A solitaire 'In-Your-Hand' style game lasting about 10 minutes
You are the governor of a new colony, part of the West Islandia Trading Company. Your job is to produce tradegoods, recruit colonists and make as much gold for the West Islandia Trading Company as you can, while working your way once through the deck of cards. If you make it completely through the deck without losing all of your colonists you have won and may then count up your Victory Points to see how well you governed.To play you'll need the 54 game cards, Colony Map card, and 10-12 small paperclips.
There are 4 types of cards in the game:Play: Deal one card from the bottom of the deck face-up on top of the Colony Map, centered in the game title section, with the 3 numbers facing up. Then deal a second card face up on top of the first so the 3 punched holes align with the 3 numbers underneath. These 3 numbers are used to determine resource values during the action on the top card.
Read the text on the top card and complete the action. You may gain or lose gold, colonists or tradegoods. Anytime you see a colored circle icon referenced in the action text, look at the number above, in the matching colored circle, for its value. After an action is completed, discard both cards to a pocket. Then draw two new cards.
You cannot have more than a maximum of 9 Colonists during the game. The Gold track, located at the top of the Colony Map, will allow you to bank up to 299 gold.
The bottom Tradegoods track will allow you to store a maximum of 20 tradegoods unless you build one or two of the Warehouses (each costs 10 gold), then you can store up to 10 additional tradegoods in each warehouse for a game maximum of 40 tradegoods. The righthand track lists various Trading Company Employee bonus upgrades. Add extra paperclips as needed to the gold and tradegoods tracks for the 10s and 100s placemarkers.