Food Chain Magnate rules refresher

Read the refresher

You win by having the most cash when the bank breaks for the second time. You get there by hiring and training a staff of employee cards, using them to advertise, produce food and drinks, and sell to the houses on the map.

Setup reminders first. Build the map from randomly drawn tiles, each rotated randomly: three by three for two players, three by four for three, four by four for four, and five by four for five. Remove billboards depending on player count: with two players remove billboards twelve, fifteen and sixteen, with three players fifteen and sixteen, with four players just sixteen, and with five none. Also thin out each employee card marked as a top position so that only one copy is in the stock at two or three players, two copies at four, and three at five. Put fifty dollars per player into the bank pool. Players start with no money at all. Each player takes a chain, a CEO card, three restaurants and a set of three bank reserve cards. Randomise turn order. Then, starting with the last player in turn order and ending with the first, each player either places their starting restaurant or passes; anyone who passed places in a second round, going in turn order. A starting restaurant must sit fully on empty squares, its entrance must border a road, and its entrance may not be on the same tile as another restaurant's entrance. Finally, each player secretly picks one of their three reserve cards and puts it face down next to the bank. The other two are discarded unseen.

Every turn runs through seven phases in the same order: restructuring, order of business, working, dinnertime, payday, marketing campaigns, and cleanup. In restructuring you choose which staff work this turn and arrange them under your CEO. In order of business you claim a slot on the turn order track. In working you take one action per employee at work. Then the houses go out to eat, you pay salaries, campaigns generate demand, and you clean up.

In restructuring, all players simultaneously pick the cards they want to use, face down, then reveal together. Those cards are at work; everything else is on the beach, unusable this turn, though beach cards can still be trained and still cost salary. Arrange the working cards as a pyramid under the CEO. The CEO has three slots and may take normal staff or managers. Each manager has between two and ten slots, and only normal employees may report to a manager, never another manager. If you have played more cards than fit, everything except the CEO goes to the beach and you play the turn with only the CEO. On the first turn the CEO is the only card. Outside this one phase, anyone may ask to see any player's cards, both at work and on the beach.

In order of business, the player with the most open slots on their CEO and managers picks their spot on the turn order track first, then the next, and so on. The first airplane campaign milestone adds two extra open slots for this count only. Ties go to whoever was earlier in turn order last turn. There are only as many spots on the track as there are players.

In working, players go in turn order and each completes everything before the next begins. The actions of the pricing manager, discount manager, luxury manager, CFO, recruiting manager, HR director and waitress are mandatory; the rest are optional. Actions happen in a fixed order regardless of where cards sit in your chart: recruit, train, marketing, get food and drinks, place houses and gardens, and finally place or move restaurants.

Recruiting: your CEO always gives one free hire, plus one per recruiting girl, two per recruiting manager and four per HR director. You may only hire entry level cards, and they go onto the beach. Unused hires on a recruiting manager or HR director each become a five dollar salary discount at payday. Training: each training action trains one beach card one step. You may not train cards that are at work, nor busy marketeers. Normally a card may not be trained twice in the same turn; a coach may move one card two steps, a guru up to three, and the salaries milestone lets multiple trainers work on one person. The final card must be available in the stock, but intermediate cards need not be.

Marketing: each marketeer may place one campaign of its type or lower, with a duration from one turn up to the card's maximum. Range is counted in tile crossings by road from one of your restaurant entrances, and the campaign tile itself must be in range. Brand managers and brand directors ignore range, but billboards, mailboxes and radios still have to sit on empty squares connected to a road. Airplanes go at the edge of the board and must fly over one, three or five full rows or columns without leaving the board. Choose what to advertise and put that many wooden pieces on the campaign, one per turn of duration. Set the marketeer aside with a busy chip matching the campaign's number. A busy marketeer takes up no slot but still needs a salary. Campaigns can never be ended early.

Food and drinks: kitchen staff take burgers or pizzas as printed on their card. Errand boys take one drink of any type. Cart operators, truck drivers and zeppelin pilots trace a route from a restaurant entrance and collect drinks for each drink symbol they pass; carts and trucks follow roads and may not make U turns, while zeppelins ignore roads and may not enter the same tile twice. Your stock sits in front of you and serves all your restaurants. A new business developer places a house anywhere connected to a road, which comes with a garden already, or adds a garden to a printed house, forming a two by three rectangle on empty squares, one garden per house. A local manager places a new restaurant within three tiles by road, coming soon side up, opening at the end of the turn. A regional manager places a restaurant anywhere, or picks one up and moves or rotates it, and it is active immediately. While either manager is active, your restaurants have a drive in and count as having an entrance in every corner.

