Rounds, Time and Death
Take cubes, spend time and record the family’s history.
Start the round
Use the setup card matching player count and expansion combination. Put the listed coloured influence cubes and all six plague cubes into the green bag, mix, and distribute to areas according to that card.
[Marriage] Use seven plague cubes; the Family action gets no cubes in round one only (Marriage).
Your turn
Take one cube from any action area. Keep coloured influence; return a black plague cube and spend two time. Then you may use the chosen area’s action, paying its costs. You may decline the action after taking the cube, except that taking a Market cube always starts a market day.
Instead of taking a cube, the Well lets you pay three influence of one colour to perform an action. Do not take an area cube as well.
Time
Move the farm’s time marker clockwise for each unit spent. If it crosses the quill, finish the action and then resolve a death at the end of your turn. During a market day, resolve the death immediately instead.
Death and the chronicle
Choose one of your oldest eligible villagers: the lowest printed generation number among those visible on the board or your farm. If several qualify, choose which dies. Unborn villagers and those inside the black bag cannot die this way.
The profession where the villager dies determines its chronicle category. Put it in a free matching space; if none remains, put it in the graveyard. A villager dying on the farm uses the farm category. Do not select a higher generation just to claim a better profession.
[Marriage] Bread can raise a living villager’s effective generation (bread); deaths on the Marriage board use the farm category. [Port] Death at sea can use sea burial (Port).
End the round
The player taking the last action cube completes the chosen action, then Mass takes place. If someone claimed the next-starting-player ring, that player starts the new round and returns the ring to the council chamber. Otherwise keep the same first player. Refill cubes using the correct setup card.