During a game of Project Aleutian, another type of card that you will encounter are ability cards. Ability cards allow you to exchange resources for powerful abilities.

The top banner of the card includes the type of ability card (general, special, or reaction) determining when the ability can be played during a players turn, a symbol for the ability the card lets you perform, and the cost of performing the action. These cards represent special technologies used by aeronauts in pursuit of the stone cloud or repeatable events that can occur along the way. Some ability cards are present in each nation’s deck, but most ability cards are unique to the technology developed using the crystals associated with each nation.

Since Project Aleutian is still a prototype, the graphic design, layout, and art on the cards are preliminary and subject to change.

During a game of Project Aleutian, another type of card that you will encounter are prosperity cards. The way to win the game is to have the most prosperity (victory points) at the end of the game, and these cards help accumulate points toward victory.

The top banner of the card shows the point value for collecting these cards. These cards represent beneficial technologies or works of art that are made possible by the wealth you accumulate for your nation throughout the course of the game.

Since Project Aleutian is still a prototype, the graphic design, layout, and art on the cards are preliminary and subject to change.

The second phase of Project Aleutian is cloudfall. After the first core crystal is removed, the stone cloud enters landfall and begins to descend toward the ground. A card is drawn from the stone cloud display deck to determine what shape the stone cloud display takes. Once it is revealed, the players must race to get resources off before enough core crystals are removed and it crashes into the ground.  

Any cards in the stone cloud display that aren’t partially covered by other cards are considered “available” to all players, regardless of where they are seated relative to the display. Other displays continue to behave as normal when determining if a card is available or not. 

During cloudfall, players start to accumulate cards aimed at gaining prosperity (or victory points) in a last-ditch effort to push for victory. The game ends immediately when core crystals equal to the number of players plus 1 have been removed from the main displays (purchased or discarded). 

The first phase of Project Aleutian is the chase. During the chase, players will choose one of the “available” cards from the two adjacent displays to perform an action. An available card is a card in one of the two adjacent displays to a nation’s play area and that isn’t partially covered by other cards. Once the card is played, any available cards that are face down are revealed. 

During the chase, players start to accumulate prosperity cards which provide victory points, crystal contracts that provide access to resources, and tools in the form of action cards that will help in their pursuit of the stone cloud.  

As cards are removed from the display it represents the progress of each nation’s aeronauts as they race toward the stone cloud. At the top of each display during the chase is one of the stone cloud’s core crystals. When the first core crystal is removed from the game, it triggers a few things. First, the nation who removes the first core crystal gains bonus prosperity points for getting the first survey of the cloud up close. The nations sharing a border where the crystal was removed both gain bonus prosperity points due to the resources it will bring their nations once it fully lands on their border. Finally, the next phase of the game begins, cloudfall. 

To set up Project Aleutian, each player selects one of the six playable nations (Navaire, Seulana, Scivatan, Waviscia, Pohuan, and Henshina) to play and collects that nation’s deck of cards and crystals (currently represented as colored cubes). After each nation shuffles their respective deck, each player creates two stacks of 10 cards and returns the remaining cards to the box. Each player then keeps one stack and passes the other to the player on their left who then shuffles the mix of cards. 

Each player then lays out the mixed deck of cards in a display of face up and face down cards between themselves and the player on their right. As you can see in the image of a four-player setup, this results in a display between each pair of seated players that is a mix of their two decks.  

The mixed makeup of each display represents the mixed technology and resources resulting from a shared border during the chase of the stone cloud. Each display has one of the stone cloud’s core crystals at the top that indicates reaching the stone cloud and will trigger the next phase of the game.