How to play Natrak

How to start a game: open the table, share the link and the setup round

Natrak runs in the browser, for 3 to 6 people. No accounts, no downloads, no passwords: someone opens a table, shares one link, and everybody else opens it, types a name and sits down. Each player plays from their own phone or computer. The table needs exactly the number of players it was opened with: ask for 4 seats and the game will not start until all 4 seats have an owner.

You open a table on the New table screen (route #/admin). Four decisions and one button. Creating it takes you straight to the table, with the link already copied to your clipboard. There you sit down like everyone else: type your name, pick a colour and a class. Your seat is then flagged as the one that opened the table — a ★ in the waiting room — and it carries the buttons for shuffling the order and starting the game.

• Basic: the essentials. Gather materials with the dice, build roads, camps and cities, and trade. Played to 10 points.
• With adventurers: adds the advancing goblins, the adventurers who hold them back, and the three progress disciplines (Alchemy, Crown and Religion). Advancing a discipline requires that you already own a City, and from level 4 the discipline hands you a metropolis worth 2 points — which anyone who climbs higher than you can take away. Played to 13 points.
• Full: all of the above plus the sea. The main island is ringed by water, and out in that water sit smaller islands with gold on them, hidden under fog until someone sails out and uncovers them. Longships arrive to sail with, and a kraken that holds ships in place. Played to 13 points.

There is a single link for the whole table: the one you copied when you created it works for all 3 to 6 people. Whoever opens it lands straight on the screen that asks for a name. While seats are still empty, the table itself shows the link again with a copy button, in case you need to hand it out once more.

• Name: up to 24 characters. It is what claims your seat and what the rest of the table sees.
• Colour: eight colours, one per player. Any colour already taken shows greyed out.
• Class: nine portraits, whose names are shown in Spanish — Guerrero, Paladín, Enano, Cazador, Asesino, Druida, Mago, Hechicero, Monje — also one per player. It is only the portrait: no game rule ever looks at your class or your colour.
• Getting your seat back: type the SAME name and you get your seat back with your colour and class, even from another phone. If your previous screen is still connected, the table warns you and you can move the game over to this device.
• One exception: the seat that opened the table cannot be taken over while it is connected, not even with the "it's me" button.

The table does not start by itself: it opens in the waiting room, and nobody touches the board until every seat has an owner. There you see who has arrived, how many points win the game, and the link for the people still missing. Once everyone is in, whoever opened the table has two buttons: shuffle the order and start. Turn order is ALWAYS drawn by lot — never the order in which people sat down — and if nobody drew it, the start button draws it. You can redraw as often as you like before starting. Neither the turn clock nor the automatic turn runs while you wait, nor during the setup round.

Then comes the setup round: two passes around the table in snake order. On the first pass players place from first to last of the drawn order; on the second, from last to first. Whoever goes last places twice in a row, and whoever opens the game is the last to place their second piece. On your go you do two things back to back: place your vertex piece, then a road touching that same piece.

• Nothing is paid: setup pieces are free. Nobody pays materials, because nobody has any yet.
• Distance rule: you cannot build on a junction if any neighbouring junction is already occupied, by anyone.
• The road touches your piece: the opening road must run out of the camp (or city) you have just placed. During setup it does not have to connect to anything else.
• No open water: roads are not built on the sea — the coast is fine — and one edge holds one piece only.
• In the Full version, main island only: setup cannot start on the smaller islands; you reach those later, by sailing.
• No undo: the undo button only exists in the main phase of a turn. What you place during setup stays.

One quirk on screen: on the second pass the prompt still reads "place a camp", but in With adventurers and in Full the piece that goes up there is a City.

The second placement is the one that deals your opening hand: it gives you 1 resource for each producing hex next to it, up to three. Forest gives Wood; quarry, Clay; farmland, Wheat; meadow, Wool; mine, Stone. Wasteland and sea give nothing. The first placement deals nothing, so where you put the second one decides what you start with. Each player also begins with their pieces: 5 camps, 4 cities and 15 roads — plus up to 15 longships in the Full version — of which setup already spends two vertex pieces and two roads.

As soon as the last road of the second pass is down, setup ends and turn 1 begins, with the first player of the drawn order rolling the dice. From then on every turn is the same: you roll, and every connected player with a piece next to a hex showing that number collects — the hex the dragon is sitting on produces nothing, and on a 7 nobody produces at all — and then, in your phase, you build, trade and end your turn.

Two practical things about the server, so nobody is caught out: one connection keeps one open table at a time (try to open another and the server hands you back the one you already have, which you can close from there), and a table that goes six hours with no activity and nobody connected closes itself. The game itself is not lost when you close the browser: the server stores it move by move, and coming back with your name puts you right where the table left off.

Goal and victory points: how a game is won

Natrak is won on victory points (VP). You score them for what you hold on the board — camps, cities, metropolises — and for feats the whole table competes for, such as the longest route or fending the goblins off. There is no other winning condition: no deck runs out, no round limit applies, you simply get to the number. The moment someone reaches the target the game closes and nothing else is accepted: the server turns every action away with "the game is over".

A table can also shut down with nobody winning: whoever opened it can close it, and it closes itself after six hours with no activity and nobody connected. That does not hand anyone the win, it just locks the door.

