HOW TO PLAY
THE RULEBOOK
Build the biggest fortune. Sue your neighbours. Stash it offshore. Here is everything you need, in about four minutes.
Nobody likes reading rules
So here is the whole game in one breath: You are a CEO. Over three years you build the biggest pile of money you can. The richest CEO at the end wins. When honest business is too slow, you sue people, smear them in the press, and steal their best employees, then act shocked when they do it back.
You could start playing right now. But if you'd like to actually win, read on.
Basically
- Most cash after Year 3 wins. It is the only thing that matters.
- Run a deficit you can't cover at year-end and you go BANKRUPT — you're out.
- Everyone plays at the same time, every round. Nobody waits for a turn.
- Sabotaging the person who is winning is often smarter than growing.
- Be brilliant if you can. Be ruthless if you must.
How a game flows
A game is 3 fiscal years. Every year has the exact same two beats.
1
The Draft
Everyone gets a hand of cards. At the same time, each of you keeps one card and passes the rest to a neighbour. Repeat until the hands are used up. This is where you build your company, and where you knife everyone else's.
2
The ReckoningThe books close. Each CEO adds up income, pays expenses and tax, repays loans, and finds out whether they survived the year. Do this three times. Then count the cash.
It is 7 Wonders in a very expensive suit, in a world that reads like the business section on its worst day: shell companies, offshore accounts, lawsuits and press conferences. Except the people scheming are at your table.
The Draft — how a year is played
Each round, everyone does this at the same time: choose one card, reveal, resolve, pass the rest.
► Play it
Pay its cost in cash and place it in front of you. Playing is how you hire, launch a product, take a loan, or attack a neighbour.
► Discard it
Can't afford anything? Slide one card away and take +1M cash instead. A discarded card does nothing but line your pockets.
Then pass
Pass the rest of your hand: Years 1 & 3 to the LEFT, Year 2 to the RIGHT. Pick up your other neighbour's hand and go again.
Every card is a scene
The cards aren't spreadsheets. Each one is a painted moment from the boardroom: a founder unveiling a product to thunderous applause, a lawyer sliding a suit across the table, a headhunter making an offer no one should refuse. You draft the scene, and the numbers come with it.
An actual card from the game
Board order (why timing is a weapon)
When played cards interact, they resolve in a fixed order:
Investment → Connection → Work Environment → Employee → Competition.
The attacks (Competition) resolve last — so the shitstorm you launch lands after your rival has finished building their defenses for the round.
The delicious part: the cards you don't take go to the person next to you. That amazing lawyer you can't afford? Pass it on and your rival hires it. Sometimes the smartest play is to discard a great card just to keep it out of enemy hands. This is called hate-drafting. It is exactly as petty as it sounds. Do it.
The three scales
Your company is measured on three tracks, each from 0 to 7. Cards and employees push them up. They are the engine of everything, and they are permanent — climb early and they pay you every year that follows.
Product Development
How good your product is. Protects you against consumer surveys and powers your product cards and income.
Work Environment
How happy your people are. Shields you from shitstorms and illness, and at step 5+ your wage rises are halved.
Legal Expertise
Your firepower in court. Each step pays +1.25M income every year, and Legal decides every lawsuit.
How to read a card
Every card is a small illustrated contract. Here is how to read one at a glance.
A Service employee
- The coin, top right, is what the card costs in cash to play right now.
- The band names the card's type — here a Service employee. The type also decides when it resolves in the round.
- Each effect line is tagged so you know how long it lasts: instant pays once, yearly pays at every Reckoning, permanent stays for good.
- Coloured keywords are the three scales — Product Development (blue), Work Environment (green), Legal (gold).
- Upkeep, at the bottom, is the card's running cost each year. For employees it rises each year as wages climb, so an old hire is an expensive hire.
The abbreviations
Your opponents' small boards shorten the three scales, using the game's original Danish short forms. Here's the key:
PU (Produktudvikling) = Product Development
AM (Arbejdsmiljø) = Work Environment
JURA = Legal
Each scale runs from 0 to 7. Hover a row in the game for the full name.
Money — the only scoreboard
Two kinds of money, and confusing them is how people lose. Cash is what you have (and your score). Income is what you earn each year, paid only at the Reckoning. A card usually costs cash now but pays income every year — so an early hire is worth far more than a late one.
Expenses & WagesEvery card in play has a running cost. Minimum expenses are always at least 1M + 0.25M per employee. And the trap that sinks beginners: each employee costs +0.25M more per year for every year employed. Keep Work Environment at 5+ to halve those raises.
Tax
Pay 0.5M tax per full 3M of income (revenue, not profit!). Every accounting employee, offshore account and green card lowers it by 0.5M, down to zero. Growing fast without a finance function is dangerous.
Loans
Some cards let you take a bank loan: cash now, a larger repayment at the Reckoning. Own any offshore account and the repayment is cheaper. Great for a big early move, if the year ends in the black.
Dirty tricks — the reason this game exists
Attacks only ever hit the neighbour on your left or your right. Choose your seat wisely, because that is who you'll spend three years quietly ruining.
LEFT RIVAL◄
YOU►
RIGHT RIVAL
An actual card: “Sue your neighbour”
See you in court
The lawsuit is the cleanest weapon in the game: slide it across the table at the neighbour with the weakest Legal, and collect at the Reckoning. No product to build, no staff to hire. Just a signature, a smile, and someone else's money.
