Sunset Over Water

Sunset Over Water is set up by arranging the landscape cards in a 5x5 grid in the center of the play area, serving as the wilderness board where artists travel. The daily goal deck and commission cards are placed alongside the grid, with four commission cards initially available for players to claim. Each player selects a meeple character to represent their artist on the map, along with a set of day/action cards used for planning and tracking movement throughout the game.

The primary objective of the game is to earn the most renown by wandering the wilderness, painting beautiful landscape scenes, and fulfilling various art commissions and daily goals over a campaign lasting six days.

Every round starts with a planning phase where players secretly choose a planning card to determine their wake-up time. This establishes the player order for the day. During the trek phase, players move their meeple across the 5x5 grid in permitted directions, collect landscape cards to add to their hand as painted pictures, fulfill commission requirements when possible, and sometimes trigger board replenishments if they land on or pass ranger stations.

Renown points are tallied at the end of the game based on successfully completed commission cards, achieved daily goals, and bonus points awarded for specific matching landscape features on your paintings, as well as holding the majority in certain card criteria.

The game concludes after six full days of travel and painting. Once all six rounds are complete, players calculate their total renown points using the scoring guide, determining titles ranging from paint-by-numbers all the way up to true artisan.