for the whole game. Put the undrafted cards face down in the middle: this is the market (§09) — 24 cards at two players, 14 at three, 4 at four.
- Take a board. Fill its five tiers with your 20 units — 2, 3, 5, 5, 5 from the top. Everyone starts with no gold.
- Lay the starting map shown for your player count, then each player places
one unit from their top tier on the Plains nearest them — their homeland. Every layout follows three rules:
one Mountain per player in a single block in the middle;
one Plains per player around it, each touching exactly one Mountain;
and no two starts closer than three tiles.
Cards only act next to your own civilization, so nobody can reach a rival's homeland in the opening rounds. The fight for the middle — the Mountains — comes first.
- Tile supply. Sort the remaining tiles into four open piles by terrain, face up. Every tile laid during the game comes from here.
- Innovation space. Shuffle the upgrade deck face down and deal nine cards face up in a 3 × 3 grid beside it (§09).
- Map objectives. Shuffle the twelve objective cards and deal two to each player. Show one face up on your board and keep the other hidden (§12). Return the rest to the box unseen.
- First player. Choose a start player. They take the black marker, set it to 1, and lead the first round.
To skip the slowest part of the opening, each player places two units from their top tier on their homeland in step 4 instead of one. That empties the Tribe tier before the first card is played, so everyone begins at Settlement: melds of up to three cards, research up to 14 and a wall of 12. Nothing else changes. The worked round below uses the standard start.
A worked round
Three players — Ada, Bex and Cy — play their first round. Read it for the shape of a turn; every rule used here is set out properly in the sections that follow.
Setting up
They draft their hands of ten; fourteen starting cards are left over and go face down as the market. Each loads a board with twenty units and lays the three-player map — three Mountains in a triangle, a Plains beyond each outer face — putting one unit on their own Plains. The upgrade deck deals nine cards into the innovation space; with a Tribe's rank cap of 12, only the 12s there are within reach for now. Each is dealt two map objectives and shows one. Ada starts, with the black marker set to 1.
The card phase
Everyone's meld limit is 2. Ada lays first, face down, then Bex, then Cy. All anyone sees is the count: two, two, one. Then they turn them over together:
- Ada: 5 of Plains + 6 of Plains — a run, total 11.
- Bex: 8 of Mountain + 8 of Ocean — one rank twice, total 16. Suits do not matter in a meld.
- Cy: a single 4 of Mountain, total 4.
Nobody has a victory card yet, so nobody declares. Bex wins the trick with 16 against Ada's 11 and Cy's 4. The markers are set — Bex takes the black marker, to 1, Ada's to 2 and Cy's to 3 — before anyone touches the map, the trick's dues are settled clockwise from Bex. Cy's meld ranked last, so he takes 1 gold. Then Ada, holding as many cards as Bex played and having lost, sets one of hers aside. It pays her 1 gold. Cy played only one card to Bex's two, which is already fewer, so he owes nothing further.
The map phase
Both of the trick's debts are already paid, so Ada now has only one card left to spend. They act in initiative order: Bex, then Ada, then Cy.
- Bex spends both cards. The Mountain beside her Plains is in reach, so her 8 of Mountain settles a unit there — Mountain holds one, so it is hers alone. Her 8 of Ocean explores: she picks an empty space beside her civilization that touches at least two tiles, and lays an Ocean tile from the supply.
- Ada spends her one remaining card, the 6 of Plains, to settle a second unit on her homeland, which holds three.
- Cy could settle the empty Mountain beside his homeland, but he cashes his 4 for a second gold instead: he is saving for research.
Each card spent also carried one movement — two for Bex, one each for Ada and Cy — but everyone's units already stand where they want them, so nobody moves.
Look at the reserves. Bex and Ada have now each placed both units of their Tribe tier, so they are Settlements: next round they may play melds of three and research up to rank 14. Cy is still a Tribe. Nobody's reserve is empty, so play goes on, and Bex leads the next round.
One meld did two jobs for each player: it fought for the trick, then became the budget they spent on the map. Bex won initiative and a full turn; Cy's cautious single let him bank gold instead. That trade — tempo now against resources later — is the whole game in miniature.
The round
Every round has two halves. First everyone plays cards; then everyone spends those same cards, in the order the cards decided.