The Lawsuit
Decided at the Reckoning, purely on Legal: the plaintiff wins on an equal or higher Legal step. Filing is an advantage — ties go to the attacker. Lawyer up, or don't get sued.
The Shitstorm
A media firestorm. It bites harder the more your marketing outguns their Work Environment. Miserable staff have no goodwill to spend.
The Consumer Survey
A hit piece dressed up as research. It scales against their Product Development — a genuinely great product is hard to smear.
The Poach
Steal the employee that fits you best. The talent leaves them and joins you, and takes their scale points along (their tracks drop, yours rise).
The Crown & the Dagger
A crown marks whoever is set to win — gang up on them before they run away with it. A dagger means that player has already attacked you. Revenge is not required. But it is encouraged.
Steal the talent
Headhunting is the cruellest trick of all: reach into a neighbour's company and take the employee that fits you best. They don't just lose the person — the scale points that hire earned go with them. Only a non-compete clause can stop it.
An actual card from the game
The Reckoning — closing the year
When the hands run out, every company closes its books in this order.
Masks off. Any cards played in secret this year are revealed. Surprise.
Court is in session. Every pending lawsuit is decided (plaintiff wins ties on Legal). Money changes hands.
Income − Expenses − Tax. Add income, subtract running costs, subtract tax. Add subsidies and CEO perks. The result lands in your cash.
Repay loans. Every bank loan comes due now (cheaper with an offshore account).
Bankruptcy check. If your cash is now below zero, you could not cover the year. You are bankrupt, and out of the game.
Winning
After the third Reckoning, everyone still standing counts their cash. The richest CEO wins the reckoning. Good luck. You'll need less of it than you think, and more nerve.
A worked year
Read this once and it all clicks. Meet three CEOs: you (Peter), Sarah on your left, and Martin on your right.
SARAH · left
YOU · Peter
MARTIN · right
Round 1
Your hand has a great Accountant, a cheap Product Developer, and a Lawsuit. You want the Accountant, but if you pass it left, Sarah hires it, and she's already rich. So you play the cheap Product Developer (it pays income all game) and pass the rest left. That lovely Accountant is now heading into Sarah's hands. Annoying.
Rounds 2–7
You take a Bank Loan to afford a Lawyer (Legal 0 → 2), draft a couple of income cards, and fire a Consumer Survey at Martin's flimsy product. Martin, bless him, keeps discarding cards for quick cash and wonders why his product is being torn apart in the press.
The Reckoning
Court: you sued Martin — your Legal 2 beats his 0, and he pays up. Books: income covers expenses, and your one Accountant even trims your tax. Loan: comes due; you planned for it and end the year comfortably in the black. Martin survives, barely, and now holds a dagger against you. Two more years like that and someone gets very rich. Make it you.
Field guide — the five card types
You don't need this to play. It's here for when a question comes up. The types are also the order cards resolve in each round.
RESOLVES 1ST
Investment
Cash-and-income engines: webshops, stock, solar farms, IPOs, grants. The safe, boring, extremely effective backbone of a fortune.
RESOLVES 2ND
Connection
Favours and financial engineering: bank loans, offshore accounts (permanent tax relief + cheaper loans), subsidies and lobbying. They bend the rules in your favour.
RESOLVES 3RD
Work Environment
Cards that raise your Work Environment and shield you from shitstorms and illness. Home of the satirical parental-leave cards.
RESOLVES 4TH
Employee
Your workforce in five colours (Service, Marketing, Sales, Legal, Accounting). They push scales and income, but eat capacity and rack up wages. Can be fired (1M) or poached.
RESOLVES LAST
Competition
The dirty tricks: lawsuits, shitstorms, surveys, illness, planted evidence, poaching. Always target a left or right neighbour, and land after everyone has finished building.
Expansions — mix and match freely
Each card expansion adds 1 card to every hand, so the years run richer.
The Board
Draft four board demands, commit to one each year. Meet it for a bonus, miss it and pay a fine. The art is promising the right thing at the right time.
The Investment Pack
Six new investment cards every year: webshops, venture funds, IPOs and more.
The Headhunters
Staff warfare. Poach the employee that fits you best (they take their scale points along) and defend your own with non-compete clauses. Includes the parental-leave cards.
The Lobbyists
Lobbying, greenwashing and spin doctors. Build Political Influence (0–7) for state subsidies, greenwash your tax down, and turn media attacks back on their senders.
The Entrepreneurs
Six more CEOs to sit at the table — the ex-banker, the serial founder, the HR director, the former judge, the influencer and the landowner — each with their own perk.
Three parting tips
The courtroom is a business model
Every step of Legal pays you income and wins you lawsuits. A lawyer who bills for every suit you file, plus a bonus for every one you win, turns suing your neighbours into a revenue stream. This is one of the strongest strategies in the game — not a desperate move.
An actual card from the game
1 · Lawyer up
Legal is quietly the strongest track: every step pays income and lets you win lawsuits against your neighbours. Build it early and the courtroom becomes a money machine. Do not treat suing as a last resort.
2 · Turn cash into engines
Cash is only the final scoreboard. What wins is turning it into things that pay you every year — staff, products, retainers. A little paid annually usually beats a one-off lump.
3 · Revenue is not profit
Big revenue drags big tax behind it, and a team gets pricier the longer it stays. Accountants and an offshore account cut the tax; a high Work Environment curbs the wage creep. Grow the parts that pay you.
