Win alone. Lose together.
It’s like poker plus the prisoner’s dilemma with a doomsday clock.
Snow is burying the one road to a starving town on the far side, and three supply wagons are racing to cross before the drifts win. All night you spend your own winter where it counts: loading a wagon, shouldering another along, keeping the watchfires lit against the storm. Back a wagon that makes it? Paid triple. The snow wins? Every wagon is lost, and only the fire's wages pay.
The Backstory
On a clear night you can see the far town from the head of your valley: a scatter of lights under the mountain's shoulder, and one thin road between here and there. Every winter the snow takes that road. The town grows nothing that keeps, so whatever crosses while the road is open, they live on till thaw; whatever doesn't, they do without. Come spring, some of those lights don't come back on. Everyone in your valley knows why.
Your valley runs the relief: three wagons loaded and sent over the saddle before the drifts win.
Four forces rule the mountain, and you learn them before your letters.
Spades are the snow. Patient and mindless, it climbs its own track up the mountain and never looks back. Most days it only creeps. But some days a gust drops a drift three deep before you can spit.
Hearts are food. Milled grain, hard rind cheese, the seed corn that has to live to see a spring.
Diamonds are medicine. Fever-bark and little stoppered bottles worth more than their weight in anything, the physic that decides whether a child sees the thaw.
Clubs are firewood. Cordwood and pitch-pine, the plain difference between a house that wakes warm and one that doesn't wake.
Each rides its own wagon, six lengths of road to the far lights. A king is a whole family's fortune, set down the way you'd sign your name.
And the joker is the whiteout: the storm all at once, the road simply gone. You can't plan around it. Nobody ever has.
You don't stand and watch. All night you spend your own winter where it counts: grain onto a wagon that's moving, a shoulder behind another to get it rolling, a turn at a watchfire when the cold bites. Nothing crosses on luck; wagons get home because someone hauls them there. And no wagon is past reach till it crests the saddle; many a family has run down a load already away to heave one last sack aboard, half of it spilling to the drifts with every throw. And when the drifts stack too deep ahead, someone walks out with a spade and breaks trail: shovel-work in the dark, no pay and no glory — no shovel yet has carried a wagon over the line — but the road opens a length. Back one that makes it, and the saved town pays you threefold and says your name at its tables for a lifetime; their thanks is the only coin that matters up here. Back one that turns back, and it's gone under the drift.
But nothing crosses unless the watchfires stay lit, and a watchfire holds only while someone stands in the cold feeding it, going nowhere, while others run for the glory. Thankless work, remembered anyway, most of all for whoever kept the longest watch. And on the worst nights, drift at the flames and no wagon home, someone feeds a king straight into the coals, and the blaze roars up and shoves the snow back down the mountain. Costs a fortune. Buys the road a minute.
Every crossing comes at last to one still hour: when the last store is spent and no hand is left to feed a fire or turn a wheel. The Last Watch: the fires sink to embers, the whole weight of the pass comes down the road at once, and the only things still moving are the wagons already rolling on the memory of the run, making for the far lights while the drift closes behind them.
When the cold comes back, it asks what it always asks: who rides, and who keeps the fire?
How It Plays
A night repeats three steps until it ends. Check for the night's end after each. Play three nights; the most gratitude wins.
Face-down, then reveal together. You must play while you hold a card. Your card does one of three things; see below.
Move the Snow +1 for every player who did not feed the fire this beat.
Play any card to take the watch and hold the drift back. A ♠ earns the +3 wage; any other card +1. Feed a King (any suit) and the fire roars, shoving the Snow back 1. Always legal, never loses you points: your safe move, and it always pays.
Load a ♥♦♣ onto its wagon: your own winter stores. Full pips only while it's on space 0–2. Through → repaid ×3; turns back → lost. Heave: a laden wagon on 3–5 can still catch a thrown sack, and half the pips (round down) ride, settling like any stores. An empty wagon catches nothing.
A ♥♦♣ rolls its own wagon +1 — suit-matched, any position, any time (value ignored). If that wagon reaches Town, each push pays you +2. Nothing gets home on flips alone. Break trail: a ♠ is a shovel — it moves a laden wagon 3→4 or 4→5, the only two shovel moves on the board. It earns nothing, never crosses into Town, and it isn't a feed: the drift still counts you.
The Last WatchWhen all hands are empty the fires gutter to embers: stop flipping Fate. Each round the Snow floods +(3 + players), then every laden wagon coasts +1 toward Town on its momentum, until one crests home or the road buries.
The Whiteout GambitStorm comes early, before any laden wagon has moved? Everyone commits one card at once; the most stores flung wins (tie: highest card, then a flip of the Fate deck — the mountain names the winner). Empty wagons can't win.
You're paid most by loading a winner. You're safest at the fire. And the wagons only move if someone spends their cards pushing. That three-way pull, every beat, is the game.
One Deck, Four Forces
Pull the four Aces as the track markers, and keep one Joker as the storm. Every other card is a wagon's stores or the snow's advance.
Card values are stores: pips as shown, J / Q / K = 10, a great household's fortune.
For the Table
| Players | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hand | 9 | 8 | 6 | 6 |
| Fate deck (+1 joker) | 18 | 16 | 14 | 12 |
| Snow track | 22 | 21 | 27 | 27 |
Two players play THE LAST VALLEY, which has a rulebook of its own: hands of 8, a Fate deck of 26, a Snow track of 13, and the offer, the watch and Call the Run on top of everything below.
The Road is 6 spaces. The Fate deck is set aside at setup; hands are not drawn from it. Load a wagon in full only while it's on space 0–2; a laden wagon on 3–5 can still catch a heaved sack for half pips. A card pushes its own wagon, any position, any time; a ♠ shovel moves a laden wagon 3→4 or 4→5, never into Town.
1. Flip: ♥♦♣ wagon +1 · ♠ Snow +3 · Joker = whiteout.
2. All play one card: feed (any; ♠ = +3, other +1; a King roars & shoves Snow back 1) · load ♥♦♣ on space 0–2, or heave to a laden wagon on 3–5 for half pips · push its wagon +1 (pays +2 if it arrives; a ♠ shovels a laden wagon 3→4 or 4→5, no pay).
3. Snow +1 per player who didn't feed.
Three nights. Re-deal each night; gratitude carries across all three. Most gratitude wins (tie → best single night).
Scores go negative only by backing a wagon a rival's beats to Town; a buried road is a wash.
Tend the scene