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Chapters Game Play Overview

Fortress Hub Basics

Game Play Overview

Start with the setup

The game owner creates a three- or four-player game and invites registered players. Everyone must accept before the owner can start. Starting the game randomizes turn order and assigns the starting cash, colors, gates, and route for each position.

Resolve each round

Play the following phases in order:

  1. Airline Development — In forward turn order, each player may start up to two gate auctions, launch or close routes, forfeit unused gates, propose a trade, or pass. Auctions and trade responses temporarily interrupt the normal sequence.
  2. Airport Expansion — In reverse turn order, each player may expand at most one eligible airport or pass.
  3. Airline Operations — Each player acknowledges the phase. The airline then receives all route operating profits and pays maintenance for every owned gate.
  4. Regulatory Action — Pioneering provides a conditional subsidy. Maturity presents a regulatory card, unless the card is Recess; players submit lobbying positions and amounts at the same time.
  5. Taxes — Each player acknowledges the phase. Tax is calculated from the airline's current cash and active tax threshold.
  6. Capital Markets — Each player submits a dividend count at the same time. If dividends are prohibited, players only acknowledge the phase.
  7. Reset — Each player acknowledges the phase. The game checks for victory, processes bankruptcy, calculates the next turn order, checks for the Maturity transition, and starts the next round if no one has won.

Phase-wide settlements occur as a phase ends after the required players have responded. A negative cash balance during a round is not itself an immediate bankruptcy; the Reset phase decides whether the airline is removed.

Keep the round moving

In a sequential phase, pass when you have finished. In an acknowledgment or simultaneous phase, submit your response even when you have nothing to do. The phase advances after every active airline has responded.

See Turn Order for the exact order used by each phase and Game Stages for the change from Pioneering to Maturity.