The target can be changed before the game starts. The creation screen offers 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 18 or 21 points and pre-selects the one matching the version you picked; touch a number and yours wins. The server takes any whole number from 5 to 500. Each table's target is announced in the waiting room, so nobody plays without knowing what it takes to win.

Nobody starts at zero. In the founding round each player places twice, down the table and back up, and those pieces already count. In the basic version that means two camps: 2 VP to start. In the adventurer versions the second placement is a city, so you begin with one camp and one city: 3 VP to start.

Where the points come from:

Points you can lose:

• Goblin sacking: −1. If the table loses the fight, everyone who contributed least to the defence loses a city, and only players who actually own a city are counted. Each of them downgrades one city to a camp; with several cities, they choose which one. Cities carrying a metropolis are immune, and a player whose cities are all immune loses nothing. Watch out: an offline player counts as contributing zero, so they usually end up among those who pay.
• Metropolis stolen: −2. Someone reaches a strictly higher level than yours in that discipline and takes the metropolis, its two points included.
• Longest Road: −2. While you hold it and still have 5 segments or more, a tie does not take it: you only lose it if someone beats you outright. You also lose it if your line drops below 5, which can happen several ways: a rival building or adventurer cutting across it, a road taken off the board by the Diplomat, or one of your own longships moving. Once the medal comes loose it goes to the only player with 5 segments or more; if two are tied at the top, nobody holds it.
• Merchant: −1. As soon as another player plays that card and puts the piece next to their own buildings.
• Largest Company: −2. Only if another player gets to play more Mercenaries than you.
• Never lost: camps, cities the goblins do not sack, islands you have already settled, Glory, the Constitution and the Printing Press.

The scoreboard is public. Every player card shows that player's point total, and the total already includes Glory: what stays hidden is which scrolls somebody holds, not how many points they have. Of your rivals you only see how many materials, scrolls and progress cards are in their hand, never which ones. So nobody wins out of nowhere: if someone is one point away, the table can see it.

Victory is checked after every change in points, whoever's turn it is, and it is checked for every player, not just the one playing. That is why you can win on someone else's turn: the goblin attack the table repels hands you the point you were missing, or the rival who takes the Longest Road off you picks up the two points that carry them home. The instant someone reaches the target, the game is over.

How much can end up on the board: each player has 5 camp pieces and 4 city pieces, and that is all. Upgrading a camp to a city returns the camp piece to your supply, so it can be used again. With all nine down that is 13 points from buildings alone (5 camps worth 1 and 4 cities worth 2): it is the ceiling on what building can give you, and finding room for nine buildings is no small thing. Going past it takes medals, metropolises or cards.

The turn and production: dice, harvest, the 7 and the dragon

Natrak is played in turns, one after another, always in the same order. That order is drawn by lot when the game begins: it is not decided by who sat down first. On your turn you roll the dice once, the whole table collects whatever its land produces, and then you build, trade or play cards until you decide to stop. The dice are not rolled again that turn.

These are the phases a game goes through:

Two six-sided dice are rolled. One is the red die, the other the white one; production is decided by their sum, from 2 to 12. In the versions with adventurers a third die is rolled at the same time, the event die, which adds nothing: its six faces decide whether the goblins advance or whether progress cards are handed out. All three faces go into the game log, are shown on screen, and the game keeps a tally of how often each sum and each face has come up.

The three conditions for drawing at a gate are: level 1 or more in that discipline, a red die no higher than your level plus 1, and fewer than 4 progress cards in hand. Disconnected players draw nothing.

Once the sum is known, the whole board produces at once, not just the player who rolled. Every hex carries a number token: the ones showing that exact sum give their material to every piece standing on their corners, whoever owns it. A Camp collects one unit; a City, two. If you have two pieces touching the same hex, you collect for both. There is no material supply that can run dry: if the hex produces, you get paid.

What each kind of land gives (you recognise the land by its artwork; the names here just describe it):

Gold is not kept as a material: it is a voucher you swap 1:1 for Wood, Clay, Wheat, Wool or Stone. You can cash it in during your main phase, and also during the special building window on 5-6 player tables. Herbs, Tribute and Coin are the goods that pay for Alchemy, Religion and Crown upgrades.

A hex showing the right sum can still pay nothing. That happens in four cases:

• The dragon is sitting on it: the hex stays dry as long as it is there.
• The hex is still under the fog (undiscovered islands): neither its land nor its token is visible, and it produces nothing until it is uncovered. Any piece of yours next to it lifts the fog: a road, a Camp, a City or a longship. Launching a longship beside it also pays you 1 resource for the discovery.
• The wasteland carries no token at all, so the dice never call it.
• The owner of the piece is disconnected: while away they collect no production, no goods, no gold and no cards.

In the versions with adventurers there is a consolation: anyone at Religion level 3 or higher who collects nothing on a roll — any roll except a 7 — picks 1 basic material.

Number tokens are dealt at random from the game's seed, with one fixed rule: two 6 or 8 tokens never end up side by side. The 3-4 player mainland has 19 hexes, 18 tokens and one wasteland; the 5-6 mainland has 30 hexes, 28 tokens and two wastelands. There is no 7 token: that is why the result produces nothing and is used for something else.

In the full version, with sea and islands, those counts cover the mainland only: every island hex adds one more token, up to 10 in all, drawn from 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. So an island map can hold two 2s or two 12s even at a three-player table.

