How to Play Frontier Island

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Frontier Island is a trading and building game. You and your friends settle a tropical island, and the first to 10 Renown wins (the host can pick 8 or 12 instead). Here is how a game goes, the way I'd explain it across the table.

Where to look

The TV shows the island and everything everyone can see. Your phone holds your cards and your moves. When it's your turn to build, your phone shows the board for a moment so you can tap a spot, and then it goes back to your hand. Look up at the TV a lot: that's where the game is.

Pick an island

The Island Cove is an island round a shared Lagoon. The Gold Coast is a stretch of coast with desert behind it, where Gold is wild and stands in for any resource. Each comes in three sizes, so pick one to fit your table.

Getting started

Take turns placing a Stilt Hut and a Trail beside it, then a second pair in reverse order. Huts always need an empty corner between them. Your second hut pays you one card from each tile beside it.

Each turn

Every turn, two tiles pay out (three when the Lagoon pays too), and the TV rims them in gold. Every player with a building beside one of them takes cards: 1 for a Stilt Hut, 2 for a Longhouse. The tiles show how often they pay, from one pip to five, so a five-pip tile pays most often. Sometimes the Squall hits instead and nothing pays.

Then, in any order, you can:

  • Trade. Make an offer to anyone, out loud, and they accept it on their phone. Or trade with the supply: 4 of one resource for any 1, or 3 for 1 once you've built beside a harbor.
  • Build. Spend what you have (see below).
  • Play a Legend. One a turn, and never the turn you drew it.

When you're done, tap End Turn.

What things cost

The resources are Bamboo, Vines, Fish, Palm and Obsidian.

  • Trail: Bamboo and Vines. Goes on a land edge.
  • Canoe Route: Bamboo and Palm. Goes across the Lagoon, so only on the Island Cove.
  • Stilt Hut: Bamboo, Vines, Fish and Palm. 1 Renown.
  • Longhouse: 3 Obsidian and 2 Palm, in place of a Stilt Hut. 2 Renown, and it pays double.
  • Legend: Obsidian, Fish and Palm.

The Lagoon and Pearls

On the Island Cove, Lagoon tiles pay too: each hut beside one brings up a Pearl, each longhouse two. Pearls build nothing. They make trades with the supply better, and you can give 3 to the Lagoon for 1 Renown, twice a game. You can hold 3 at a time.

The Squall

Some turns the Squall strikes and nothing pays. Anyone holding more than 7 cards gives up half. Then the player whose turn it is moves the Squall to any tile and steals a card from someone beside it. A tile under the Squall pays nothing until it moves.

Legends

Navigator sends the Squall anywhere and steals. Island Feast takes any 2 resources. Trade Winds makes every harbor you've reached trade 2 for 1 for the turn. Ancestor Song is a hidden Renown that you keep to yourself.

Ways to score Renown

  • Stilt Huts (1 each) and Longhouses (2 each).
  • Longest Voyage: the longest unbroken route of Trails and Canoe Routes, at least 5 long. 2 Renown.
  • Chief Navigator: the most Navigators played, at least 3. 2 Renown.
  • Voyage Goals: three goals sit on the TV for everyone. The first player to meet one on their own turn claims it for 2 Renown. Watch what your friends are close to, and get there first.
  • Ancestor Songs, and Offerings to the Lagoon.

You win the moment you reach the target on your own turn.