The Pioneers Program Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Game Overview and Aim
• Resources
• Key Components
• Setting Up
• A Game Round
  • Step 1: Actions
  • Step 2: Maintenance
  • Step 3: Turn Order
  • How Many Rounds?
• Example Town
• Winning
• Other Rules
  • Response Tokens
  • Dice Rolls & Attack Cards
  • Attack Cards
  • Special Effects, Activations and Discards
  • Playing Cards
  • Raids
  • Headquarters
  • Town Size
• Round Overview
  • Step 1 Actions
  • Step 2 Maintenance
  • Step 3 Turn Order

Game Overview and Aim

The aim of the game is to gain victory points. These can be gained in different ways such as attracting personalities to your town, upgrading your HQ, performing special actions or by completing research projects. Players may choose to expand rapidly by building structures but need to ensure they have enough food production to feed everyone and enough military power to defend their growing town. Others may take a slower approach exploring the wastes or making plans to enable them to respond to whatever the world has left to throw at them.

Resources

Players can gain:

• Food
• Credits
• Response tokens

A player can store a maximum number of resources in their resource pile dependent on town size (see Town Size on page 7):

• Small town: 6
• Medium town: 8
• Large town: 10

Certain cards can also store resources, the type of resources that can be stored are specified on the card. For example the Grain Silo (pictured right) can only store food.

Key Components

Player Mat

These include:

1. An area for your HQ
2. Where to place structures, items/personalities and your survivor
3. Reference info
4. Possible actions
5. Resource pile (certain cards can also become an extension of your resource pile).

The player mat and cards played 'in town' form your town.

Survivor Card

A new survivor is selected each round during Step 3, each survivor has:

1. Survivor number for turn order, highest first
2. Name
3. Combat modifier (added to dice rolls)
4. Special skill

Structure Cards

Players start with a Small HQ (see page 7). Other structures are found in the market deck and can be bought and played in Step 1 (see page 5).

Structures played in town are placed in a row to the right of your HQ.

Each structure may have:

1. Structure name
2. Production
3. Maintenance cost
4. Special effect

Market Deck & Waste Deck

Cards can be purchased from the market or drawn from the waste deck as an action in Step 1 (see page 5). Cards are taken into a player's hand and can then be played for one response token. Played personality and item cards are placed face up in a row to the right of the resource pile on the player mat.

Project Deck

There are always two project cards face up for players to research. All project cards have one victory point.

Each project card has:

1. Name
2. Benefits
3. Project value

Multiple players can place research tokens on a card (see 4. Research on page 5) but when one player has a number of their research tokens on the card equal to the project value they place the card underneath their player mat, take its benefits and all research tokens on it are returned to the respective players. A new card is now drawn from the research deck to replace the researched card.

Note: Completing the Arc's research projects is a way to win favour and gain victory points, remember to move your victory marker when claiming one.

Here, Purchasing Power and Way of the Wastes are available to research. Toby (the Green player) has placed three research tokens on Purchasing Power, while Odin (the Red player) has placed two research tokens on it. Odin has placed three tokens on Way of the Wastes, along with Gordon (the Blue player) who also has three tokens.

Setting Up

Each player chooses a player mat, which determines their player colour.

Place the matching coloured small HQ card on each player mat, this is the first structure in their town, take the player token and research tokens of the same colour as the HQ and play mat.

On the board form the market by placing six cards from the market deck to its right hand side, face up. Place the turn, round and victory point markers at the start of their trackers. Shuffle the alarm tokens and place them face down on round 5, 6 and 7. Place two project cards face up above the market.

Players begin with two credit and two response tokens in their resource pile (on your player mat).

Players randomly draw a survivor card. The player with the highest survivor number, will take the first action, then the next highest and so on.

Note: A survivor's special skill has no effect in the first round.

Each player draws three cards from the market deck and two from the wastes deck, they each pick one and can keep it in their hand or play it into their town for free, (cards can only be played for free in the set up) event and attack cards cannot be played during set up. Next pass the other four to the player on their left. All pick one from the cards passed to them by their neighbour and then pass them on again. The third time they pick one card and the remaining two unpicked cards are discarded.

In this example, the players have completed setting up and commence their first round with Step 1: Actions.

Gordon (the Blue player) will take his action first as he has the highest number on his survivor card. Odin (the Red player) will take the second action, as his survivor card is next highest, leaving poor Toby (the Green player) until last.