Your tier
Your board holds your 20 units in five tiers — 2, 3, 5, 5, 5 — and you always take units from the topmost tier that still holds any. That is your current tier, and it sets three numbers: the meld you may play, the highest rank you may research, and the wall your fortifications hold at.
| Tier | Units | Meld limit | Rank cap | Wall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tribe | 2 | 2 | 12 | 10 |
| Settlement | 3 | 3 | 14 | 12 |
| Kingdom | 5 | 4 | 16 | 14 |
| Empire | 5 | 5 | 18 | 16 |
| Civilization | 5 | 6 | 20 | 18 |
Read only the row you are on — nothing is cumulative. Empty a tier and all three numbers step up together, at once. Growing costs nothing; if units come back to your board (§06), the numbers step back down.
Card phase
- Lead. The leader lays a meld from their hand face down: one or more cards, up to their meld limit, forming an unbroken run of ranks (§05).
- Follow. Clockwise, every other player lays a meld of their own, face down, one or more cards, up to their own limit. You may not pass, and nothing has to follow what was led. All anyone sees is how many cards each player laid.
- Reveal. When the last meld is down, everyone turns theirs over at once.
- Declare. Starting with the leader and going clockwise, each player may spend one card from their victory row on its A effect (§10), adding its rank to their total. You can see every meld and every earlier declaration before you decide.
- Compare. The highest total — the ranks of the meld added together, plus any A effect — wins the trick. If totals are equal, the meld with more cards wins; then a tie-winning A effect; then whoever spent the higher victory card on A; then the highest card, then the second-highest, and so on; and finally the meld laid earlier. There is never a tie.
- Set the markers. Four initiative markers, one per player, are each set to the seat's finishing place: the winner takes the black marker, always set to 1; the rest take plain markers set to 2, 3 and 4. This is the initiative order for the map phase, and the black marker is how the table spots the leader at a glance. Each player keeps their marker in a corner of their board until their turn is over.
- Resolve the trick's dues. Clockwise from the winner, before anyone touches the map: the player whose meld ranked last takes 1 gold. Everyone holding as many cards as the winner played, or more, sets cards aside — one at a time, their choice — until they hold fewer than the winner did. Each pays 1 gold instead of acting and goes face up into its owner's discard. A player owed both coins takes both.
Map phase
Every forced discard is already settled by the time the map phase opens, so each player's meld is exactly what they will spend. In initiative order, each player takes their whole turn before the next begins: spend the cards of your meld (§06) and take your free actions (§07), in any order you like. None of what you set aside is lost: it sits in your own discard and becomes part of your hand again at the recycle (§08).
When everyone has finished, the trick winner leads the next round.
Melds
A meld is one or more cards whose ranks form an unbroken run — every rank from your lowest to your highest must be present. How many cards you hold of each rank does not matter, and suits do not matter at all. One card is always a legal meld.
If you know rummy or poker, set that vocabulary aside: there are no straights, sets or full houses, only runs, and duplicates inside a run are free.
Your meld limit is a ceiling, never a quota. A short meld is a real line, not a failure: it still reaches the map card for card, and losing with fewer cards than the winner costs you nothing at all.
Spending your meld
Take the cards of your meld one at a time, in any order you like, and do one of four things with each: settle, explore, attack or take gold. Each card resolves fully before the next, so a tile you lay with one card can be settled by the next.
Every card except one taken as gold obeys two rules:
- Reach. The card acts on a single cell next to your civilization: a tile you occupy, or a tile or empty space adjacent to one you occupy. Cards of one meld need not act near each other.
- Suit matches terrain. A Forest card acts on Forest, an Ocean card on Ocean, and so on.
The four terrains differ in two ways. Holds is how many units a tile can take: Plains 3, Forest 2, Ocean 1, Mountain 1. Defence is added to a defender in a fight: Plains +0, Ocean +0, Forest +1, Mountain +2. Defended ground is moulded taller, so a glance at the map tells you how hard it will fight.
Losing your last unit does not end your game. While you have no units on the map, your cards ignore the reach rule and may act anywhere on the map. The exemption ends the moment one of your units is back on it.
Settle
Put one unit from your reserve on the tile — always from the topmost tier that still holds any. You may stack your own units on a tile up to what its terrain holds. Drawing down your reserve is how your civilization grows, and how the game ends (§11). With no unit left in your reserve, the card takes gold instead.
