How to play Tiland The rules of the island strategy board game

• The host sits first. Each player who joins takes the lowest open seat.
• At an online table, whoever waited longest sits first and hosts.
• Setup pieces cost nothing. A setup settlement needs no road, but it keeps the distance rule.
• Setup is worth 2 points. Its roads and harbours already count towards the awards.

1. 1

   Roll

   Roll two dice, or play a court card first.

2. 2

   Produce

   Tiles with that number pay: 1 resource to each settlement on them, 2 to each city.

3. 3

   Trade

   Trade with the bank, or offer a trade to the other players.

4. 4

   Build

   Build roads, settlements and cities, or buy a court card.

5. 5

   End

   End the turn. The next seat rolls.

• Trade and build in any order, as often as you can pay.
• The tile under the bandit produces nothing. Nor does a desert.
• On a 7, nothing is produced. The seven has a chapter of its own.
• Only the player on turn acts. The others may only answer an offer or discard.
• Your offers never hold your turn up: build, trade and offer again while they stand.
• Nothing is built between turns, at any table size.

There is no box of pieces. Build whatever you can pay for and the island has room for.

1. Beat 1

   Discard

   • Every hand of more than 7 resources discards half, rounded down.
   • A 7 only makes a player who has played a Treasury discard above 10 resources.
   • You pick the resources. Court cards are never counted.
   • Nobody plays on until every debt is paid. After 40 s, random resources go.

2. Beat 2

   The bandit moves

   • The player on turn moves the bandit to a different tile.
   • Any tile will do, a desert included.
   • While he stands there, that tile produces nothing.

3. Beat 3

   A resource is taken

   • Choose one player with a settlement or city on that tile.
   • Take 1 random resource from their hand.
   • If nobody there holds a resource, nothing is taken.
   • A Strongbox they hold stops it: nothing is taken, and the box is gone.

A Mercenary moves the bandit and takes a resource the same way, with no discards.

The bank

Between players

• An offer stands for 30 s at standard pace, then closes with no trade. An accept in its last 10 s sets it back to 10 s, so its maker has time to choose.
• It closes when everyone addressed has declined. Only the player who made it can cancel it.
• Nothing is held back while it stands. An offer its maker can no longer pay closes.
• A counter-offer goes to the player who made the offer, and everyone sees it. Its sender must hold what it gives.
• An answer its sender can no longer pay counts as declined.
• An offer to a player who is away counts as declined.

Playing a card

• A court card costs 1 sheep, 1 wheat and 1 ore. The table only hears that you bought one.
• Cards are drawn at random from what is left. There is no deck order to learn.
• Play one card per turn, before your roll or after it. The Strongbox is never played.
• A card cannot be played in the turn it was bought.
• No card is worth a point. Every point anyone holds is in plain sight.
• Held court cards are never stolen, traded or counted on a 7. An away seat keeps them.
• Once the deck is empty, no more cards can be bought.

The draft

• Before the island is set, every seat drafts three decrees. A hosted table may play without them. Its host turns the decrees off in the game options, and the setup begins at once.
• Every seat drafts from all eight decrees, bots included. Every decree is free to every player, and gold buys looks only.
• There are three rounds of 60 seconds. In each, every seat picks one decree.
• Nobody sees a pick until the round ends. Then every pick of the round is shown at once, and the next round begins. After the third, the picks stay up a moment before the setup.
• A pick may change until the round ends. A seat that picked nothing gets one at random. Nobody drafts the same decree twice.

The decree rounds

• There are three decree rounds. The first comes when the setup ends, before the first roll.
• The second follows the turn in which the leader first reaches 35 % of the target.
• The third follows the turn in which the leader first reaches 65 %.
• In the first round the last seat to place issues first. Later rounds start with the leader.
• In each round every seat issues one decree it holds, or throws one away. There is no passing.
• A seat has 60 seconds. When time runs out, one of its decrees is thrown away at random.
• A decree with no legal target cannot be issued. A seat with none to issue is skipped.
• Nothing else happens in a round: no roll, no build, no trade.

The decrees

• There are eight decrees in four families: numbers, land, harbour and guard.
• In each family, one decree works for you and the other works against your rivals.
• A decree changes the island for good, and the change is shown to every seat.
• A tile showing a 6 or an 8 never changes. No decree makes a 6, 7 or 8.
• A number's pips are the rolls of two dice that make it: one for a 2, four for a 5.
• So a Reassessment may swap a 2 with a 3 or a 4, never with a 5.
• A ward refuses every later decree but Restoration, which lifts it.