The 7 is the likeliest result and the only one that gives materials to nobody. When it comes up, production is cancelled outright and two things happen in a row: first everyone holding too many cards discards, then the player in turn moves the dragon and steals a card. In the versions with adventurers the event die resolves just the same: on a 7 the goblins still advance and the gates still deal. There is one house exception: during the first round a 7 does nothing — no discard, no dragon — so that the very first roll of the game cannot wreck someone's spot before everyone has played once.

How the discard works on a 7:

• Everyone holding more than 7 cards discards, including the player who rolled. With exactly 7 you drop nothing.
• Every card in hand counts: materials, goods (Herbs, Tribute, Coin) and Gold. Spell scrolls and progress cards do not.
• You drop exactly half, rounded down: 8 cards means 4, 9 cards also 4, 13 cards means 6. You pick which ones.
• In the versions with adventurers, each castle (a City with a wall) raises your limit by 2: one wall lets you hold 9 cards, two 11, three 13, which is the ceiling, since nobody owns more than three walls.
• The table waits 45 seconds. If someone has not dropped by then the server discards for them at random, and it does the same for anyone disconnected.

The dragon is the piece that blocks the board. It starts on the wasteland, and while it sits on a hex that hex pays nobody. When a 7 comes up, whoever rolled moves it: they pick any other hex — it has to be a different one — and may name a victim among the players with a Camp or a City touching it. From that victim they steal one card at random, sight unseen; you cannot steal from yourself, and if the victim has no cards nothing is taken. The dragon will not land on islands still hidden by the fog. In the full version, with sea and islands, a 7 also lets you send the kraken to a water hex instead of moving the dragon: it then steals from someone with a longship beside those waters. If the table plays with a clock, moving the dragon is worth 25 seconds; once they run out the server drops it where it hurts least and steals from nobody.

A 7 is not the only way to move the dragon. In games with expansions it is also moved by:

• The Mercenary, a spell scroll: you move the dragon and steal from a rival next to the new hex. It can even be cast before rolling the dice; afterwards you go back to the roll, which is still waiting.
• The Bishop, a Crown progress card: it moves the dragon and steals 1 random card from every player with a building next to the new hex.
• An active adventurer standing next to the dragon (or next to the kraken) can drive it off during your main phase: you place it again and steal as if a 7 had come up, and that adventurer is left spent.

Once the collecting and the plays are done, you say you are finished and the turn passes to the next player in order. On 5 or 6 player tables a 30-second special building window opens as well: one single person uses it, the one who played three turns earlier, and in it they may build, buy cards, raise disciplines and exchange gold, but not trade, cast cards or move adventurers. That way everyone gets their window once a lap, well away from their own turn. If fewer than five players are connected, the window switches itself off and the turn moves straight on.

Two things that change the rhythm of the turn:

• Turn clock: whoever opens the table chooses whether there is a clock and how long, from 20 seconds to 2 minutes, or none at all. If yours runs out before you have rolled, the server rolls for you — so the table still produces — and then closes your turn. Discarding, moving the dragon and picking the sacked City each run on their own clock and are not charged to your turn.
• Absent players: if someone's connection drops they get a grace period to come back; past it their turn is skipped whole, with no roll, and while they are away they receive no production, goods, gold or progress cards. What does get resolved for them are pending discards and sackings, so nobody gains anything by disconnecting. On reconnecting everything goes back to normal.

Building in Natrak: exact costs and placement rules

Building is the main road to victory, but not the only one. Of everything you put on the board, only two pieces score on their own: a camp is worth 1 point and a city is worth 2. Roads, walls, adventurers, longships and scrolls are worth nothing by themselves.

The rest of the points come from elsewhere: the Longest Road (2), the Largest Company (2), each metropolis (2), your first camp on each minor island (1), defending the table against a goblin attack (1), and several cards. Glory and Scholar give 1 hidden point; Constitution and Printing Press give 1 in plain sight; Merchant gives 1 for as long as nobody takes it from you.

You build during your main phase: after the dice are rolled and production has been handed out. You pay the cost from the resources in your hand and place the piece right then.

There is one exception on tables of five or six players: a building window opens at the end of every turn. Only one player acts in it, the one who played three turns earlier. They can build anything (roads, camps, cities, walls, adventurers, longships), activate and promote adventurers, raise disciplines, cash in gold and buy scrolls. They cannot trade, cast spells or play progress cards, move adventurers, or drive off the dragon. The window switches off if fewer than five players are connected.

Watch out for two names that look alike: Clay and Stone are different goods. Roads and walls are paid with Clay; cities and adventurers with Stone.

Walls score nothing, but they earn their keep: each wall you own lets you hold 2 more cards in hand before you have to discard when someone rolls a 7.

Pieces are limited. If you run out of one kind you cannot build more of it, no matter how many resources you hold. They come back to your supply when they leave the board:

• Upgrading a camp to a city gives you the camp piece back.
• When the goblins sack a city and knock it down to a camp, you get the city piece back (and lose 1 point).
• When someone plays the Diplomat and pulls out a rival road with a loose end, that piece returns to its owner's supply.
• When someone plays Intrigue and removes a rival adventurer standing on their road network, that adventurer's owner gets one of their six slots back.

