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Springsign may be a tough little settlement — the winters are hard, it’s crawling with bandits, and the only thing to eat is fish — but what if it could be more? Well, that’s where you come in! As a member of the Springsign Town Council, you and the other councilors will need to improve the settlement… though nobody said you can’t pursue your own interests too!
Springsign is an asymmetric, action-management board game where you and your opponents develop a young frontier settlement. Only one player can win the game by being elected mayor, so even as you each contribute to the town, you’ll need to develop your own strategy to get ahead of your opponents!
Gameplay
The goal of Springsign is to win The Election at the end of the game by having the most votes. To get votes, you’ll need popularity, which is collected through a variety of actions and abilities. Let’s learn how by walking through the game.
Each player chooses which of Springsign’s unique town councilors they want to play as. Each player board has an equally-powerful “Beginner” and “Asymmetric” side, so it’s up to the player which one they want to use.
Each Settler card in town generates new resources, which the players will use during the coming Season. If you’ve hired any Settlers, those resources go right into your inventory.
Your player board will give you some actions, but you’ll gain others during the game. A common action you’ll take will be to Explore the World, which lets you add new cards to town (for a reward from the town’s market)!
Some other common actions are Hiring a Settler to generate resources for you, Studying a Relic to gain a powerful new action or passive ability, and Fighting a Bandit to claim its bounty (and there are many more!).
To gain popularity with your actions, you’ll need to plan your turns around the Building cards in town, which will reward you with popularity for fulfilling their requirements.
– Dissatisfied Settlers Leave. Settlers who haven’t sold all their wares will look for work elsewhere. Their leftover resources become available in the town market.
– Troublemakers Act. Any Bandits (and some trouble-making Settlers) who haven’t been dealt with will cause Anarchy in town. Careful — if Anarchy gets too strong, it can win the game instead, causing all the players to lose!
– Town Votes. Whoever has accumulated the most popularity scores a vote, then resets their marker on the popularity track.
Springsign is being developed as a product of The End Games, a brick-and-mortar game store in Charlottesville, Va.
The project is led by Andy Mangham, who acts as The End Games’ product developer. Andy has been designing games since 2018; he wrote and produced the tabletop role-playing game “Emberlord”, and owns Trap Mountain Studio, a start-up game development company.