13-0 · The campaign stage
Free the Colonies
The draft is the first half of 13-0. The second half is thirteen rounds on a map of the colonial seaboard: a clue, a click, and one colony either free or still under Crown control. This is how that stage judges you, and how to spend what your cabinet gave you.
How a click is judged
Under the map there is no distance measurement and no "hot or cold" indicator. A click is scored by where it lands, and there are exactly three outcomes:
Inside the colony
Free. Always, whatever your cabinet looks like. This is the only way to score with no tolerance at all.
Near the border, inside nothing at all
Free if the distance is within your tolerance, which runs from 0 km with a useless General to about 46 km with a perfect General and Vice President together. Otherwise a miss. This is the General's entire contribution — it buys forgiveness on near misses over water and empty land.
Inside a different colony
A miss, always, at any tolerance. The thirteen are packed far too tightly for it to be otherwise: Maryland's Eastern Shore sits about five kilometres from Delaware, and Trenton is roughly 90 km from Dover. A tolerance loose enough to forgive "near Delaware" would also forgive "in New Jersey", and then the map would stop being a geography game.
The practical consequence: when you are unsure, a click on open water just off the coast you believe in is often better than a click on the neighbouring colony you can actually see. Water can be forgiven. A neighbour cannot.
What your cabinet gave you
Four of the five seats convert into something the campaign can use. Each one scales with how well the appointee fits the role, from the floor at a bad fit to the ceiling at a perfect one.
- PresidentRetry
- 1–3 retries
- Every colony you miss can be attempted again. A well-fitted President buys you up to three retries across the whole campaign.
- GeneralTolerance
- 0–40 km
- A strong General counts a click that lands near the colony's border, not only inside it. This is the seat that decides how forgiving the map is.
- Propaganda MinisterSecond Clue
- 0–13 colonies
- Unlocks the geographic clue for every colony. A strong appointment unlocks it for all thirteen; a weak one leaves you guessing from the nickname alone.
- TreasurerBuy Clues
- 2–6 clues
- A budget you can spend to unlock one colony's final clue — the year, the capital, the detail that gives it away. Spend it where you are stuck.
- Vice PresidentSteady Hand
- ×1.00–×1.15 tolerance
- Multiplies whatever tolerance your General brings. A useless Vice President costs you nothing at all; a perfect one turns a 40 km General into 46 km. It is the safest seat to fill badly and the most valuable one to fill well alongside a strong General.
What your score means
The score is a count out of 13, and every band is reachable. There is no bonus for style and no partial credit for a colony you nearly placed — the record simply marks each of the thirteen as freed or still under Crown control.
- 1313-0: ALL THIRTEEN FREE
- 11–12INDEPENDENCE SECURED
- 8–10A WORKING MAJORITY
- 5–7HALF A NATION
- 2–4A FEW LOYAL COUNTIES
- 0–1THE REBELLION COLLAPSES
Two of these bands are worth aiming at deliberately. Ten or eleven colonies is a campaign where the small, awkward colonies cost you — usually Delaware, Rhode Island or New Jersey. Thirteen is a campaign where you knew the whole seaboard, or your cabinet was good enough to cover the one or two you did not.
Four ways campaigns lose points
Clicking the famous city
Boston, New York and Philadelphia are easy to find, and the colony that contains them is usually easy too. The rounds that cost you points are Delaware, Rhode Island and New Jersey — small, coastal, and crowded against their neighbours.
Spending retries on a colony you know
A retry is only consumed by a wrong click, so there is nothing to protect. But the budget is different: buying the third clue for a colony you were about to get right anyway wastes the one thing that could rescue a later round.
Treating the Chesapeake as one shape
Maryland wraps around the Chesapeake on both sides, and Virginia holds the southern shore. The bay is not a border between them so much as a thing Maryland surrounds. If you click on the wrong side of the water, you are in the wrong colony.
Forgetting the merged borders
Maine is Massachusetts and West Virginia is Virginia on this map. Clicking the far north for Maine is correct; clicking the western mountains for Virginia is also correct. But the map has no separate shape for either, because colonially there was not one.
FAQ — the campaign stage
Q1.What happens if I click on the wrong colony?
It counts as a miss, and the border tolerance cannot save it. Landing in a neighbouring colony is always wrong, however generous your General is — otherwise a click clearly inside Maryland would be scored as a hit on Delaware, which is only about five kilometres away across the head of Delaware Bay. The tolerance only applies to clicks that land in open water or empty land.
Q2.Do I lose the colony if I miss?
Only when you are out of retries. A miss with retries left keeps you on the same colony and lets you click again — the map stays up, and the clue does not change. Once the retries run out, the round closes and that colony stays under Crown control for the rest of the run.
Q3.Should I save the Treasurer's budget for later rounds?
Usually not, and here is the arithmetic: the budget is for buying the third clue, and the third clue names the founding year and the founder. It is worth far more on a colony you cannot place at all than on one you are merely unsure about. Spend it on the first colony that stumps you rather than hoarding it to the end, because a colony you never free is worth nothing at any budget.
Q4.Does the order of the colonies matter?
The thirteen are shuffled per run, so there is no fixed sequence to memorise. The order does decide which colonies get a second clue, though: the Propaganda Minister's ability unlocks the geographic clue for the first N colonies in the run's order, so an early awkward colony is a good sign that your Propaganda Minister was weak.
Q5.Is a 13-0 score possible with a bad cabinet?
Yes, but it has to be earned with knowledge rather than forgiven by abilities. With every seat at fit zero you still get one retry, a two-clue budget and no tolerance at all — you have to click inside the right colony every time. It is the same map either way; the cabinet only changes how close you are allowed to be.
The map is waiting.
Draft a cabinet, take the map, and see how many of the thirteen you can place.
Play 13-0 ↗