Dinnertime is automatic. Houses are processed in printed number order, lowest first. A house with no demand tokens does nothing. Otherwise it looks for chains that are connected to it by road and can supply its entire order in full. If several qualify, each chain's unit price plus its distance in tile crossings decides, lowest total wins. The unit price is ten dollars, reduced one dollar per pricing manager, three per discount manager, and one more permanently with the lower prices milestone, and increased ten dollars by a luxury manager. Bonuses from milestones and the CFO never change the unit price. Ties go to the chain with more waitresses in its structure, then to whoever is earlier in turn order. The winner discards the matching goods from stock and the demand tokens from the house, and gets the unit price plus any bonuses per item. A house with a garden pays double the unit price, but bonuses are not doubled. After all houses, each chain collects three dollars per waitress, or five with the waitress milestone. Then any chain with a CFO, or the hundred dollar milestone, adds fifty percent to all cash earned this turn, rounded up.

At payday you may fire anyone in the structure or on the beach, returning them to stock; busy marketeers normally may not be fired. Then pay five dollars for every card you still hold that shows a salary symbol, including busy marketeers. All discounts available to you must be used, and salaries can never drop below zero.

Then campaigns run in number order, lowest first. A house holds at most three demand tokens, or five if it has a garden, and a campaign reaching a full house does nothing. Billboards hit orthogonally adjacent houses, mailboxes hit every house in the block without crossing a road, airplanes hit every house in their fly over lane, and radios hit their own tile plus the eight tiles around it. A house counts as reached even if only its garden is touched. Remove one advertising token from each campaign afterwards; when it is empty, return the campaign and free the marketeer.

In cleanup, discard all food and drinks unless you own the freezer milestone. Take all cards back into hand. Flip coming soon restaurants to welcome. If any milestone was claimed this turn, remove the remaining copies of that milestone from the game. Milestones themselves are claimed the instant you meet the condition and take effect immediately and permanently, and others may still claim the same one during that same turn. Watch the first billboard placed milestone in particular: from then on your campaigns never end, they go on the board on their eternal side with a single wooden piece, and the marketeer who placed each one is gone for the rest of the game.

The game is tied to the bank. If during dinnertime the bank cannot pay everyone, it breaks. The first time, reveal the reserve cards, add their total to the bank, and look at the slot numbers on them; the most common number becomes the number of CEO slots for every player from the next turn on, with ties going to the higher number. The second time the bank breaks, the game ends at the end of dinnertime, salaries are not paid that turn, and you finish paying everyone out, writing down anything the bank still owes. The player with the most cash wins, and if two are tied, the one earlier in turn order wins.

A turn, played out

It is mid game and you play the yellow chain. In restructuring you reveal three cards and fill all 3 of your CEO's slots: a pricing manager, a waitress, and a kitchen card that prints 3 burgers. The red player reveals only two cards, leaving 1 slot open on their CEO. In order of business, red has more open slots than your zero, so red claims first place on the turn order track and you take second. In working, red goes first and finishes everything. Their kitchen card brings in 2 burgers. Then it is your turn. Your pricing manager and waitress have mandatory actions, so they simply work. Your kitchen card brings in 3 burgers, and they sit in front of you, ready for any of your restaurants. Now dinnertime. House 2 goes first, because houses go lowest number first. It has a garden and holds 4 burger demand tokens. You have only 3 burgers, red has only 2, and a house takes its whole order or nothing, so neither chain qualifies and house 2 does nothing. Next is house 5, which has a garden and 2 burger demand tokens. Both chains reach it by road and both can supply 2 burgers. Your unit price is 10 dollars minus 1 for the pricing manager, so 9. Your nearest entrance is 2 tile crossings away, for a total of 11. Red has no pricing staff, so their price is 10, but their restaurant is only 1 crossing away, also 11. The tie goes to the chain with more waitresses. You have 1, red has none, so house 5 is yours. You discard 2 burgers from your stock and the 2 demand tokens come off the house. The garden doubles your unit price to 18, so the 2 burgers earn you 36 dollars. Once every house has been checked, your waitress adds 3 more, for 39 this turn. You have no CFO, so nothing is added on top. Your third burger goes unsold, and without the freezer milestone it is discarded in cleanup.