Rulebook

Rules

The same rules as the printed booklet, generated from the card data so the two cannot drift apart.

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The goal

Each player builds a Book: the Positions in front of them, face up, where everyone can see them.

The first player whose Book holds 7 counting Positions wins immediately. This is checked continuously, not only on your turn. If something on another player's turn takes your Book to 7, you win at that moment.

Counting a Book

Count the Positions, then apply any Leverage and Drawdown that change the count. Leverage and Drawdown are never themselves Positions, however many of them a Book holds.

Four Positions, one Leverage (+1) and one Margin Call (−1) counts as four.

The cards

One shared deck, plus a separate Openings pile. Six types.

Type	What it does
Position	Goes in your Book. The thing you are collecting. Carries a currency pair and a direction.
Leverage	Goes in your Book. Improves your whole Book and stays in play.
Drawdown	Goes in an opponent's Book. Hurts their whole Book and stays in play.
Order	One-shot effect, then discarded. Most of the attacks live here.
No Bid	Cancels a card as it is played.
Circuit Breaker	Cancels a card and cannot itself be cancelled.

Leverage and Drawdown are not attached to any particular Position. They sit in the Book alongside them and affect whoever owns the Book.

So a Book is one tidy row with nothing overlapping, and there is never a question about what happens to an attachment when its Position leaves.

Setup

Separate the Openings from the main deck. Leave the pile within everyone's reach. It stays in play all game.
Each player takes 1 Opening into their Book.
Shuffle the main deck. Deal each player 5 cards.
A random player goes first. Play proceeds clockwise.

Starting with a Position already in your Book gives the attack cards something to bite on from the first turn.

Your turn

Open. Resolve any "at the start of your turn" effects in your Book.
Draw. Draw one card.
Act. Do exactly one thing from the list below.
Close. If you hold more than 7 cards, discard down to 7.

Act: choose one

Play a Position into your Book.
Play a Leverage into your Book.
Play a Drawdown into an opponent's Book.
Play an Order, resolve it, then discard it.
Or draw one extra card instead.

One action per turn is the whole reason the game stays light. Cards that let you act again say so. If the deck runs out, shuffle the discard pile to form a new one.

No Bid

The signature card, and the only thing that happens outside your turn.

Any player may play No Bid at any time a card is played, before that card resolves. The cancelled card is discarded with no effect.
Playing No Bid is not your action. It does not use your turn.
A No Bid can itself be cancelled by another No Bid. Players keep responding until nobody adds another.
The card was still played, so whoever played the cancelled card has spent their action.

In a real market a trade only exists if somebody will quote you the other side. If nobody bids, the trade does not happen.

A Position cancelled by No Bid never enters the Book, so it cannot trigger anything that happens when a Position enters.

Circuit Breaker

Identical timing to No Bid, and also not your action, but it cannot be cancelled by anything.

Without it, a table holding enough No Bid can stall indefinitely, and the last card played is decided by who holds the most copies. There are 3 in the deck against 10 No Bid, so knowing one is still out there changes how freely people spend theirs.

Resolving a stack

The last card played resolves. Everything beneath it is cancelled.

Book cards

These stay in play once played. Printed here exactly as they appear on the card.

Leverage: Your Book counts as having one additional Position.; Same trade. More of it.
Stop Loss: When one of your Positions would be Liquidated, you may discard this instead.; It absorbs one. Once.
Prime Brokerage: Your Positions cannot be Assigned or Unwound.
Positive Carry: At the start of your turn, draw an extra card.; It pays until it doesn't.
Credit Line: Your hand limit is increased by three.
Margin Call: This player's Book counts as having one fewer Position.; Still your book. Just not helping.
Slippage: At the start of this player's turn, they discard a card.
Frozen Collateral: This player cannot play Leverage.
Wide Spread: At the end of this player's turn, they discard a card.

Taking cards

Order cards use a fixed vocabulary, so no card explains itself twice.

Term	Meaning
Liquidate	Send a Position from a Book to the discard pile.
Assign	Take a Position from another Book into yours.
Stop Out	The Position's owner chooses which of theirs is Liquidated.
Unwind	Return a Position from a Book to its owner's hand.

All four move Positions only. Leverage and Drawdown never travel and never leave with a Position.

A Drawdown you have been given is a lasting problem, not something you can shed by letting the Position under it die.

Pairs

Every Position shows a currency pair and a direction, LONG or SHORT.

These are targeting handles only. A card may name a direction, or a currency. Holding a LONG and a SHORT of the same pair is legal, and both count.

Reading the art

The chart line rises for LONG and falls for SHORT. The two cities either side of it are the regions of the two currencies in the pair.

Information

Books and the discard pile are public. Hands and the deck are hidden. Anyone may count any Book at any time.

Winning

The moment a Book holds 7 counting Positions, that player wins. If two Books reach the target at once through a single effect, the active player wins.