Mandate 2038: Component reference

Use this aid during setup and when a named component state appears. Printed Faction boards, Governance Board Era panels, map tiles, Core Actions, shared Programs, Headlines, Mandates, Training cards, Dossiers, and player aids own their exact text; resolve the matching printed surface.

Deck contracts

Training deck: 40 cards

• Four copies of each of seven domains: 28
• Four Curated Corpus
• Four Benchmark Leak
• Four Human Evaluation

Discard every revealed card after a run. If the deck empties, resolve the current card, shuffle the discard, and continue.

Headline decks

In Default Game, each Era deck contains every card for that Era without an Advanced Play badge. Reveal three each Era. Leave every resolved card face up in its Era row to form the twelve-card Future Timeline.

Shared Program display

Place all six Program cards face up. They are public rules surfaces, not player hands. Each player tracks use with two faction-coloured Program markers. A marker on a Program means that player has used that named Program this game.

Deferred Tactic deck: 36 cards

Tactics are absent from the baseline game and evidence; see Optional Tactic Rules for their contracts.

Component limits

Each faction receives:

• One CEO
• Three Teams
• Four Facilities, visibly numbered 1–4
• One Generator
• One integrated starting-grid identifier on Facility 1; Facilities are constructed in number order
• Ten Scrutiny cubes
• One Mandate marker
• Six captive faction-board sliders: Runway, Compute, Capability, Customers, Trust, and Research Protection
• Two Program markers
• Two Links, used only in Advanced Play
• Six Core Action cards
• Four Era-labelled AGI Dossier cards with symmetrical backs and Commit / Hedge orientations
• One four-panel foldout player aid

Generators do not count against the Facility limit.

The shared supply contains:

• One Governance Board and nineteen district tiles
• Six shared Program cards
• 6 numbered matched Joint Venture token pairs
• 6 numbered matched Mega-Cluster token pairs
• One dedicated Fusion Demonstrator marker; it is a single shared project and leaves the supply once constructed
• Eighteen Systemic Risk cubes
• Thirty-six silver Power cubes
• Two distinct Temporary Compute tokens
• One opaque Audit bag
• One Initiative marker
• One Current Era marker
• One writable Current Mandate ledger on the Governance Board and one shared fine-tip dry-erase marker
• Six Advanced Play Realignment ballots and one Volatility die

Unused contract tokens cannot be reserved; create a Joint Venture or Mega-Cluster only while a matched pair is available.

Defined markers and effects

• Remove Scrutiny: return the stated number of your cubes from the Audit bag to your supply. If fewer are present, remove as many as possible.
• Research Protection: refresh to one at Era start; Orisonix refreshes to two. Spend one when a duplicate appears to discard it and bank the run. It is not a tradeable resource.
• Latest Production snapshot: during Allocate, remove the prior snapshot, then place one Power cube on each powered Facility and one per satisfied unit of Mega-Cluster demand. Leave every cube in place until the next Allocate. Built Facilities without cubes are offline. This visible snapshot governs Mandates, the Dossier, powered-Facility Headlines, and final penalties.
• Current Mandate ledger: after revealing the Era Mandate, write its criterion and minimum. Use one public row per faction to retain only the value that card asks the table to count. Reset this-Era values; evaluate current-state criteria when scored.
• Dossier orientation: place the current Era's Dossier face down with its arrow toward the table center for Commit or toward its owner for Hedge. Never inspect a filed card before the Era IV reveal.
• Offline recovery: reassess Power and, in Advanced Play, Network connectivity every Production. Facilities never flip.