The distance rule. A crossing cannot take a building if any of its neighbouring crossings already has one. Neighbour means joined by a single edge. It does not matter whose piece it is, and it does not matter whether it is a camp or a city: any building, yours or someone else's, blocks the three crossings around it. The rule applies the same during setup and for the rest of the game, and it is what stops people from piling camps onto the same good corner. Adventurers do not count for this rule: an adventurer standing on a neighbouring crossing does not stop you from raising a camp there.

Connecting to your network. Outside setup, nothing gets built loose:

• Camp: the crossing must be free of buildings, respect the distance rule, and touch a road of yours or a longship of yours.
• Road: the edge must be free — one already holding a road or a longship, anybody's, does not count — and one of its ends must hold a building of yours or continue another road of yours.
• A rival cuts your network: if the crossing holds someone else's building, or someone else's adventurer, you cannot carry on through it with more roads. You reach that crossing, but you do not cross it.
• Roads and longships do not splice in open water: roads only continue roads, and longships only continue longships. To link your land network to your sea network you need a building of yours on the crossing where they meet.
• City: it is not placed, it is upgraded. You can only turn one of your own camps already on the board into a city, and nothing else needs checking: the spot was legal already.
• Wall: it goes up on a city of yours that does not have one yet.
• Adventurer: a crossing free of buildings and of other adventurers, touching a road of yours or a longship of yours. The distance rule does not apply to it.
• Longship: a sea or coastal edge, free, that does not touch the hex where the kraken sits. It has to set out from a building of yours or chain onto another longship of yours through a crossing with no rival building.

Where you cannot build.

• There are no roads at sea and no longships inland. An edge is land if it touches no sea hex, coast if it touches sea and land at once, and sea if it only touches sea. Roads take land and coast; longships take coast and sea.
• Each edge holds a single piece. A coastal edge fits either a road or a longship, never both.
• The kraken blocks its waters: you cannot launch a longship on an edge that touches its hex.
• With no pieces left in your supply you cannot build, however many resources you have.
• While you have a metropolis waiting to be placed you cannot raise another discipline or end your turn: first you choose which of your cities it stands on. Building is still allowed.

Setup placement. Before the first turn everyone places their opening pieces for free: nothing is paid. The order snakes back and forth — first from the first player to the last, then back from the last to the first — so whoever closes the first pass places twice in a row. On each of those turns you put a piece on a crossing and then a road touching it.

The second piece is the one that starts the game: you collect one resource for every hex it touches. In basic mode that second piece is another camp; with adventurers it is a city, which is why you start on 3 points instead of 2. In full mode setup happens only on the big island: you reach the rest by longship, and your first camp on each minor island gives you 1 extra point.

Discipline upgrades. In the adventurers mode there are three disciplines: Alchemy, Crown and Religion. Each climbs through levels 1 to 5 and is paid with its own good: Alchemy with Herbs, Crown with Coin, Religion with Tribute. Reaching level n costs n of that good, so getting to 5 comes to 15 in all.

You need at least one city to raise any discipline, and that is no accident: those three goods are produced only by cities. A city on a Wood hex gives 1 Wood + 1 Herbs; on a Wheat hex, 1 Wheat + 1 Tribute; on a Stone hex, 1 Stone + 1 Coin. On a Clay or Wool hex a city produces no good at all: it gives 2 of the same resource. Camps never produce discipline goods.

The first player to reach level 4 in a discipline claims its metropolis: +2 points, and they choose which of their cities it stands on. If someone already holds it, matching them is not enough: you have to climb strictly higher, which means level 5. Whoever loses it loses those 2 points too. Once you are on level 5 yourself, nobody can take it from you. On top of that, Crown level 3 is required to promote an adventurer to level 3.

Building free or cheaper. A few cards break the price list. What they give lasts only for the turn you play them: use it or lose it.

• Roads (spell scroll) and Road Building (discipline card): two free roads, or however many you have left in supply if that is fewer than two.
• Engineering: one free wall on a city of yours that lacks one. It still counts against your cap of three walls.
• Crane: your next discipline upgrade costs 1 less. If it was level 1, it comes free.
• Smith: two adventurer promotions without paying.
• Levy: activates one of your resting adventurers for free.
• Warlord: activates all your resting adventurers at once, no payment.
• Deserter: you take a rival's lowest-level adventurer and plant it in your network for free. It keeps its level and arrives resting, like any freshly placed adventurer.

Trading: the guild, the ports and player-to-player deals

Trading is how you turn what you have too much of into what you are missing. You can only trade during the main phase of a turn: the phase that starts once the dice have been rolled and production handed out. Not before the roll, not while someone is moving the dragon, and not during the extra building window of five- and six-player tables.

There are two routes, and they are very different. With the guild the exchange is automatic: it never turns you down, but it always charges its rate. With the other players you negotiate the price yourself, though everything goes through an offer, and the offer is always posted by whoever is on turn.

The nine materials

The first five are the basic resources: any piece produces them, camp or city. The next three are the goods, and they are the reason to upgrade a camp into a city: a camp next to a forest gives 1 Wood; a city there gives 1 Wood plus 1 Herbs. A meadow or a quarry has no good attached, so a city there simply gives 2 of the plain resource.

What everything costs

That last row is what makes the goods valuable: taking a track from zero to level 3 costs 1 + 2 + 3 = 6 cards of the matching good, and only a well-placed city produces them.

