City of the Great Machine

Set up the board by arranging district tiles according to the quick or preset methods in the rulebook. Shuffle citizen tiles face-down and place them onto the designated spots on each district tile, leaving leftover citizens nearby. Place two guard pawns in every district. Each revolutionary player takes a hero miniature, their oversized card, and nine matching access access cards, secretly choosing one as their forfeited card. The Great Machine player takes the progress clock board, setting the master plan and discontent markers based on player count. Shuffle directive, city event, and access decks, preparing all tokens and dice near the main play area.

City of the Great Machine is a one-to-four-player hidden movement and deduction game. One player controls the oppressive Great Machine, striving to complete its master plan and crush dissent. The remaining players act as Revolutionaries leading heroes who must ignite uprisings, incite citizens, and overthrow the regime before time runs out.

A round is divided into five sequential phases. Phase one reveals a new city event card that modifies round rules and conditions. Phase two has every revolutionary secretly play an access card to determine their destination district. Phase three allows the Great Machine to spend bonds moving guards and servants to patrol districts, make arrests, repair broken guards, and raid locations. Phase four lets heroes move using trust and perform district actions like inciting dissent, attacking guards, or starting riots. Phase five is the closing phase where failed raids resolve, discontent rises, and end-of-round event triggers are checked.

The Great Machine accumulates bonds from the discontent track and citizen trust during the closing phase. Heroes manage trust balances as currency for movement and actions, remaining cautious not to exceed their maximum trust limit or get detained.

The game ends instantly under several conditions: the Great Machine wins if its master plan advances to 12, if a hero runs out of access cards, or if discontent reaches the riot stage when two successful riots have already occurred. The Revolutionaries win if they successfully trigger three riots across different districts or if two riots succeed while discontent is at the riot stage.