Actions and the Year

How action-card placement, contracts, towers and annual phases work.

Choose an action

In each of the year’s three action rounds, place an action marker on the next numbered space of your company mat and choose one:

1. Play an action card.
2. Retrieve all action cards on your company mat. You need at least two there. Return any attached connection tiles to your play area, move your time disc one space, and move your turn-order disc to the lower row.
3. Take one battery, if the supply has one, and move your turn-order disc to the lower row.

Play an action card

Put the card in the leftmost empty space of either row, even if the space is between two cards. The zone printed on the space determines where a zone-linked effect applies. A red frame pays its zone value; a green frame receives it. If a card offers an alternate battery cost, choose that instead. An energy symbol on the frame gains the amount shown for that space. Meet the card’s printed requirements before resolving the effect. If an opponent’s bulldozer or tower satisfies a requirement, pay that owner any cost and follow the frame’s bulldozer movement instruction after resolving the effect.

Basic action effects

Your eight basic cards cover these actions:

• Build a wind farm and gain the frame’s energy.
• Build an electrical tower and take two orthogonally adjacent tower-board spaces or tiles allowed by that zone.
• Take venture capital from an unlocked slot; collect its space value and income from the highest marker in that income band. Pay $30 per tile at the end.
• Choose between a wind farm, tower or standard contract, following the selected effect’s normal rules.
• Move bulldozers between eligible sites, the utility area and the parking grid. A parked bulldozer stays there.
• Fulfill standard contracts, remote contracts or sell batteries to a foreign market where the card and zone permit.
• Retrieve cards or take a battery as a turn action instead of playing a card.

Specific card frames and specialist effects are summarized in Cards & Components.

Build towers and farms

Place a wind farm on an empty wind-farm or mixed site beside a bulldozer. Gain the energy shown by the action frame; the energy track ranges from 0 to 14. A tower uses the leftmost tower on your grid board and an empty tower or mixed site beside a bulldozer. Resolve the tower’s printed effect, then choose two adjacent spaces on the tower bonus board. A tower in zone A takes both choices from A; zone B can reach A or B; zone C can reach any area. In two-player games, discard one additional eligible bonus tile (the optional Rahdo variant changes which tile you discard).

Move bulldozers as an action or card effect to prepare construction. A site is available only when it has no structure and no bulldozer beside it. The utility area has unlimited spaces. A bulldozer moved to a parking space claims that printed bonus and cannot leave the grid.

Fulfill contracts

For a standard contract, you need an unlocked sector, zone, market icon and transformer column; the chosen transformer space must also connect to an earlier contract on your grid (unless it is your first contract). Pay the energy cost printed at that board space, take the contract, move an unlocked transformer onto its vacated board space, and place the contract in that transformer’s grid space. Resolve its printed grid bonus and advance each matching income marker by the number of arrows shown, stopping before any locked income threshold. A marker’s first arrival at a dark-green threshold gains you a specialist card.

Solar contracts are available to the dedicated solar action. Take the next tile reachable from either start of the solar display, pay the tile’s specified energy or battery cost, and put the transformer on the display space. Remote contracts are fulfilled like standard contracts, but pay the energy and/or battery cost printed on the remote tile.

Zone access and market access open progressively: level 1 gives zones A/B and residential/remote icons (solar contracts are always available to the solar action); level 2 opens industrial/resort; level 3 opens commercial; level 4 opens zone C. The tower must also be built in the sector where the chosen standard contract sits.

Foreign markets

Use a card that supports foreign-market sales in a zone B space. Pay the batteries shown on one displayed Argentina or Brazil card, take it, collect income for each symbol shown on its income side, then flip it to its market-icon side for scoring. Refill the display from that country’s deck. Market symbols on acquired cards can count in scoring and trigger end-game tower bonuses.

Consolidation and turn order

After all players take three actions:

1. Retrieve your action markers.
2. Return one rightmost action card from either row to your hand, returning any connection tile attached to it.
3. Produce one battery for each uncovered production icon at or to the left of the tower column matching your energy level. The supply is shared; if it runs short, resolve this in turn order.
4. Collect the displayed income from all five income markers.
5. Advance your time disc one space.

In the turn-order phase, move lower-row turn-order discs back to the top in the order their time discs have advanced (higher in a stack is further along), then add the remaining discs behind them in that same order. If all time discs reach the final space, proceed to end-game scoring.

Source: Official Pampero rules and player reference, pp. 8–19.