Trading with the guild: 4:1

The guild is always open and never runs out of material. The starting rate is 4:1: you hand over four identical cards and receive one of whatever type you ask for. Each trade is exactly that, four for one, and you cannot ask for the same material you are handing over. You may chain as many trades as you like in one turn, as long as your hand covers them.

Ports: 3:1 and 2:1

• A port occupies one coastal edge and both of its corners. Having a camp or a city on either of those two corners is enough to use it. An adventurer standing there does not count: it has to be a building.
• Generic port (3:1): hand over three identical cards of any basic resource and receive one.
• Specific port (2:1): it has one of the five basic resources drawn on it. Hand over two of that resource and receive one card of whatever you ask for.
• Ports do nothing for the goods. Herbs, Tribute and Coin stay at 4:1 even if you hold every port on the board.
• Your best rate always wins, resource by resource. With a Wood port and a generic one, your Wood trades at 2:1 and everything else at 3:1.
• No two ports ever share a corner, and they are spread evenly around the whole coastline.
• How many there are: nine on the 3-4 player table (four generic, one for each basic resource); eleven on the 5-6 player table (five generic and six specific, with two Wool ports). The island map uses the same counts —nine below five players, eleven from five up— and puts them all on the coast of the main island.

Rate table

The three goods play by their own rules. Neither the generic port, nor the specific one, nor the Merchant piece brings their price down: the only permanent discount is raising the Alchemy track to level 3, after which all three trade at 2:1. The Merchant Fleet does work on them, but only during the turn you play it.

Gold is not traded, it is cashed in

Gold is not a material you stockpile and spend: it is a voucher. It cannot be swapped at the guild or put into an offer to another player. You cash it in 1:1 for any of the five basic resources, one card at a time.

It is also the one thing in this section that does not wait for your turn: you can cash in Gold during any main phase, no matter whose turn it is, and during the extra building window of five- and six-player tables as well. That is the single exception to that window, which is otherwise closed to trading. Gold only turns up on the island map, on the gold hexes of the small islands.

Trading with other players

There is no free-for-all bartering here: everything goes through an offer, and the offer is always posted by whoever is on turn. Only one offer can be live at a time.

• Posting: you choose what you give and what you ask for. Both halves must contain at least one card, so you cannot give things away or ask for something for nothing. And you must actually hold what you are offering.
• Directed or open: you can send it to one specific player or leave it open to the whole table.
• Directed: only that person can accept it, and the moment they do, the deal closes instantly.
• Open: whoever accepts only raises a hand. The player who made the offer sees everyone interested and picks who to close with.
• "Not interested": on an open offer anyone can say no, so the offering player stops waiting on them. You can change your mind, in either direction.
• Counter-offering: on an open offer, any rival can propose their own deal. One per player; a new one replaces the old. The offering player accepts or rejects it, and if rejected that player may try again. Accepting a counter-offer closes the offer.
• Withdrawing: the offering player can close their offer whenever they want; on a directed offer, the recipient can close it too.
• The offer dies when the turn ends, closed or not.
• When an offer is posted, the engine does not quietly rule out the rivals who cannot pay for it: doing so would leak hands that are meant to be secret. Everyone decides for themselves whether to raise a hand.
• Right before closing, the engine checks again that both sides still hold what was agreed. If someone already spent their half, the deal does not happen.

What you cannot do

• You cannot accept your own offer.
• Two players who are not on turn cannot trade with each other. Outside your turn, your only route is accepting or counter-offering the active player's offer.
• You cannot ask the guild for the same material you are handing it.
• You cannot raise your hand on an offer without holding what it asks for: the action is rejected on the spot. Same if the offering player has already spent what they were offering.
• Gold goes neither to the guild nor into an offer. It is only cashed in 1:1, as explained above.
• Real materials only. The server rejects any invented key in an offer or counter-offer; it does not trust what the browser sends.
• No trading during the extra building window of five- and six-player tables. That window is for building and buying; the only thing that escapes the rule is cashing in Gold.

Cards that change your rates

• Merchant: you place its piece on a land hex that produces and touches a building of yours. While you hold it, you trade that resource at 2:1 and the piece is worth +1 victory point. If someone else plays the card, they take both piece and point.
• Merchant Fleet: you name a resource or a good, and for that turn you trade it at 2:1 with the guild, whatever ports you hold. It runs out when the turn ends.
• Trade Port: you name a basic resource you hold at least one card of. Every rival holding goods gives you one at random and receives one card of that resource in return. It covers as many rivals as you have cards of that resource.

All three come from the Alchemy track's deck, which is the game's trading branch.

The cards: spell scrolls and progress cards

Natrak has two decks, and each one reaches you a different way. Spell scrolls are bought with materials, whenever you decide. Progress cards are never bought: the event die hands them out to whoever has levelled up their disciplines.

Neither deck counts toward the discard on a 7. That limit looks at something else: your hand of resource cards. And everything you are holding goes into it, not just materials — goods (Herbs, Tribute, Coin) and Gold count too. The limit is not always 7, either: every wall you have on the board raises it by 2.

A scroll costs 1 Wool + 1 Wheat + 1 Stone. You buy it in your main phase — and also in the building window of 5- and 6-player tables — for as long as the deck lasts. There is one deck for the whole table, shuffled when the game is created, and you always take the top card: you do not choose which one. There is no cap on purchases per turn; your resources and the deck are the cap.