Explore
On an empty space, lay a tile of the card's suit from the supply instead. No unit goes down — settle it with a later card, or leave it as open ground.
A new tile must touch at least two tiles already on the map. The map grows as one compact body; there are no bridges into open table. If that terrain has run out of the supply, the card takes gold instead.
Attack
A tile a rival occupies cannot be settled. Spending a card on it declares an attack instead, and the attack is a duel.
- Attack. Your attack is the rank of the card you spent. You commit nothing else.
- Defence. The defender may answer with one card from their hand, of any suit, face up — or decline. Their defence is that card's rank plus the terrain's defence; a card not committed counts as nothing. If the tile is fortified, the higher of the wall and their card defends (§07).
- Compare. The higher total wins. A level total goes to you — unless the defender's card is also of that terrain, in which case they hold. (Your card always matches the ground; that is how it got there.)
- You win: one defending unit falls back. Its owner moves it to
an adjacent tile they already hold that has room, and chooses if there are several. With
nowhere to go, the unit goes home to their board and refills their current
tier — or, if that tier hasn't lost a unit yet, the tier before it, reopening it
so the owner's numbers step back down (§04). Either way, it costs them
at most one tier.
If that was the last unit on the tile, the ground changes hands: place a unit from your reserve on it and take 1 gold from the supply. With no unit left in your reserve, the tile is simply left empty, and pays nothing.
They win: nothing happens. Your card is spent.
Cards used in the duel go to their owners' discards. Clearing a tile holding several units takes one won duel per unit, and the coin comes only with the last.
Ocean and Mountain hold one unit each, so one you already occupy has no room to spare: a retreat can only reach Plains or Forest. And a unit with nothing of yours beside it has nowhere to fall back to at all — a lone outpost goes home.
Your cards fight for the trick, pay for your turn — and defend your ground. A hand played down to its last cards is a frontier with nobody on the walls, and everyone at the table can count your cards.
Take gold
Instead of using a card on the map, take 1 gold. Any card, any number of them — a whole meld can be cashed. It is not a fallback: gold buys walls, research and trade.
Free actions
Besides your cards, your map phase offers actions that cost no card. Take them whenever you like during your turn, between card plays or after them:
- move your units, and once a turn take the water advantage;
- fortify your units with gold;
- research or trade, up to twice a turn between them (§09);
- spend a victory card on its B or C effect (§10).
Movement
Each card of your meld carries one movement — including cards cashed for gold, but not a card you set aside. Lay three and you may make three moves this turn. A movement need not be spent by the card that paid for it. Each move takes one of your units:
- By land — through any chain of tiles you occupy, and onto a tile beside it that is unoccupied, or yours and has room.
- By sea — a unit standing on Ocean may sail across unoccupied Ocean, as far as the open water reaches, to an empty Ocean tile.
Movement is never an attack: you may not move onto or through a rival. You may empty a tile by moving its last unit away — an empty tile is nobody's, and your neighbours will notice.
The water advantage
Once per turn, a unit standing on Ocean may sail out onto a new Ocean tile. Lay an Ocean tile from the supply on an empty space that touches the water the ship could sail through — its own tile, or unoccupied Ocean joined to it — and move the unit onto it. This uses one movement and no card. The space must touch at least two tiles, like any explore, but it does not need to be in your reach.
That is the difference between a voyage and a card: a ship pushes the charted sea outward, so a later card can act on ground it could not reach before. It never brings you ashore — real Plains, Forest or Mountain still takes a card of that suit.
Reaching the water is an ordinary land move, so the advantage usually costs two movements: one to put a unit out to sea, one to sail. A single-card meld can only take it with a unit already waiting on the water.
Fortify
Pay 1 gold and place the coin on one of your units on the map — at most one coin per unit. The coin stays until a fight spends it or the unit is disturbed: moved, or stacked onto by another unit (which strips every coin on that tile). A coin on a unit never comes back to your gold.
A coin on a unit is a wall, and a wall fights. When the tile is attacked:
- The coin defends at your tier's wall (§04) plus the terrain's defence, and it counts as a card of that terrain.