A Game Round

Three steps form a game round; actions, maintenance and turn order.

Step 1: Actions

Players have two turns each, taking their first in order (determined by survivor number, highest first). They may make one of the four actions as well as play any number of cards from their hand at a cost of one response token per card (even cards gained this turn can be played). They can also upgrade their town or activate any cards during their turn.

Then once everyone has had a turn they move the turn marker to two and take their second turn in order (they can make the same action again). Some game effects allow additional turns and these are also taken in order, a maximum of three turns can be taken in Step 1.

4 possible actions or a pass

1. Market

Pay in credits for a card from the market at the following costs from closest to the market deck 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 and take it into your hand.

2. Wastes

Take the top card from the wastes deck into your hand.

3. Plan

Take response tokens based on your town size (see Town Size on page 7):

• Small town: 3 response tokens
• Medium town: 2 response tokens
• Large town: 1 response token

4. Research

Small towns pay one response token and place a research token on their chosen project. Medium towns can pay up to two response tokens and large towns up to three to place the equivalent research tokens.

• Small town: 1 response token = 1 research token
• Medium town: 1 response token = 1 research token, or 2 response tokens = 2 research tokens
• Large town: 1 response token = 1 research token, or 2 response tokens = 2 research tokens, or 3 response tokens = 3 research tokens

Pass

On your turn before doing anything else you may place your player token on the nearest available slot to the market deck. Your turn is over and you may not take another turn this round following a pass.

At the end of Step 1 when no further turns are available, if a card remains in the last slot (cost 0) of the market discard it, then (whether there was a card left in the last slot or not) all remaining cards in the market are moved to the right and the empty slots are replenished from the market deck. Return the turn marker to one.

Note: Market cards are only replenished at the end of Step 1.

Step 2: Maintenance

Cards in your town may have a production and or maintenance cost (See Structure Cards on page 3, cards in the player's hand do not count). These are the food, credit or response tokens that they produce or require to be spent in maintenance.

1. Take the resources your town produces from the central stores and create a production pile, this is seperate from your resource pile and has no limit.
2. Food (remember response tokens can be used in place of food tokens) can now be sold or bought, one trade per player per round, with the central stores at the following rates:

• 3 food for 1 credit
• 5 food for 2 credit
• 7 food for 3 credit
• 1 credit for 2 food

Note: You can only trade during Step 2.

3. Choose whether to pay the maintenance costs of a card by placing the required tokens on it. These can come from the production pile or your resource pile.
4. If you don't or can't pay a card's maintenance cost then it is immediately removed from your town. Resources placed on cards for maintenance are now returned to the central stores.
5. Any resources left in your production pile can now be placed in your resource pile if there is space or discarded.

Note: Remember to place tokens spent on maintenance back into the central stores.

Step 3: Turn Order

In order players place their player token under the nearest available slot to the market deck (if they haven't already), then return their survivor cards. Players now choose a new survivor card in an order based on the player tokens, nearest to the market deck first, and take back their player token. Then move the round marker to the next round on the round tracker.

How Many Rounds?

At the start of the fifth, sixth and seventh round an alarm token is flipped over. When the Arc alarm is revealed the next round will be the last and the game will end.

For example, at the start of the sixth round if the Arc alarm is revealed then round seven will be the last round.

The game may also end earlier if a player meets the winning conditions (see Winning on page 6).

Example Town

1. This town produces 4 food: HQ=1, 2 Farms=2, Pig Pens=1. It also produces 2 response tokens: Theresa=1 and Training Grounds=1; and 1 credit: Medium HQ. These are placed in the production pile.
2. The player now chooses whether to trade food with the central resources. They trade 3 food for 1 credit leaving them with 1 food. They must now pay maintenance.
3. They pay their remaining 1 food towards the Training Grounds' maintenance costs and also deduct a credit from their production pile. This would leave them without a food token for Theresa's maintenance costs. They would ordinarily have to use a response token in the place of a food token or discard her but as they have an RV they do not have to pay her maintenance costs.
4. The maintenance was paid for all cards and so none are removed from the town. Tokens placed for maintenance are returned to the central resources.
5. The remaining 2 response tokens and 1 credit are added to the town's resource pile.

Note: There are better rates for selling more food, saving up to sell at once generates more credits.