Casting a scroll follows short, strict rules:

• One per turn. The moment you cast one, the rest are locked until your next turn.
• Never the one you bought today. The count is per card type: if you bought a Mercenary today but already held another from before, that older one can still be cast.
• Only in your main phase, with one exception: the Mercenary may also be cast before you roll the dice.
• Glory is never cast. It is a point you get for buying it, not a spell.
• Everything resets when your turn ends: the one-spell lock, the list of what you bought that turn, and any free roads you did not use.

The Mercenary also feeds the Largest Company: cast 3 mercenaries and you take 2 victory points, and they only change hands when someone strictly beats you (with 4 — a tie at 3 is not enough). The counter never goes down, because it counts mercenaries cast, not cards held. It is public information: the table can see everyone's tally.

Progress cards work the other way around: there is no way to buy them. Every time someone rolls, a third die goes with the two production dice — the event die. Three of its six faces move the goblins forward; the other three open the gate of one discipline and deal cards from that deck to everyone who meets the conditions, not just the player who rolled.

When a gate opens, every player who meets all three conditions at once draws one card from that discipline:

• Hold level 1 or higher in that discipline. At level 0 you never draw.
• The red die (the first of the two production dice) must be no higher than your level + 1. At level 1 you draw on a red 1 or 2; at level 4, on a 5 or less; at level 5 you always draw.
• Hold fewer than 4 progress cards in hand.

Two more notes. An offline player draws nothing. And the cards come off the top of the deck, one per player in seat order: if that discipline's deck runs out mid-deal, whoever came next simply gets nothing. The cap of 4 only blocks drawing — a card taken from someone with the Spy can leave you holding five.

Progress cards are played only in your main phase and with no limit per turn: if you hold three, you can chain all three. They do not share the scroll's lock, so a single turn can carry one spell plus several progress cards. Each card played is spent and gone: there is no discard pile and no reshuffle, the three decks only shrink.

The disciplines are the three upgrade tracks of your cities, and they are the key to everything above. You raise them with goods, not materials: level n costs n goods of its type (level 1 costs 1, level 2 costs 2, up to level 5, the maximum). You need at least one city to raise a track at all. And only cities produce goods: a camp next to a forest gets 1 Wood, while a city gets 1 Wood + 1 Herbs.

Level 4 is worth something on its own: the first player to reach 4 in a discipline claims its metropolis, worth +2 victory points, and picks which of their cities hosts it. That city becomes the discipline's fortress, and the goblins can no longer sack it. It is only taken from you by a strictly higher level — a 5 against your 4 — and whoever loses it loses those 2 points too. At level 5 it is safe for good, since nobody can go past that. Outside of levels 3 and 4, levelling up grants no extra effect: it is there to draw cards more often and to reach the metropolis.

The Alchemy deck (18 cards). This is the money deck: trade, exchange rates and stripping rivals bare.

The Crown deck (18 cards). This is the aggressive deck: stealing, blocking and moving other people's pieces.

The Religion deck (18 cards). This is the constructive deck: extra production, cheap building and points.

Of other players' hands you only see totals: how many resource cards, how many scrolls and how many progress cards they hold, never which. When someone buys a scroll, the table learns about the purchase but not the card; when someone draws at a gate, everyone sees who drew and from which discipline, not what they got. Thefts by the Spy, the Bishop and the Master Merchant are dealt out censored: only the thief and the victim see the card.

What is not hidden is the score. The total the table sees for each player already includes the point from Glory: nobody knows where it came from, but everyone sees it go up. The secret is the source, not the number.

A note for anyone looking at old games: new tables are created with generation 6 of the engine, and from generation 5 onward the decks described here are the ones dealt. A game already under way keeps the deck it was born with — the earliest versions had 12 cards per discipline and only three types — because the state is rebuilt event by event and the deal has to come out identical. That is why five cards still exist that no longer appear on new tables: Fair, Smuggling, Dragon Envoy, Levy and Scholar. Levy woke a single resting adventurer for free; today the Warlord fills that gap by waking them all. Scholar granted 1 victory point the quiet way, like Glory: nobody saw where it came from.

Goblins and adventurers: the horde's attack and how to hold it off

The goblins are the whole table's enemy. Nobody controls them: they advance on their own, and when they arrive they attack every player at once. The only thing that stops them are adventurers — pieces you post on the board's crossings, activate, and whose levels add up into the table's defence. Muster enough defence between you and the attack is driven off, with a victory point for someone. Fall short and someone loses a city.

Every turn you roll three dice: the usual two plus a six-sided event die. Faces 1, 2 and 3 move the goblins one step closer. Faces 4, 5 and 6 are discipline gates — 4 Alchemy, 5 Crown, 6 Religion — and deal progress cards to anyone with enough level in that discipline. The event die is resolved on every roll, rolls of 7 included: the goblins still advance, and if that is their attack, it resolves before anyone moves the dragon.

The goblin track is seven spaces long. It starts at zero and goes up by one on every goblin face. When it reaches seven they attack right away, on that same roll. Three of the six faces are goblin faces, so half of all rolls bring them closer: roughly one attack every fourteen rolls.

Here is how an attack is settled:

If the table wins. The attack is driven off and nobody loses anything. The point goes to whoever contributed most: +1 VP. If two or more tie for the highest contribution, they each get a point.

