You are an entrepreneur. You have three fiscal years to end up with the most cash. Hire people. Invest in product development and work environment. Copy the competitor's product.
And when honest growth gets inconvenient: Sue your neighbours, smear them in the press and steal their best employees. Then look genuinely surprised when they do it back.
You can start now. If you'd like to win, read on.
A game is 3 fiscal years. Every year has the exact same two beats.
The DraftEveryone 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.
The ReckoningThe books close. Each entrepreneur 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.
Each round, everyone does this at the same time: choose one card, reveal, resolve, pass the rest. The year's hand is 8 cards, and every expansion card pack adds one more.
Pay its cost in cash and place it in front of you. This is how you hire, invest, take a bank loan, or attack a neighbour.
Can't afford anything? Slide one card away and take cash instead: 1M in year 1, 2M in year 2 and 3M in year 3. A discarded card does nothing but line your pockets.
The remaining cards move to your neighbour (automatically in the digital edition): years 1 & 3 to the LEFT, year 2 to the RIGHT. Your next hand arrives from the other side.
Every card belongs to one of five types: Investment (cash and income engines), Connection (bank loans, tax tricks and shady favours), Work Environment (well-being and shields), Employee (your workforce) and Competition (the dirty tricks). The field guide further down covers each of them.
When the round's played cards interact, they resolve in a fixed order:
Investment → Connection → Work Environment → Employee → Competition.
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.
How good your product is, or at least how convincingly you say it is. Your investments pay more for every step, and the scale is your shield against consumer surveys.
How happy your employees are. Shields you from shitstorms and illness, and at step 5+ your wage rises are halved.
Your firepower in court. Each step pays +1M income every year, and Legal decides every lawsuit.
Every winning company runs on an engine: a family of cards that build each other. Pick one early, feed it every year, and let the others fend for themselves. Each engine has cards that build it, cards that amplify it, and a weapon it powers. Mix two if you dare.
The Wellbeing EngineHappy employees pay every year, and step 5+ tames the wage creep. You build your own tower.Happy employees pay every year, and step 5+ tames the wage creep. You build your own tower.
Every WE step pays +1M a year · step 5+ halves wage increases · shield against well-being surveys and illness
The Product EngineEvery step pays, and the scale is your shield against consumer surveys.Every step pays, and the scale is your shield against consumer surveys.
Every PD step pays +1M a year · shield against consumer surveys · prequalifies you for the big tenders
The Courtroom TrackCash still wins: the courtroom just makes sure the others have less.Cash still wins: the courtroom just makes sure the others have less.
Every LAW step pays +1M a year · the plaintiff wins ties · rivals' lawsuits bounce off
The Portfolio TrackInvestments feed each other: the more you own, the steeper the curve.Investments feed each other: the more you own, the steeper the curve.
Portfolio cards pay per investment you own · investments last all three years · copy cards feed on the neighbour's PD
The Noise CannonCommunication specialists are income, weapon and shield at once.Communication specialists are income, weapon and shield at once.
Shitstorm damage grows with your communication surplus · the same people are your own shield · charges hit everyone
Every card is a small illustrated contract. Here is how to read one at a glance.
Your opponents' small boards shorten the three scales, using the game's original Danish short forms. Here's the key:
Each scale runs from 0 to 7. Hover a row in the game for the full name.
A handful of real cards from the game. Hover any of them to see what it does.
i
An income engine in a suit: 4M cash now, then 4M every year for each investment card you buy this year. Adds room for three extra hires and shaves your tax. Finance people pay for themselves.
i
A legal hire whose billable hours flow YOUR way: income for every lawsuit you file, plus a bonus for each one you win. The heart of a courtroom strategy.
i
Your neighbour's product development is yours too: 1M income every year per Product Development step the neighbour you pick stands on. The Store Brand and Same same but different follow in years 2 and 3 at higher rates.
i
Take your left neighbour to court. The plaintiff wins ties on Legal, and the verdict lands at the year-end Reckoning.
i
From the Headhunters expansion: headhunt an employee of your choice from your left neighbour, and the scale points that hire earned go with them. Non-compete clauses protect their owner, but the hunt moves on to the nearest unprotected office.
Cash is what you have, and the only thing that counts. Income is what arrives at the Reckoning. A card costs cash now but pays every year, so an early buy is worth more than a late one. Confusing the two is how profitable companies go bankrupt.
Most attacks hit the neighbour on your left or your right, and the direction is printed on the card. Choose your seat wisely: that is who you will spend three years ruining. Some attacks hit the whole table, and if a neighbour is bankrupt or protected, the attack skips onwards in the same direction. No seat is entirely safe.
LEFT RIVAL
YOU
RIGHT RIVALDecided 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.
A media firestorm. It bites harder the more your communication specialists outgun theirs: a pure communications duel, where Heads of PR count double and a green image softens the blow. And it always lands at least a glancing blow.
A hit piece dressed up as research. It scales against their Product Development: a genuinely great product is hard to smear.
From the Headhunters expansion: steal an employee of your choice. The talent leaves them and joins you, and takes their scale points along (their tracks drop, yours rise).
The arrows across the table and the game's log tell you who is aiming at you. In the digital edition the screen glows in the attack's colour, and the scale shows what you lost.
