Fields of Arle

Half-year sequence: alternate summer and winter for nine half-years, each with preparation, work and inventorying. In two-player play, take turns by month placing one worker at a time, four each. Resolve an empty seasonal action space immediately, or forgo that worker’s action.

Seasons and initiative: only one worker between both players may use the opposite season per half-year; that player’s opponent starts the next half-year. If nobody does so, starting player changes automatically. Pay the Laborer cost to imitate an occupied current-season space using your own tools and possessions.

Tools and construction: action yields and processing limits often depend on your relevant tools. Actions such as Master improve tool tracks by paying their costs. Fields, forests, stalls and buildings require available empty land and the relevant cost; placed landscape tiles cannot be freely relocated.

Reclamation and peat: moving dikes unlocks land only when a new complete horizontal line of three dikes forms above the old line. Dehydrate a moor section and add four peat, then cut the peat. Removing its last peat immediately removes the moor tile and opens the land.

Vehicles and travel: loading during work costs no worker and must fit vehicle spaces. Process wood and clay, paying one peat for clay, or turn fabrics into clothing. Processed goods remain unavailable until inventorying. A destination immediately sells at least one listed item for food, and each destination is usable once per game.

Summer inventorying: empty vehicles, milk, harvest and pay sustenance, in that order. Each field yields one grain or flax, each forest one wood; sheep and cattle yield food according to their numbers. Pay three food and two peat. Missing food uses grain, then animals; missing peat uses wood or timber. Each unresolved shortage costs two points.

Winter inventorying: empty vehicles, breed, shear and pay three food. A stall with exactly two matching animals produces one; a stable with two, three or five produces one, and four produces two. Outdoor animals do not breed. Newborn sheep count for shearing; food shortages use the same substitutions and penalties as summer.

Final scoring: after the ninth summer inventory, total processed goods, barn equipment, travel, tools, goods-track and home-board points, subtracting undeveloped-land and shortage penalties. No large vehicle costs three points. Animal types score two, one and zero points each from least to most numerous. Highest score wins; a tie goes to the hypothetical tenth-half-year starting player.