New Challenge

Snow Planner: new challenge.

Short tag: [Co-op]. This expansion requires the base game and New Season. Players run separate Hotels toward a common six-round challenge. Solo controls two or more Hotels without an Automa.

Components and setup

Picture key: 1 Co-op board; 2 Inspectors; 3 Round deck and 4 Card tokens (setup); 5 Event deck and 6 shared Event display.

Add the Co-op board, 20 Inspectors, 16 cooperative Round cards, three Events, two shared co-op Events, four Dog Sleds, four Card tokens and 20 acrylic cubes per Hotel.

Use the two-player board back at two Hotels; at three, cover the top of the four-player front with the three-player tile. Prepare New Season, then:

1. Mix Inspectors into the Guest deck. Reveal six Station cards; if four or more are Inspectors, reshuffle all six and repeat until there are at most three.
2. Use co-op Round cards: remove four-player-only cards at three players; additionally remove 3–4-player cards at two. Stack three Low Season cards (including the designated first-round card), two High Season cards and one Fiscal Year End card.
3. Mix the three new Events into the Event deck. Put the two co-op Events and three drawn Events face up as the shared hand. Whenever a permanent (∞) or end-game (→∥) Event appears face up, return it to the box and replace it. This applies throughout the game, including setup.
4. Start each Hotel’s workers at 1 and 4, with the third set aside at 1. Each Hotel gets one Ticket, one Dog Sled and 20 acrylic cubes. Do not deal private Event hands.

Shared Events

You may play a displayed Event if it has no cube of your color: add your cube and resolve it. Other players’ cubes do not prevent your play. Leave the card in the display.

For each Event draw you would gain, put one Card token on the Event deck. Once their count equals the number of Hotels, return them and add one face-up Event to the display.

When paying Event cards as a cost, use Card tokens from the deck first. With none, discard an unmarked Event from the display and put tokens on the deck equal to player count minus the Event-card cost. A card marked by any player cannot be discarded. If there is neither a token nor an eligible unmarked card, that cost cannot be paid.

Goals differ from Events: only one player may play each Goal, and the whole group may play at most three. Mark ownership with an acrylic cube. Goals cannot pay Event-card costs.

Co-op Projects

When acquiring a Project, you may put it on the Co-op board instead of your personal area and mark its owner with an acrylic cube. Its owner can still put a Window on it.

For a first-row space, choose any Project color. Above that, the two directly supporting spaces must already contain Projects, and at least one of those Projects or its Window must match the new Project’s color. Pay the destination space’s resource cost; every player receives its shared resource reward.

You must also exceed, not merely equal, the row’s printed point requirement. At four players the requirements are more than 15 for row 2, more than 35 for row 3, and more than 45 for row 4. Use the thresholds on the board/overlay for your own player count.

Every Project on the Co-op board must eventually have a Window to win.

Inspectors and cooperation

Inspectors behave as Guests but stay at most through Day 2. When an Inspector in Station is discarded during Cleaning, all players lose its printed points. A VIP acquisition advances the matching Score Track by two instead of one.

You may take free actions during other players’ turns and during every phase. A face-up Dog Sled lets you send one resource to another player. Keep the used Dog Sled with the giver, face down; reset it at Announcement. The publisher’s harder optional variant passes the Sled itself to the recipient instead.

After Cleaning in round 3, fill the highest still-empty Public Works ranks with unused colors’ cubes. At four players use resource tokens to mark those ranks. Those filled ranks no longer award Bonus tiles or allow later player cubes.

You may choose any free position within an action area; the competitive leftmost-space rule is replaced.

Victory and scoring

Finish Cleaning in the 6th round, score each Hotel using the base and New Season rules, then check all of these:

• Every required Co-op board space has a Project.
• Every Project on that board has a Window.
• The average Hotel score must exceed 50.

If any test fails, everyone loses. A score of exactly 50 does not satisfy the written victory condition even though the rating table starts its B band at 50.

Solo

Control two Hotels using the two-player setup, with no Automa. Apply the same collective victory requirements and score their average. More Hotels make management harder; use the relevant board and player-count rules.