The lawsuit is the slow blade. It is filed now but only decided at the Reckoning, which leaves you the whole year to defend yourself:
The shitstorm and the consumer survey are the fast blade. They land the instant they are played, and your yearly income takes the hit then and there:
A crown marks whoever is currently set to win: the most useful thing on the table. When someone pulls ahead, the smart move is for everyone else to point their knives at them, before they run away with it.
When the hands run out, every company closes its books in this order.
After the third Reckoning, everyone still standing counts their cash. The richest entrepreneur wins. Good luck. You'll need less of it than you think, and more nerve.
Read this once and it all clicks. Meet three entrepreneurs: you (Peter), Sarah on your left, and Martin on your right.
SARAH · leftYOU · PeterMARTIN · rightYou 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.
InvestmentRESOLVES 1STCash-and-income engines: webshops, stock, solar farms, IPOs, grants and copies of your neighbour's product. The safe, boring, extremely effective backbone of a fortune.
Favours and financial engineering: bank loans, offshore accounts (permanent tax relief + cheaper loans), subsidies and lobbying (the Lobbyists expansion), and the covert jobs, like planting evidence on a neighbour. They bend the rules in your favour.
Work EnvironmentRESOLVES 3RDCards that raise your Work Environment and shield you from shitstorms and illness. Home of the Staffing Policy (year 1), the Pay Policy (year 2) and Ownership or Abuse? (year 3): each time you pick between two models, say co-ownership for the best or pay set by the algorithm. One pays for the relationship and yields income per employee, the other removes the relationship, pays more per employee and costs a Work Environment step. And the satirical parental-leave cards from the Headhunters expansion.
Your workforce in five colours: Service, Communication, Sales, Legal and Accounting. They push scales and income, but eat capacity and rack up wages.
Salespeople fight their own duel, the Client Raid: at every Reckoning you steal 1M income per surplus salesperson against each rival, and vice versa. The Head of Sales counts as two.
Employees can only be fired through cards (Restructuring), and only poached with the Headhunters.
The dirty tricks: lawsuits, shitstorms, surveys, illness, and with the Headhunters expansion, poaching. Always target a left or right neighbour, and land after everyone has finished building for the round.
Each card expansion adds 1 card to every hand, so the years run richer.
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.
Staff warfare. Poach an employee of your choice from a neighbour (they take their scale points along) and defend your own with non-compete clauses. Includes the parental-leave cards.
Lobbying, greenwashing and spin doctors. Build Political Influence (0 to 7) for state subsidies, bid on the yearly public tender (your bid plus your influence wins, if you meet its requirement), draw money straight from the tax pool, greenwash your tax down, and turn media attacks back on their senders. The pack’s leaf cards carry the sprout on the banner: each leaf lowers your tax by 0.5M and counts as one communication specialist in shitstorms against you (up to two), and several of the cards pay per leaf you own.
Six more entrepreneurs 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.
Click an expansion to see it up close, cards and all.
With 4 players you can play two teams of two. With 6, also three teams of two (2v2v2). Digitally, pick Teams in the Opponents section on the start screen; at the physical table, simply agree before dealing.
Teams are seated alternately around the table, so your neighbours are always opponents. Attacks only ever hit neighbours, which means they can never hit your partner.
Victory goes to the team's combined cash after the final year-end settlement. The richest player at the table can easily sit on the losing team.
Plan together all you like, but each player still runs their own company with their own hand. Split the roles: one builds the money machine, one wages war on the neighbours.
The questions that come up most often at the table. One answer each, and a link to the chapter if you want the whole story.
No. Capacity is your ceiling for staff. Accountants can always be hired, and they expand capacity themselves.
Read more in the chapter →The plaintiff. The plaintiff wins at equal or higher Legal, so a tie always goes to the attacker.
Read more in the chapter →Everything resolves in a fixed order: Investment, Connection, Work Environment, Employee and finally Competition. Attacks therefore land last, and a shield played in the same round works first.
Read more in the chapter →The salespeople's own duel. At every Reckoning you steal 1M income per surplus salesperson against each rival, and vice versa. The Head of Sales counts as two.
Read more in the chapter →Cash instead of the card: 1M in year 1, 2M in year 2 and 3M in year 3. The card does nothing.
Read more in the chapter →When your cash drops below zero at the Reckoning. You are out of the game, and attacks aimed at your seat skip on in the same direction.
Read more in the chapter →Years 1 and 3 to the left, year 2 to the right. Your next hand arrives from the opposite side.
Read more in the chapter →On the year's profit: 1M, plus 1M per full 5M. Loss years are tax-free. Every accountant and every green card takes 0.5M off, an offshore account 1.5M to 4M.
Read more in the chapter →The crown sits with whoever is currently set to win. That is who everyone else should be pointing their knives at.
Read more in the chapter →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.
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.
The bigger the profit, the higher up the tax ladder you climb, and your employees get pricier for every year they stay. Accountants and an offshore account cut the tax; a high Work Environment curbs the wage creep. Grow the parts that pay you.
Ruthless Returns · Regnskabets Time · A game by Thomas Lay & Diana C. L. · © 2026 South Harbour Studios · Privacy