Teach the Game
A table-ready introduction to Oil Rock's four-round oil-business race.
How you win
After four rounds, the company with the most victory points wins. You score by deepening wells, building offices, developing refineries and meeting the conditions on blue Structure Improvements. Progress also scores, and unspent Patents and sets of leftover resources convert to points.
The boards
The shared board links colored Regions with a railway network. Each Region has office spaces, a Railway bonus and a terrain cost. The center has a rotating action wheel, a Progress track, milestone display, Improvement market and victory-point track. Each company board tracks three colored wells, their Drill depth, Offices, Refineries, Turbines, Briefcase rewards and player resources. Your Character notebook sets your starting Progress benefits and the worker mix available as you advance.
A round
Each of the four rounds has six phases:
- Income: take the resources shown by your current Character level and Improvements.
- Worker actions: place three workers, Assistants first and Managers after. An Assistant performs one available action. A Manager performs one action or activates two connected spaces on the inner action ring; resolve one fully before the next, and you may decline the second.
- Extract oil: each well produces barrels according to its depth. A blue barrel may substitute for green or yellow, and green may substitute for yellow.
- Refine: activate each of your Refineries at most once. Match its requested barrels; a Turbine beside that Refinery adds its printed production bonus. The basic refinery converts any combination into resources at half the total value, rounded down.
- Milestones: score the currently visible round goal. The top visible tile is the target; turn it face down after scoring.
- Round end: remove the two lowest-numbered Improvement cards and refill the market to 6/7/8 cards for 2/3/4 players. Return workers, rotate the outer wheel clockwise and set next round’s turn order from Progress, with the player furthest behind going first.
Your worker actions
| Action tile | What it does |
|---|---|
 Progress | Gain 1 Progress, free |
 Progress + Improvement | Gain 1 Progress, then you may buy an Improvement |
 Move the Train | One or two Regions, paying Coal for the terrain; take the Railway bonuses |
 Train anywhere | Straight to any Region, paying only the destination |
 Build an Office | Pay Tools; take the top Office of a column and its bonus |
 Build a Drill | Pay Tools (by well and depth); take the top Drill of that well |
 Build a Refinery | Free |
 Refinery + Improvement | A free Refinery, then you may buy an Improvement |
 Build a Turbine | Pay 0–2 Coal (printed on its back); it boosts the Refinery beside it |
 Buy an Improvement | Pay its cost from the market |
 Three resources | Take any three from the general supply |
The wheel actions let you advance Progress, move your Train, build one Office, Drill, Refinery or Turbine, or buy an Improvement. The Copy space lets you pay one Progress to use an Action tile not occupied by one of your workers. A Manager on the inner ring may link two neighboring actions. The action tile’s own printed instructions determine its precise cost and reward.
Train movement follows connected Regions. Ordinary movement travels one or two Regions and pays the terrain cost for each entered Region; take each Railway bonus as you arrive. After moving, your Engineer can move to a Region you traversed or left. A special move may take the Train directly to any Region, paying the destination terrain cost and taking its Railway bonus; the Engineer may move from the start or to the destination.
How the game ends
The game ends after the fourth round’s final milestone and round-end phase. Complete final scoring, including your built assets, qualifying Improvements, Progress and remaining resources. Use the tie-breaker printed in the rules: the player ahead on the Progress track wins; when markers tie, the lower marker in the stack is considered ahead.
Ways to score
- Wells: each completed well scores by its final depth (the player board shows the point values).
- Offices: score the value of the occupied office spaces.
- Refineries: the later Refineries score when they are adjacent to a Turbine, as printed on the tile.
- Structures: score each blue Structure card’s end-game condition.
- Progress: score the value shown at the final Progress spaces; Progress beyond the track converts to points as specified.
- Patents: each unused Patent is worth 1 point.
- Resources: each complete set of three leftover Tools, Coins and Coal (in any mix) is worth 1 point; round down.
What each resource is for
Tools pay for Offices and some Improvements. Coins pay for Improvements, additional Refinery construction and some actions. Coal pays terrain movement and some Turbines or Improvements. Progress advances your Character and improves income, worker access and abilities, but can also be spent to copy an action. Patents unlock Briefcase rewards or buy one extra action tile use per round (maximum one such extra action each round). Barrels are the three oil grades: use them to satisfy refinery recipes, with higher grades substituting for lower grades. Victory points track your current score.
Teaching tips
Show the oil-to-refinery loop first: build a Drill to deepen a colored well, extract barrels, then build and activate a refinery that can use them. Next explain how the Train opens Regions for offices and Railway bonuses. Save the wheel’s linked Manager action and action-copy timing for the second example turn. Remind players that unused barrels mostly do not carry over: at phase end, keep at most one of each color.