Endless Winter: Paleoamericans

Objective and structure: Play four rounds, each representing a generation. Rounds one to three have Action, Eclipse and Preparation phases; after the fourth Eclipse, proceed directly to final scoring. Add final points to those already earned. The highest total wins, with ties going to the tied player ahead in final turn order. The fixed action count makes immediate efficiency and recurring Eclipse rewards central to development.

Setup: Prepare the Main, Animal, Idol and Megalith boards and the Terrain map. Sort Tribe cards into five types and Culture cards into Era I and Era II decks; initially display eight Era I Culture cards. Each player takes a personal board, Chief, two Tribe figures, starting cards, Camps, Villages and Megaliths, then gains the benefits on their Setup card. Shuffle the starting deck and draw five cards. Complete player-count and turn-order setup using the retail manual’s diagrams.

Turn sequence: Optionally play Culture cards first. The first requires no extra discard; for every card beyond the first, discard one additional hand card. Resolve each card immediately. Then place one available Chief or Tribe figure on a Main-board Action Column or your personal Rest space. Discard the cards played this turn afterward, without a normal hand refill. On your third turn, secretly select cards from your remaining hand for your Eclipse pile; unselected cards remain in hand.

Columns and Labor: The four columns are Initiate, Develop, Migrate and Hunt. Resolve top, middle and bottom in that order. Top actions may be repeated by paying their costs, or skipped; the middle action is available once. Only the first figure to reach a column’s bottom this round receives its bottom reward. Later figures may still use the column. Tribe cards generate Labor; spending Food moves its marker left and generates Added Labor for icons crossed, rather than a universal one-Food-for-one-Labor exchange.

Cards and Sacred Stones: Initiate’s top action buys different types of Tribe cards with Labor and Tools; newly gained Tribe cards cannot immediately generate Labor that turn. Its middle action can gain a Tribe card and bury a card by paying Food. Develop’s top action gains Culture cards, while its middle action takes a Sacred Stone after paying the personal-board placement cost. A player holds at most three Sacred Stones, which cannot be removed. Era I restricts the available Stone area, and Stones score during Eclipses.

Terrain, hunting and Megaliths: Migrate places or moves Camps and builds Villages, while Hunt reveals and acquires Animals as indicated by its actions. Pay printed Labor, Tools and other costs. Each Camp gives one Influence to its hex; each Village gives two to each of its three hexes. Tipping an Animal grants its immediate benefit but normally removes it from final animal sets. Megalith placement grants its positional and stacking rewards immediately; do not add those same placement points again during final scoring.

Rest and the Eclipse pile: A figure placed on the personal Rest space draws one card and may tip one Animal. Each figure there contributes one-and-a-half Labor to the coming Eclipse. You cannot play Tribe cards for Labor when taking Rest, though applicable Chief abilities still work. After your third turn, secretly commit any number of Tribe and Culture cards to your Eclipse pile. Culture cards can bluff opponents about its size but contribute no Eclipse Labor.

Eclipse: Reveal all Eclipse piles simultaneously. Total the Labor on committed Tribe cards plus one-and-a-half per resting figure; Food cannot generate Added Labor here. Culture cards contribute no Labor and return to hand. Higher Labor acts earlier, with ties favoring the player who acted later in the current round. In the new order, gain turn-order benefits, resolve Tribe Eclipse abilities, take benefits from individual hexes where you have most or tied-most Influence, and collect exposed personal-board benefits and Sacred Stone points. Discard resolved Tribe cards afterward.

Preparation: After the first three Eclipses, advance the round, recover figures and refill the Animal display. After round one, fill Culture gaps from Era I. After round two, clear the display and reveal eight Era II cards; after round three, refill gaps from Era II. Every player draws five additional cards, retaining existing hand cards; this is not a refill to a five-card hand, and there is no hand limit. Reshuffle your discard pile when your draw deck runs out.

Final scoring: After the fourth Eclipse, convert combined leftover Food and Tools using the Offering-track ratio, discarding remainders; an unmoved marker scores nothing here. Honor-track rank selects the buried-card scoring chart, with earlier arrival breaking a same-level tie, and an unmoved marker scores nothing. Add printed points on all personal Tribe and Culture cards and sets of upright Animals. Argentavis can join another animal set as a wild but cannot form its own set. Break a total-score tie by final turn order. Do not score previously awarded Sacred Stone or Megalith points twice.

Solo and scope: The separate solo rules provide the Nomad opponent, with its board, Nomad cards, Sacrifice and Map decks, priorities, Eclipse procedure and scoring. Multiplayer procedures do not replace those specific automa instructions. This entry describes the checked retail base rules; Ancestors, Cave Paintings, Rivers & Rafts, additional Big Box content and promotional modules are not automatically included.