Cinderfall 2210
How to begin
Open the game and the campaign panel appears. Choose how many houses take the field — 2 to 5 — and the doctrine the computer houses will play at: Cadet, Veteran or Ace. Press Open the campaign. You always take the first seat; the rest are played by the machine.
If you have a campaign in progress the panel also offers Resume the saved campaign. The Field manual button opens the full rules at any time.
Controls
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Select one of your stacks | Click or tap it |
| Choose a target | Click an adjacent enemy territory |
| Place automata (deploy) | Click your territories; shift-click places five |
| Play a directive | Click the card on the rail, then its target if it needs one |
| Switch between Earth and Luna | The tabs at the top left of the board, or E / L |
| Advance the phase | The button at the foot of the rail, or Space |
| Press an attack | A, once a target is chosen |
| Clear a selection | Esc |
Turn order
The campaign runs 5 years. Each year begins with a sealed bid: every house secretly commits energy for its place in the order of march. Bids are revealed together and the rail re-sorts into the queue for that year. The energy is spent whether or not you win the place you wanted.
The house that takes the first march also draws +2 automata that year. The last march acts after everyone else — which in year five means acting last before the ledger closes.
Each house then takes its march in order, through four phases:
- Commission — draw energy, hire marshals, raise Launch Spires, draw directives.
- Deploy — place your automata on ground you hold.
- Invade — attack adjacent territories.
- Manoeuvre — make one free movement along a chain of your own territories.
Movement
Automata move in two ways. In invade, winning an exchange that empties the defending territory lets you occupy it, moving as many automata forward as you like so long as one stays behind. In manoeuvre, you make a single free shift of any size between two of your own territories that are connected through territory you hold.
Three gates restrict where you may go at all:
| Gate | What it takes |
|---|---|
| Seafloor trenches | A Deepwater Marshal in post |
| Ascent to Luna | A Launch Spire (7E, on land you hold) and an Orbital Marshal; you may only land on the 4 marked landing sites |
| Descent from Luna | The Skyfall directive |
Combat
The attacker rolls up to 3 dice and the defender up to 2, one die per automaton committed beyond the one that must stay home. Dice are matched highest against highest; the defender wins ties. Each loss removes one automaton.
A marshal present on the ground swaps one d6 for a d8 — but only in their own element. A Ground Marshal does nothing in a trench or on the Moon. Every exchange is itemised on the dice slip on the rail, with d8s ringed in gold and the winning dice picked out.
Scoring
The ledger closes at the end of year 5.
| Item | Points |
|---|---|
| Each territory held | 1 |
| Each whole sector held | +2 |
| Each devastated territory held | 0 |
Devastated ground draws no energy, takes no reinforcement, scores nothing, and breaks the sector bonus around it. A warhead is as much a denial of someone else's sector as it is a killing blow.
Sectors and their bonuses. Holding every territory in a sector pays the bonus below in scoring, and adds 2E per sector to your yearly income.
| Sector | Domain | Territories | Bonus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boreal Rim | Land | 8 | +5 |
| Meridian Reach | Land | 4 | +2 |
| Old Continent | Land | 7 | +5 |
| Sahelian Belt | Land | 6 | +3 |
| Great Steppe | Land | 12 | +7 |
| Austral Arc | Land | 5 | +3 |
| Atlantic Trenches | Seafloor | 3 | +3 |
| Pacific Trenches | Seafloor | 3 | +3 |
| Indo-Arctic Deep | Seafloor | 2 | +2 |
| Mare Imbrium | Luna | 3 | +3 |
| Mare Serenitatis | Luna | 3 | +3 |
| Mare Nubium | Luna | 3 | +3 |
| The Farside | Luna | 3 | +3 |
Winning
The house with the highest ledger at the close of year 5 takes the mandate. Ties are settled by ground held, then whole sectors, then territories taken over the campaign, then surviving energy, and only then by a draw.
Losing
You lose by finishing behind. A house that is driven off the board entirely is eliminated, but that is rare: the campaign is a race for the ledger, not a fight to the last automaton. Losing your last territory ends your campaign; the remaining houses play the mandate out.
Marshals
| Marshal | Element | Commission | Grants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground Marshal | Land only | 8E | Ground Marshal deck |
| Deepwater Marshal | Trenches only | 8E | Deepwater Marshal deck |
| Orbital Marshal | Luna only | 8E | Orbital Marshal deck |
| Ordnance Marshal | Any domain | 9E | Ordnance Marshal deck |
| Envoy | Any domain | 7E | Envoy deck |
Every house begins with a Ground Marshal already in post, at no cost. A marshal occupies no place in a stack and is never picked off by a lost exchange — but a marshal is lost with the ground they stand on.
Saving and restarting
The campaign saves itself automatically after every action, in this browser only, under a single key. Close the tab and the campaign will be waiting under Resume the saved campaign when you return.
New in the top right discards the saved campaign and opens the setup panel again. Nothing is stored anywhere but this browser, and no data ever leaves your machine.