Company and Round

How a Carnegie Company works — Departments, active and inactive employees, Missions — and the four steps of a round, including a Timeline that has reached its End.

Your Company

Your Company board starts with a Lobby and 5 Departments: Human Resources, two Management Departments (Commerce and Finance, Strategic Planning), Construction and Research & Development. You also start with $12 and 4 goods cubes. During the game you add Department tiles on the empty spaces of the board.

Departments

Each Department belongs to one of the four action types — Human Resources, Management, Construction, R&D — shown at its top. It has 1–3 Workstations; the price under each is what it costs to stand an employee there.

• A Department does nothing without at least one standing employee on it.
• When its type is chosen, it works once per standing employee.
• Blue-backed Departments (4, 8, 12, 16 and several expansion tiles) give an ongoing effect instead, as long as one employee stands there. The New Lobby needs no employee at all.

Active and inactive employees

• An employee lying down is inactive (“in training”); standing up it is active. Only a standing employee on a Workstation counts as active.
• Every employee arrives lying down — new recruits and those back from Missions go to the Lobby.
• Moving an employee always lays it down. A Workstation holds one standing employee; any space or Department can hold any number lying down.
• You stand employees up only at the end of a round, paying the price under the Workstation (End of the round). An employee that stays put stays standing.

Missions

Departments marked work by sending the employee on a Mission: move the standing employee you used from its Workstation to one of the four Mission areas on the board (West, Midwest, South, East). It is no longer active.

• You must send the employee that took the action, not another one.
• You can’t send an employee if you can’t pay for the rest of the effect — no Mission to build without the goods cubes.
• You may send employees to any region you like; Construction then builds in that region.

Recovering employees

Employees come home only when a Take Income event names their region (see Events): they go back to the Lobby lying down, and you need a Human Resources action to move them out again.

A round

The game lasts 20 rounds. Each round has four steps.

Select a Timeline

The first player picks the action for the round — Human Resources, Management, Construction or R&D — and puts the Timeline marker (the gear) on that row, just right of its action marker. The space under the gear sets the event.

A Timeline that has reached the End

You may choose a row whose action marker is already on its last space. Put the gear right of it as usual, then turn over the action marker of the row below (R&D wraps to Human Resources). That marker must still be able to move forward; if it can’t, go down another row. The turned marker triggers the event of the space to its right. At the end of the round turn it face up and move it one space forward.

So when one action is taken more than five times, another can be taken fewer times.

Events

Placing the gear triggers one event for everybody:

• Take Income (a region): starting with the first player, everyone with employees in that Mission area may bring one or more home to their Lobby. Each returned employee pays the transport income of your disk’s space on that region’s track (tracks). If you returned at least one, you also collect project income once — every income space revealed on your project tabs (tabs).
• Make a Donation (): starting with the first player, each player may make one donation (Donations).
• On the four last spaces of the Timeline each player may do both, in either order.

Use Departments

Starting with the first player and going clockwise, each player uses their Departments of the chosen type, in any order:

• each Department once per standing employee on it — you never have to use them all;
• finish one Department before starting the next, and don’t go back to it this turn;
• a Department with several effects lets you pick one per employee.

The four actions explain what each type does.

Activate employees and end the round

After everybody has acted, each player may stand up inactive employees anywhere in their Company, paying the price under each empty Workstation they take. Then the first player moves the chosen action marker one space right (the gear goes back beside the board) and passes the first-player marker (locomotive) and the gear clockwise.

Action Choice tiles

With 3 or 4 players some players have an Action Choice tile (setup). On your turn in step 3 you may hand it back to the box to use your Departments of a different type from the one the first player chose. Each tile works once per game; an unused one scores 3 VP at the end.

Selling goods

You may sell goods cubes to the supply at any time for $1 each.