- It is a floor, not a substitute: you may still answer with a card from hand, and if that card is higher, it fights instead. If it is not, it stays in your hand.
- The attacker still spends one card. Beat the wall and the duel is won: a defender falls back, and the ground changes hands if that was the last of them.
- The coin goes to the supply either way. One coin, one attack made much harder.
The starting deck tops out at 11, so a dealt card can break a Tribe's wall only on Plains or Ocean — an 11 against 10 — and never on Forest or Mountain. Every higher wall needs a researched card. You cannot fortify in answer to an attack, because attacks come on someone else's turn: a wall is a read on your neighbours, paid for in advance.
The recycle
Your hand is ten cards, and nothing you play ever leaves you: every card goes to your own discard. When your hand is empty and every card of your meld has been resolved, your hand recycles — at once, in the middle of your turn:
- Collect your income: 1 gold for each of your map objectives, shown or hidden, whose pattern you hold right now (§12).
- Pick up your whole discard as your new hand — ten cards — and carry on with your turn. You never draw cards to refill.
If you spend your last card defending on someone else's turn, you recycle as soon as your own meld is resolved — or at the end of the round, if your turn has already passed.
Only research and trade ever change which ten cards you hold (§09). A hand drifts because you paid to make it drift, never because the deal moved underneath you.
Research and trade
Two piles of cards sit beside the map:
- the innovation space — nine face-up cards from the upgrade deck in a 3 × 3 grid. Research reaches into it.
- the market — the face-down pile that began as the undrafted cards. Trade reaches into it.
Up to twice per turn, during your map phase, you may improve your hand: research twice, trade twice, or one of each. The first improvement of a turn costs 1 gold, the second costs 2, whichever kind it is.
Research
- Draw the top card of the upgrade deck and place it face up on the grid position showing the highest rank, covering it (if tied, the first in reading order). Nobody chooses; a covered card is out of reach until the one on top of it is taken.
- Retire the lowest-ranked card in your hand to your victory row (§10). If you hold several of that rank, choose which suit. With no card in hand you cannot research.
- Pay — 1 gold, or 2 for your second improvement this turn — and take any visible card at or below your rank cap (§04). Put it into your hand, to use this cycle, or your discard, so your hand runs out and recycles sooner.
- Refill any empty grid positions from the deck. Once the deck is empty, positions stay empty.
Draw first, then look. If nothing on the grid is at or below your rank cap, the research ends: the drawn card stays, and you retire nothing and pay nothing. It still counts as one of your two improvements — the deck has moved — but because you bought nothing, your next one this turn still costs 1.
The rank cap only limits what you take. A card you already hold is yours to use whatever your tier. And because research always retires your lowest card, your victory row is a record of what your civilization outgrew: 3s and 4s early on, perhaps a 12 by the end.
Trade
Where research reaches up — a stronger card, paid for by retiring your weakest — trade reaches sideways: two cards for two, no rank gained and nothing retired.
- Draw the top two cards of the market into your hand, blind. There must be at least two.
- Pay — 1 gold, or 2 for your second improvement this turn.
- Bury any two cards from your hand — the two you drew, two you already held, or one of each — face down at the bottom of the market. Your hand is back to its size.
The draw commits you: once you have seen the two cards, you must bury exactly two. The market is never shuffled after setup, so what you bury comes back up in its own time, in somebody's trade.
The victory row
Every card you retire by research goes to your victory row: five slots on your board, filled from the right. A card there does two jobs. It scores at the end of the game (§11), and until then it can be spent once on one of three printed effects.
The row holds at most five cards. Retire a sixth and the lowest of the six goes to the bottom of the market — even if that is the card you just retired. A full row never stops you researching.
Spending a victory card
Every card prints three effects, growing with its rank. Spend a card on one of them, then put it at the bottom of the market: your row shrinks, and your score with it.
| Rank | A · after the reveal | B · your map phase | C · your map phase |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–5 | Add this card's rank to your total | Found a colony — 1 new tile of this suit, 1 unit on it, fortified | 2 gold |
| 6–10 | Add its rank, and win ties | Found a distant colony — as above, up to 2 tiles out | 3 gold |
| 11–15 | Add this card's rank to your total | Open a frontier — 2 new tiles of this suit, 1 unit on one of them, fortified | 4 gold |
| 16–20 | Add its rank, and win ties | Two colonies — 2 new tiles of any terrain, 1 unit on each, both fortified | 5 gold |
- A is declared in the card phase, after the reveal (§04). It counts only toward winning the trick, never toward what you spend on the map. "Win ties" places you ahead of an equal total with the same number of cards (§04).