If the table loses. The goblins sack, and the ones who pay are those who contributed least, counting only players who own at least one city. If several tie for the lowest contribution, all of them pay. An offline player contributes zero, so they are almost always among those paying. Each of them downgrades a city back to a camp and loses 1 VP; if that city had a wall, the wall is destroyed with it. The player chooses which city falls. If only one eligible city is left, it falls without asking; if every city they own carries a metropolis, they lose nothing.

After the attack. If at that moment there is not a single city anywhere on the board, the goblins leave empty-handed. Win or lose, the track resets to zero and every adventurer on the table goes back to resting: they have to be activated again with Wheat, one at a time. While anyone still owes a choice of which city to sacrifice, the game pauses in the sacking phase; if that person is offline or runs out the clock, the server picks the first of their cities that isn't a metropolis.

Adventurers and walls are built like this:

An adventurer isn't placed the way buildings are: the minimum-distance rule doesn't apply to it, it just needs a free crossing next to your network. It can sit right beside a camp or a city, yours or anyone else's. What it cannot do is land on a crossing that already holds a building or another adventurer. Freshly posted it rests: it doesn't defend and it can't act. Activating costs 1 Wheat, and it stays active until it does something (moves, drives off the dragon) or until the goblins attack.

An active adventurer is good for five things:

• Defending: it adds its level to the table's defence when the goblins arrive. That costs you no action, it just happens. But it does wear the adventurer out: after any attack — driven off or not — every adventurer on the table goes back to resting, and each one has to be activated again with 1 Wheat.
• Moving: it travels along your own network of roads and longships. It arrives resting.
• Displacing a rival: if the destination crossing holds an enemy adventurer of a strictly lower level, it throws them out and takes the spot.
• Driving off the dragon: if it stands on a crossing touching the dragon's hex or the kraken's, it chases the threat away. You then re-place that threat just as you would on a roll of 7: send the piece to a sea hex and it is the kraken that moves, send it to land and it is the dragon. And you steal a card from a rival who has a piece next to that hex — a building on land, a longship at sea — if they have any cards. The adventurer is left resting.
• Getting in the way: an enemy adventurer standing on a crossing cuts any caravan route running through it and blocks other adventurers from passing. And one of your own adventurers on the loose end of your road stops the Diplomat card from removing it.

Moving has rules of its own. Only active adventurers move, and only in your main phase: it isn't allowed during the special building window on 5- and 6-player tables. Nothing stops you from moving one on the same turn you activated it. The destination has to connect to the starting crossing through your own roads or longships. The trip may end on a crossing a rival occupies, but never pass through it: an enemy building or an enemy adventurer blocks the way. You cannot land on a building, or on an adventurer of your own. If you throw out a weaker enemy adventurer, that piece relocates itself to a free crossing on its own network; if it has none left, it leaves the board and goes back to its owner.

Five progress cards touch adventurers and walls directly:

• Warlord (Crown): activates all of your resting adventurers at once, for free.
• Deserter (Crown): pick a rival who has adventurers; they lose their lowest-level one and you post a free adventurer of that same level on your network. It arrives resting.
• Intrigue (Crown): removes from the board an enemy adventurer standing on your network of roads or longships.
• Smith (Religion): two free promotions this turn. Reaching level 3 still requires Crown 3.
• Engineering (Religion): one free wall on a city of yours that doesn't have one.

Walls. They cost 2 Clay and go up on a city of yours; that city becomes a castle. Three per player at most. What they buy you is hand size: when a 7 comes up, your card limit rises from 7 to 7 plus 2 for each wall you own before you have to discard half. They are no protection against the goblins: if that city is the one that falls in a sacking, the wall is destroyed with it.

Metropolis. The three disciplines — Alchemy, Crown and Religion — are paid for in Herbs, Coin and Tribute. Raising one to level n costs n units of its material and requires owning at least one city; level 5 is the ceiling. Reaching level 4 claims that discipline's metropolis: +2 VP. The city that receives it becomes a fortress, and you pick which of yours that is; you cannot end your turn or upgrade another discipline until you place it. You only take a metropolis off its current holder with a strictly higher level (5 against 4), and the previous holder then loses their 2 VP. At level 5 it is safe for good.

A fortress is immune to sacking: the goblins cannot bring it down, and neither the owner nor the server may pick it. It still counts as a city toward the attack's strength, though. Keep that in mind: every new city makes the horde stronger and gives you no defence at all. A metropolis adds no strength of its own — that city was already counted — but it doesn't defend you either; it just makes one city untouchable. Defence comes only from active adventurers.

Two things people mix up. First, adventurers do not count toward the Largest Company. That +2 VP award comes from Mercenaries, which are a different card, and you need to play three of them. Second, there are two shields next to each player. The one always on show is their defence strength right now — the levels of their active adventurers, added up. The other, “Defences won”, is a tally of the times they defended the table; the points from those defences were awarded when each one happened.

The sea and the islands: longships, fog, Gold and the kraken

Natrak is played on a board of hexes. In the full version that board is an archipelago: one main island where the whole table starts, a belt of sea around it, and several smaller islands nobody has set foot on. The sea is not decoration. You sail it with longships, it hides the islands' numbers under fog, it holds the only two Gold hexes on the map, and the kraken sits in it blocking waters.

