Everything you need for your first war on Meredin. Four steps per turn, twelve rounds per
game, one winner.
The goal — three ways to win
Dominance: start your turn controlling 13 of 25 territories. You must hold the lead through a full round of enemy turns — no drive-by wins.
Conquest: be the last nation standing.
The clock: if nobody wins by the end of round 12, highest Victory Points takes it — 2 per territory, 3 per complete region, 1 per port,
and 3 per sea lane your warships hold.
Your turn — the four steps
Each turn walks through four steps, always in the same order. You may pass Muster, Move, and
Regroup. The short version: get paid, plan your whole turn, then fight what you started.
1 · Muster — collect gold, build your forces
Collect income (see Gold below). Unspent gold banks forever.
Buy any units you can afford. Land units deploy to any territory you control; ships deploy
to a friendly port.
New units are fitting out: they can defend but cannot move, load onto a
transport, fire, or bombard until your next turn begins. No buy-and-blitz.
2 · Move — every move on the board, nothing fights yet
All movement happens here, land and sea together — drag a piece where it goes, or tap it
and then tap the destination. Each piece moves once (Armor's two-hop friendly move still
counts as one).
A transport can load land units from an adjacent friendly territory, then sail — load
before you move it, never after. It carries 2 slots (Armor takes both).
Moving into a space held by an enemy — a hex with their ships, or a territory with their
troops — declares a battle there. Nothing is rolled yet: the piece just stops
and the spot is marked pending. You can send in more of your own units before the turn ends,
and everyone you sent fights as one force.
Unloading onto an enemy or neutral shore is a landing — it joins that territory's
pending battle as a separate contingent that can't retreat later. Unloading through a sea hex
that's still a pending naval battle waits on that fight first.
Ships that moved or loaded can't repair this turn (step 4).
3 · Battles — fight what you declared, one roll at a time
You choose which pending battle to fight next. Each battle plays out one round — one roll
— at a time; after the dice land, you choose Continue or Retreat before the next roll.
Retreat sends home whatever can retreat: units that marched in go back where they came
from; units landed by transport can't re-embark and stay to fight on. Ships always
withdraw together as one fleet. Defenders never retreat — they fight to their own standing
orders.
A landing is locked until the sea battle escorting it is won — clear the water before your
troops can go ashore. Lose that sea fight and the landing is called off; survivors stay
aboard.
Win a battle and, by default, surviving attackers can push one more space before the next
battle is picked — a game setting your host can turn off.
Capturing needs a surviving attacker to occupy. Take an enemy's capital while they still own it and you plunder half their banked gold.
4 · Regroup — consolidate and repair
One free redeploy: move any number of land units from one territory to one adjacent
friendly territory.
Ships sitting in a friendly port that did nothing all turn repair 1 hull, free.
Then the turn passes. After the last seat's Regroup, the round counter ticks.
Combat in one minute
Land: both sides roll one die per unit each round, hits land simultaneously,
cheapest units die first. After the dice land, you decide live — Continue or Retreat — instead
of setting a rule in advance.
Sea: heavies (Cruisers, Dreadnoughts) fire first each round, then the light
ships; hits go to the biggest hull first. Damaged ships turn crippled — fewer
dice, slower — before they sink. Transports never fire and are screened while any warship protects
them.
The sea gates the shore: a landing can't fight until the sea battle escorting
it is won. Lose that fight and the landing is called off — survivors stay aboard, the invasion
never happens.
All dice are rolled on the server and every roll is shown in the battle log — what you see
on the board is exactly what happened.
Reading the board
Map symbols
Port. An anchor on an ocean hex marks a port hex — the only
place ships can be built or repaired, by whoever controls the port territory it belongs
to. An anchor after a territory's name (Avenport ⚓) marks the territory as a
port: +1 gold and +1 VP.
Sea lane. A diamond on a shaded ocean hex is a trade lane. Park any
warship on it (transports don't count) and it pays +3 gold every turn and +3 VP at the clock. The ocean's gold mines.
Strait. The two land territories on either side count as adjacent — armies
may march across. Enemy warships sitting in the strait hex block the crossing.
Attack target. A solid outline with crossed swords means moving your selected
units here declares a battle — fought later, in the Battles step.
Move target. A dashed outline with chevrons means your selected units can move
there freely.
Staged order. You've queued an order involving this spot but haven't submitted
yet. Nothing is real until you press submit.
Capital. The gold crown badge beneath a territory's name marks a nation's
capital. While its own nation holds it: +1 gold per turn. Capture it while they still own
it and you plunder half their banked gold. The crown never moves, even if
the territory changes hands.
The six nations
Every nation is marked three ways — color, flag glyph, and fill pattern — so no two are ever
distinguishable by color alone. Each nation's capital carries the gold ♔ badge on the map:
▲ Crimson — capital Avenport
● Azure — capital Fenholm
★ Gold — capital Oria
■ Emerald — capital Tarnwater
◆ Violet — capital Kessa
✚ Slate — capital Braemoor
· Neutral — no capital, no ambitions
Army counters
▲ 5I 2A 1R
Crimson's army here: 5 Infantry, 2 Artillery, 1 Armor. The letters are the unit classes: Infantry, Artillery, aRmor. Zoomed all the way out the
chip compacts to a diamond showing just the total.
▲ 3I…
A dashed border and trailing … mean units are fitting out — bought this turn, can defend but not act until their owner's next turn.
Fleet markers
● 🚢 ×3
A fleet is a ship silhouette in its owner's color at the hex center: the flag glyph to
port, ×N ships to starboard. Hover (or select the hex) for the full class
breakdown — BB Dreadnought · CA Cruiser · DD Destroyer · CT Corvette · TR Transport. Zoomed close, the classes appear under the hull; zoomed out, the fleet compacts to
a flag disc.
+2 ▼…
Status marks sit in fixed corners: +N top — embarked cargo (if the
transport sinks, they drown); ▼ bottom — crippled (damaged past the
threshold: fewer dice, slower; repair in a friendly port); … bottom — fitting
out.
⚔
Engaged. Zoomed out, a hex where two fleets have met shows a single dashed
battle ring — zoom in to see both sides.
Units at a glance
Army
Unit
Cost
Attacks on
Defends on
Notes
Infantry
2
5+
5+
Cheap line troops; 1 transport slot
Artillery
4
5+
4+
Shore battery vs landings; 1 slot
Armor
5
4+
5+
Moves 2 through friendly land; 2 slots
Navy
Ship
Cost
Move
Salvo
Hits on
Hull
Notes
Corvette
4
4
1
5+
1
Cheap screen
Destroyer
6
4
2
5+
2
Light phase
Cruiser
9
3
3
4+
3
Heavy phase — fires first
Dreadnought
12
2
4
4+
5
Heavy phase — fires first
Transport
5
3
—
—
2
Carries 2 slots; never fires; screened
Gold — where income comes from
Source
Gold per turn
Each territory you control
+1
Each port territory (extra)
+1
Your own capital, while you hold it (extra)
+1
Each region you fully control
+2 or +3
Each sea lane holding your warships
+3
Sea lanes pay the same +3 in Victory Points at the clock — the ocean is worth fighting for.
Last things to know
Lose your final territory and you're eliminated — fleet, army, and treasury all
go down with the flag.
Turn timers: run out of time and your turn passes itself. Three timeouts and an
admiral-of-the-watch (AI) takes your seat.
Empty seats at game start are crewed by AI captains with their own styles.