- B is used in your own map phase. Lay the new tile or tiles from the supply and settle a unit from your reserve on however many of them the table gives a unit for — one tile only for the 11–15 band, every tile for the others — fortifying each of those units with a coin from the gold supply. Each tile is an explore: it must touch two tiles and lie within your reach — or, for the 6–10 band, up to two tiles out. You need at least one unit in your reserve and a tile of the right terrain in the supply; lay what you can.
- C is taken in your own map phase, at any point in it.
A, B and C share one allowance per round: at most one victory card leaves your row each round, whichever effect it pays for. Declare A and you may not also found a colony or take C's gold this round, and so on.
The same five slots are your score, your war chest and your trick insurance. High cards score best — and their effects are also the strongest, so the card you most want to keep is the card you most want to spend.
End of the game
One trigger, and you can see it coming from across the table: if, at the end of a round, any player's reserve is empty — all twenty units on the map — play one more full round. Then score.
| Score | |
|---|---|
| Population | 1 point per unit you have on the map. |
| Victory row | 1 point per card in the row. In addition, lay the cards out in rank order pushed to the right of the five slots: if you hold three or more, also score the rank in the centre slot. |
| Map objectives | 2 points for each arrangement you hold of each of your two objectives, shown and hidden (§12). |
| Your victory row | Laid out in five slots | Scores |
|---|---|---|
| 2 cards — 9, 17 | · · · 9 17 | 2 |
| 3 cards — 6, 9, 17 | · · 6 9 17 | 3 + 6 = 9 |
| 4 cards — 6, 9, 14, 17 | · 6 9 14 17 | 4 + 9 = 13 |
| 5 cards — 6, 9, 14, 16, 17 | 6 9 14 16 17 | 5 + 14 = 19 |
With fewer than three cards the row pays only its point per card; the third card is where it starts paying properly, and the fifth is where it pays best.
Most points wins. If tied, the tied player with more gold wins; if still tied, share the victory.
Map objectives (§12) are part of the base game, but you may leave them out of a first game — the rest stands without them.
Map objectives
The only points in the game that reward the shape of what you hold, not its size.
Each objective card names three tiles: a middle of one terrain, and two ends that each touch the middle. The ends need not touch each other, so a bend counts exactly as a straight line does.
- All three must be tiles you occupy — at least one of your units on each. An empty tile, or one held by a rival, never counts.
- The terrains must match exactly. Fjord is Ocean between two Mountains; two Oceans around a Mountain is Mountain Lookout, a different card.
- An objective scores 2 points for each arrangement you hold at the end: 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. Holding none costs nothing.
- While you hold it, an objective also pays 1 gold at each recycle (§08) — one coin per objective, however many arrangements.
There are twelve objective cards. You are dealt two after the starting map is laid, so they reward where you go, not where you began. Show one and keep one. Showing tells the table what you are building — and which single tile would break it.
Hold your hidden card with your hand of cards — it is not one of your ten, and its different back keeps it apart — so you can check it after every tile you place. Keep your shown card face up on its space on your board, where everyone can read it without asking.
Other ways to play it
Show one is the standard game. Agree on another mode before setup if your table prefers.
| Mode | Setup | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Show one (standard) |
Deal two to each player after the starting map is laid. Show one face up on your board; keep the other hidden. | Half declared: the table can see one shape you want, and guess at the other. |
| Secret | Deal two to each player before the draft. Keep one, hidden; return the other unseen. | The tightest. Nobody knows what anyone is building. |
| Open | Turn two face up in the middle. They belong to everyone. | The most contested — everyone wants the same shapes. |
| Keep both | Deal two to each player and keep both hidden. | The loosest: two shapes to steer between and nothing declared. |
In every mode, hidden objectives are revealed together at the end, after the rest of the score is counted.
Without objectives, ground is ground. With them, a particular empty space beside your Forest is suddenly worth exploring specifically. They are worth steering toward when the map offers them — but many players end with none, so they are never worth wrecking your position over.