Everyone starts on the main island: the opening placement is rejected if the crossing you picked does not touch the mainland. Getting off it is your own problem, and it is the heart of this version. One of your longships counts as your network exactly like a road, so at a crossing touched by one of your ships you can drop a camp or an adventurer. That is how islands get settled.

The crossing has to be empty, though. A camp (1 Wood + 1 Clay + 1 Wheat + 1 Wool) also obeys the distance rule: no neighbouring crossing may hold a building. An adventurer (1 Wool + 1 Stone) ignores distance; it only needs a crossing with no building and no other adventurer already on it.

The longship is the boat. It costs 1 Wood + 1 Wool and goes on an edge (the side of a hex) of sea or coast, never inland. Each player has 15 pieces. An edge holds one piece only: where there is a road there is no room for a longship, and the other way around. The road is the longship's opposite — it cannot be built on the sea.

To launch a longship you need all of the following:

• The edge is sea or coast and it is empty: no road, no other longship.
• It sails from your own network: your camp or city at one of the two ends, or one of your longships chaining through a crossing that no rival building holds. A rival building on the crossing cuts the chain.
• The kraken is on neither of the hexes the edge touches.
• You have 1 Wood + 1 Wool and pieces left (15 is the cap).
• You launch in your main phase, and also during the special building window on tables of 5 and 6.
• Roads and longships only join at a building of yours. The same goes for the caravan route, which measures both kinds of piece as one length.

Longships are not nailed down. Once per turn you may pick one up and set it down in other waters, free of charge. That is how you rescue a ship that leads nowhere and stretch your route toward another island.

Conditions for moving a longship:

• One per turn, and only in your main phase. No ships move during the special building window on tables of 5 and 6, though new ones can still be launched there.
• Not the last longship you launched this turn. The game only remembers the most recent one, so if you launched two in the same turn, the first one can still move.
• It must have an open end: at least one of its two ends with no building of yours and no road or longship of yours continuing it. A ship boxed in by your own pieces on both sides stays put.
• The kraken holds the longship if it sits on a hex the edge touches, and it will not let one into its waters either.
• The destination asks for the same as a launch: sea or coast, empty edge, no kraken, connected to your network. Two differences: it costs nothing, and when moving, a rival building on the crossing does not cut the chain of longships (when launching, it does).
• Moving lifts any fog it reaches, but pays no discovery reward.

Fog covers the islands at the start. You can see each island hex's terrain — you know whether it is forest or quarry — but not its number token: it shows a "?" until somebody uncovers it. A covered hex produces nothing even when its number is rolled, and the dragon cannot land on it.

How the fog lifts:

• Any piece of yours next to the hex uncovers it: camp, city, road or longship. Touching it at one crossing is enough.
• Launching a longship beside a covered hex uncovers it and pays you 1 resource of that terrain on the spot. If the hex is Gold, you get 1 Gold. Launch on an edge with two covered hexes and you collect for both.
• The reward only covers the hexes the ship actually hugs (the one or two the edge runs between). Hexes that merely share a corner get uncovered too, but pay nothing.
• Only launching pays. Moving a longship already on the board uncovers for free, no reward.
• Once uncovered, the hex produces normally for anyone with a building beside it.

Gold is the two golden hexes on the map, always on the smaller islands, never on the mainland. They do not produce a material: they produce Gold tokens, which are vouchers. Each Gold buys any one of the five basic materials: Wood, Clay, Wheat, Wool or Stone. A camp next to a Gold hex collects 1 Gold when its number comes up; a city, 2.

What you need to know about Gold:

• It is redeemed 1:1, one token for one material, your choice.
• You can redeem it in any main phase, whoever's turn it is, and during the special building window too. If you collect Gold on someone else's roll, you settle it right there: the game asks you as soon as it lands.
• It is not tradeable. It goes into no deal with other players and no exchange at the guild: it is only redeemed from your own hand.
• While you hold it, it counts as a card in hand: it adds to the discard when a 7 comes up, and the dragon or the kraken can steal it.

The kraken is the sea's threat, the counterpart of the dragon that roams the land. It begins the game out at sea, at one end of the map. It moves at exactly the moments the dragon moves: on a 7, when somebody plays the Mercenary or the Dragon Envoy, and when an adventurer drives it off the coast. Whoever moves picks a hex: pick land and the dragon moves, pick sea and the kraken moves. They are two separate pieces and each stays put until somebody moves it. The kraken cannot sit still in its own waters either: if you pick sea, it has to change hex.

What the kraken does:

• When you move it, you steal 1 random card from a player with a longship next to that hex. If nobody has a ship there, there is no steal. You cannot steal from yourself.
• It blocks launching longships on any edge touching its hex.
• It holds the longships already there: they cannot leave those waters, and no longship can move into them.
• It does not stop production. That is the dragon's job on land; the kraken lets neighbouring hexes produce normally.
• An active adventurer of yours on a crossing touching its waters drives it off, during your main phase. The adventurer is left resting and you place the kraken (or the dragon) wherever you want, steal included.

Settling pays. Your first camp on each smaller island is worth +1 extra victory point, on top of the point any camp gives: the first one you place on a new island is 2 points at once, and upgrading it to a city later adds another. The reward is per player and per island: each player can collect it once on each island, and the same island can pay several players. It is the camp that counts; a city upgraded from a camp that already paid does not pay again. The full version is won at 13 points, so two new islands are a sixth of the game.