General
When a draw pile is empty, shuffle its discard pile to form a new draw pile.
Whenever one of the three draw piles (tool cards, loot cards, fence cards) runs out of cards, shuffle the respective discard pile and use it face down as the new draw pile.
Setup
Starting hands are unequal: the starting player draws 2 tools, the next player draws 3, all others draw 4.
At the start of the game, the starting player draws 2 tool cards into their hand. The player to the starting player's left draws 3 tool cards. All remaining players each draw 4 tool cards. This compensates for the starting player's positional advantage.
Turn structure
In Phase A, players take turns clockwise placing exactly 1 scoundrel token at a time until all 3 tokens per player are placed.
Phase A proceeds in clockwise order starting with the starting player. On your turn you place exactly 1 scoundrel token onto any square on the board. You may never place more than 1 token per turn in this phase. This continues in rounds until all players have placed all 3 of their scoundrel tokens (i.e., 3 full clockwise passes).
Restriction
Each placement square holds at most 1 scoundrel token; each place has 5 squares.
Each of the 5 places (City, Villa, Ruin, Museum, Harbor) has 5 placement squares. Each square may hold no more than 1 scoundrel token at a time. A player may place multiple tokens at the same place provided unoccupied squares remain there.
Turn structure
Places are resolved in order 1–5 (City, Villa, Ruin, Museum, Harbor); within each place, the token on square 1 acts first.
During Phase B, places are resolved in numerical order: City (1) first, then Villa (2), Ruin (3), Museum (4), and Harbor (5) last. Within a place, the player whose token occupies square 1 acts first, then square 2, then square 3, and so on. Each token grants its owner 1 action at that place.
Turn structure
After performing an action, a player immediately returns their scoundrel token to their personal supply — except at the Ruin.
Once a player finishes their action at any place (City, Villa, Museum, or Harbor), they immediately remove their scoundrel token from the board and place it back in front of them, ready for the next round. The Ruin is the sole exception: tokens placed on Ruin exchange squares remain there until all Ruin actions for the round are fully resolved.
Resource management
At the City, spend 1 action to freely take any 2 of the tool cards currently placed there into your hand.
A player who performs an action at the City (place 1) may take any 2 of the face-up tool cards present there into their hand. The player chooses freely. If all tool cards at the City have already been taken by earlier-acting players, the current player receives nothing.
Resource management
At the Villa, spend 1 action to take 1 loot card by discarding the tools depicted on it.
A player who performs an action at the Villa (place 2) may take 1 of the face-down loot cards placed there. To acquire a loot card, the player must discard from their hand the exact tool cards depicted on that loot card (each loot card shows 2 or 3 tools). The discarded tools go to the tool card discard pile. The player may also use their scoundrel card's printed tool once per round per place (see scoundrel_card_tool rule).