Grand Army

Most mercenaries played, at least 3 mercenaries.

Worth 2 points

A Mercenary counts the moment it is played.

Grand Road

The longest continuous road, at least 5 edges.

Worth 2 points

Counted in edges, not in distance: the longest single path along your roads. A branch off it adds nothing; a loop may be walked once round.

Harbour Warden

Most harbour points, at least 3 points.

Worth 2 points

Each harbour you hold counts 1 under a settlement and 2 under a city.

A tie changes nothing

A challenger needs strictly more than the holder. Drawing level is not enough.

A road can be cut

A rival's settlement or city on a corner cuts your road in two there. It cuts it even when you built past it under a Right of Way.

A holder who falls behind

The award goes to the single leader at the minimum or above. If several tie, nobody holds it.

A closed harbour counts nothing

A harbour closed by a decree counts nothing for the Harbour Warden.

Stalemate

• Each time a turn passes, the server asks whether any seat can still gain or lose a point.
• That takes an island with no corner left to settle, where every settlement has become a city.
• No decree round may still be to come, and neither award may still change hands.
• Then the game ends in a stalemate, and nobody wins.
• Places go by points, and level points share a place. Gold and Renown follow those places.

Last player standing

• When every seat but one is away, and that one is connected, it wins.
• This is how a game of two ends when one side stops playing.
• When every seat is away, nobody wins and the game waits.

After the last point

When a clock runs out

• A lost turn is skipped, as if the seat were away. Its open offers close.
• In setup, a random settlement and road are placed for you instead.
• Two lost turns in a row and your seat counts as away, though still connected.
• A touch says you are back. Ending a turn yourself clears the count.

Three paces

• The host picks the pace when the game starts. Standard is the default.
• A table found online always plays at standard pace.

The hurry-up vote

• At relaxed pace there is no cap. The other players can vote to hurry a slow turn instead.
• The vote opens once a turn is 90 s old.
• With up to three other players present, all must agree. With four or more, all but one.
• Once the vote passes, the turn has 30 s left. Running out is a lost turn.

• Your phone reports a touch at most every 5 s, and only while the table waits for you.
• No clock runs in a lobby, in a finished game or while nobody is connected.

1. 0:00

   The connection drops

   • The table waits for you for 2 minutes.
   • In a lobby, your seat, colour and host role are held as long.
2. 2:00

   The seat is away

   • Its turns are skipped: no roll, its offers close, an unfinished bandit move is given up.
   • In setup, a random settlement and a road touching it are placed for it.
   • On a 7, random resources are discarded for it. Offers to it count as declined, and so does an answer it had sent.
   • An away host hands the role to the lowest seat still present, for good.
3. Back

   You rejoin

   • Join the same room with the same account, and your seat is yours again.
   • Your pieces, resources, court cards and points were kept for you, even mid-game.

• Nothing advances while every seat is empty.
• A seat whose clocks lose two turns in a row is away too, until a touch.

• Empty lobbies close after 10 minutes. So do finished games nobody is connected to.
• Any room nobody has been connected to for an hour is closed.

A hosted table

• A hosted table seats 2 to 6. It starts once 2 seats hold a connected player or a bot.
• The host picks the island size, the target and the pace, and may turn the decrees off.
• The island bounds the target: a larger island carries more points, and a higher target grows the island.
• An island may grow to 61 tiles. A count under the minimum is raised to it.
• Until the host picks a size, the table plays the suggested one.

Bots, and emptying a seat

• In the lobby, the host may seat a bot in any empty seat.
• Each bot plays for itself and sees only what a player in its seat would see.
• A bot is named from a fixed roster: "BOT" and a given name, such as BOT Edith.
• The online queue seats a bot only at a seat it finds nobody for. A bot at a ranked table holds no rank.
• Until the game starts, the host may empty any seat but their own.
• A bot's seat is emptied. A player goes back to the home screen.
• Nothing is remembered: the same player may join again with the same code.

Your account

• You play as a guest from the first launch, with no e-mail and no password.
• Signing in with Google or Game Center is optional.
• It pairs your account across your devices and brings a welcome gift once.