Winning

Certain cards or special actions will provide victory points (see 1 on the card to the right) whilst in your town, which can be lost if the card is removed from your town, and other cards' special effects may provide you with a permanent victory point.

Each time a player gains a victory point their victory point marker is moved up the score tracker, if they lose a victory point their marker is moved back down the score tracker. If another player's marker is there first it is stacked on top, the player who's token is furthest along the score tracker and on the bottom is the winner if the game ends.

The first player to get a combined total of four and still have them at the end of the same game round is the winner and the game is over.

Note: Even if players get to four in the same round and still have them at the end of the same game round the winner would be the player to get them first.

Other Rules

Response Tokens

Can be spent whenever applicable to:

• Replace a food token
• Play a card from a player's hand
• Before a combat roll to add a +1 modifier per response token spent
• Perform a reroll (must reroll all dice)

Dice Rolls & Attack Cards

Dice rolls use two D6 dice and are made when players play an attack card on an opponent (see right). Their role is now over and the defender must try to equal or exceed the difficulty number on the card.

Each survivor has a combat value, this is a modifier that is applied to the defending player's rolls.

Before a roll the defender calculates any modifiers to the roll and decides whether to play or activate any cards (remember, it costs one response token to play a card from the hand).

The defender also chooses whether to spend response tokens to modify their roll: +1 per response token.

Rolls plus modifiers that equal or exceed the difficulty are a success and nothing happens; those that are below the difficulty a failure and the outcome of a failure as detailed on the card are followed.

Attack Cards

Attack cards can have:

1. Name
2. Difficulty
3. Outcome of a failure

Special Effects, Activations and Discards

Most cards' special effects are always in effect. Others can be activated during a player's turn, multiple times unless stated and some cards must be discarded to activate an effect. Event and attack cards are discarded once they have been resolved.

Playing Cards

Cards can only be played during your turn in Step 1: Actions (see page 5) and cost one response token to play.

There are some item cards however that can be played at different times as denoted on their card. Certain item cards can be kept in the hand, secret from other players, and played when needed, for instance Reinforced Walls could be played from the hand the moment of losing a structure to prevent it happening (a response token is still needed to play it).

Raids

Raids are a slightly different dice roll involving two players and are resolved, when a player plays a raid or planned raid on an opponent, as follows:

1. Defender spends any response tokens for a +1 modifier and plays or activates any cards.

2. The defender now rolls, may use any rerolls and adds their modifiers, this is the difficulty for the attacker.

3. The attacker now spends any response tokens for a +1 modifier and plays or activates any cards.

4. The attacker now rolls, may use any rerolls and adds their modifiers.

5. If the total of the attacker's roll and modifiers equals or exceeds the difficulty number set by the defender they can: a. Choose a structure to discard from the defender's town.

   or

   b. Choose two resources from the defender's town's resource pile and put them in their own.

Note: In raids the defender sets a difficulty for the attacker. Then the attacker tries to equal or exceed that difficulty number.

Headquarters

Headquarters cannot be discarded from a town. HQs can only be upgraded during your turn in Step 1. They may be upgraded dependent on the town's size:

• A small HQ can only be upgraded once its town reaches medium size or larger.
• A Medium HQ can only be upgraded once its town reaches large size.

The HQ is unaffected if a town reduces in size.

The HQ card shows:

1. Name
2. Production
3. Player colour (card borders)
4. Special effect

Town Size

The size of your town is determined solely by the number of structures in it, including your HQ.

Town Size	Small	Medium	Large
Structures	1-4	5-6	7+

Note: Town size is determined by the number of structures in it, not by the current level of HQ upgrade.

Round Overview

Step 1 Actions

• Take a turn in order making a single action, play or activate any number of cards including HQ upgrade.
• Repeat for a second turn. If any players get a third do these in order.
• Replenish the market and replace the turn marker.

Step 2 Maintenance

• All players calculate production.
• Trade or store food (one trade per player per round in Step 2 only).
• Decide whether to pay maintenance for cards in your town or discard them.

Step 3 Turn Order

• In order place player tokens (if haven't already).
• Return survivor cards.
• Select new survivor cards in player token order (nearest to market deck first).
• Take back player tokens.
• Move the round marker to the next round on the round tracker.

The printed index (page references only) is omitted from this transcription.