The Rules
The game is played over the course of three phases. The preliminary game set up and start of the first round is the Kickoff phase. Halfway through the game is the Pulse Check phase, and two rounds before the final round is the Readout phase. The example below shows the turns per phase in a 2 - 4 player game.
The game area consists of a few key components, which we’ll review now. The main component of the game area is the center row of cards, known as The Event Stream. From here, players can acquire different personas, objects, or events to help their cause or hurt another player’s. The cost to acquire a card is listed in the upper right corner, with a number and a colored indicator showing what resource(s) need to be in your inventory to acquire it. Any time a card is acquired from the Event Stream, all cards will move to the left and a new card will be drawn from the draw pile and placed at the end of the Stream.
At the top of each player’s project board, there is a row of five cards known as The Board. These five slots hold cards that can make your project run smoothly or run face first into a brick wall. To the right of The Board is The Backlog, a list of items you must clear to be in the running to win the game. The Backlog consists of a New column, Features, Bugs, Unplanned Work, and a Done column. The only time items appear in the Unplanned Work area is when a Bug is introduced, or a special Event card’s condition requires it. The maximum number of features that can be in the Backlog at any time is equal to the total number of rounds for the game (see The Rules for more information about round limits). There is no theoretical limit to the number of Bugs or Unplanned Work items that can appear in your Backlog…however, if your Bug count is greater than your Feature count, it has an adverse impact on how many cards you can hold in your hand (The Bench) per round.
After selecting the starting deck of Frontliners, each player is dealt five cards from the Leadership stack. The first three cards will be played face up, and the last two will remain face down until the appropriate round causes them to be revealed. Players are not allowed to look at their face down Leader cards. After all Leadership cards have been dealt, shuffle the remaining cards into the Events deck.
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