Empire of the North – Quick-Start Guide & Card Types Explained

Reading time: about 10–12 minutes · Last updated: Sept 9, 2026 — checked against the original German rulebook and the solo-play booklet

Quick start – your first game (with rules clarity)

Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North is a card game for 1–4 players by Portal Games, in which you lead one of 6 clans from 3 Nordic peoples. You build locations, harvest resources, place clan discs, and sail to unknown islands to plunder or conquer them.

This guide focuses on the actual flow of play, the mistakes people make most often, and the one spot where the rulebook trips people up most: how a card actually enters play.

Goal of the game

Victory: whoever has the most victory points (VP) at the end wins.

The game ends as soon as someone reaches or exceeds 25 VP during the Action phase. The current round is still played out completely, including the Expedition phase. (If someone only crosses 25 VP during the Expedition phase itself rather than the Action phase, one extra round is played.)

Components at a glance

• 6 clan card decks (33 cards each: 3 starting cards + 30 clan cards) — one per clan
• 3 starting cards per clan — your starting realm
• 5 action tiles — form the action wheel
• 2 clan discs per player — used for tile actions
• Expedition board + island cards (12 nearby, 10 distant)
• Scoring track + scoring marker
• Resources: wood, stone, food, wool, fish
• Other: gold, destruction tokens, workers, ship tokens

What do I actually do on my very first turn?

Many newcomers stare blankly at the table right after setup. Here's a worked example of a typical opening round, using the Glenn clan.

Card phase: set your starting hand briefly aside, draw 4 new cards. Say you want to keep two of them: put 2 workers on your rest tile for that, discard the other 2 cards. Pick your starting hand back up — you now have 5 cards in hand and 3 free workers left.

Action phase, possible moves:

• Move 1 – Build (Errichten): place a clan disc on the Build tile, put a matching location card without a play action for free into your realm from your hand (its build cost is waived entirely).
• Move 2 – Harvest: place your second clan disc on Harvest and take the goods from one resource source in your realm — for example a starting card, or the location you just built for free, if it happens to be a resource source.
• Move 3 – Construct a location: pay for another location card from your hand with the goods you just harvested and add it to your realm. Any construction bonus triggers immediately.

Then pass. Your realm has grown by 2 locations — a solid first round.

Setup (full detail: page 5 of the original rulebook)

1. Set out the scoring board, then the expedition board beneath it.
2. Shuffle the island cards (nearby/distant kept separate), place them face down on the expedition board, reveal 2 cards from each.
3. Arrange the 5 action tiles randomly into a ring (the action wheel) — fronts up, this stays fixed for the whole game.
4. Choose your clan and take its components: put 3 starting cards face up into your realm, shuffle the rest of the deck and place it face down in front of you.
5. Choose a player colour: take a rest tile and 2 clan discs, place your scoring marker on space 0.
6. Set out the general supply; build your personal supply from the goods shown on your starting cards plus 5 workers.
7. Randomly determine the starting player, then everyone draws 5 cards — discard 2, the remaining 3 become your starting hand.

The round structure — 4 phases

1 Card phase

This is where you get new cards "in exchange for payment."

1. Set all hand cards aside (not discarded — just moved out of your hand briefly).
2. Draw 4 cards and decide which ones you want to keep.
3. For every card you want to keep: tire 1 worker (put it on your rest tile) — that's the price of keeping it.
4. Put any cards you don't want on your own discard pile.
5. Pick your set-aside hand cards back up.
6. Collect goods from any cards with a storage effect whose condition is met.

2 Action phase

The main part of every round. Whoever holds the starting-player tile goes first. After that, clockwise, each player either takes 1 action or passes, repeating until everyone has passed. Whoever is left last may keep taking as many further actions as they like, one after another, until they pass too.

The available actions are:

• Construct a location
• Place a clan disc (= use a tile action)
• Use a location's action
• Raid an opponent's location

3 Expedition phase

Everyone with at least one ship on the expedition board takes part. The order follows the order in which the ships were placed there.

When your ship is up, choose one of the open island cards or reveal the top card of one of the island decks. Then: plunder or conquer?

Plunder: take the goods shown on the plunder field, then the island goes to the matching discard pile.
Conquer: the island is added to your realm as a location; you may use its actions and abilities immediately. At game end it's worth 1 VP, same as any other location.

4 Cleanup phase

• Return all tired workers from your rest tile to your personal supply.
• Reactivate (turn back) all exhausted cards in your realm.
• Take your clan discs back off the action wheel — un-tired side up.
• Discard any islands still open on the expedition board and reveal new ones.
• Pass the starting-player tile clockwise.

Actions in detail

Construct a location

Choose a location card with a build cost from your hand (not one with a play action), pay the shown goods — some build costs even include workers, which then get tired — and place it in your realm. You may use its effects immediately, even this round.

Place a clan disc (tile action)

There are 5 tile actions on the action wheel:

How to place a disc: put it on an action tile (untired side up, OR pay 1 food to move an already-placed disc to an adjacent tile). You may then optionally play or place a card with the matching play action. Finally, carry out the tile action itself.

Use a location's action

Pick a non-exhausted location with an action effect in your realm. Pay the cost, trigger the effect, turn the location 90° (exhaust it).

Raid an opponent's location

Pay 1 destruction token to use the action of a non-exhausted opponent's location, exhausting it in the process. Not possible if that player has already passed this round.

Resources & goods

Card types at a glance

Every card shows either a build cost in the top left ("pay to build"), or the name of one of the five tile actions (its play action). Whether it then stays in play permanently or only triggers once is not shown in that banner — it's in the body text, and that's exactly what gets missed on a first read.

In practice: before every tile action, it's worth glancing at your hand to see if a matching card is there. Whether that turns into a new permanent location or just a one-off bonus is revealed solely by the word "Immediately" — not by the banner in the top left.

Resource sources & extensions

Resource sources show only good icons, no body text. When you play one, you immediately take the pictured goods once — and again every time you activate that source with the Harvest tile action.

Extensions are special resource sources that must be assigned to an already-existing resource source of the same good type (slid underneath it) — they can't be played on their own. When harvesting, you take the goods of the source and its assigned extension together.

Location effects

• Ability: triggers automatically whenever its condition is met — never exhausts the location.
• Action: must be actively used (pay the cost + exhaust the location).
• Construction bonus: a one-time bonus, exactly at the moment the location is placed into your realm — never again after that.

End of the game & final scoring

The game ends after the Expedition phase of the round in which someone reached or exceeded 25 VP during the Action phase. Cleanup is not carried out in the final round.

Extra points at game end:

• 1 VP for every card in your realm (starting cards, locations, extensions, conquered islands)
• 1 VP for every 2 resources in your supply (resources assigned to cards don't count)
• 1 VP for every 1 gold in your supply (assigned gold doesn't count)

Whoever has the most victory points wins.

Ties

Tie-break order: 1. more locations in the realm → 2. more workers (wherever they are) → 3. more hand cards. If it's still tied after that, the tied players share the placement.

The 6 clans — difficulty & playstyle

Core principles worth remembering

• Resources and workers always sit openly visible in your own supply.
• Always draw cards from your own clan deck, unless stated otherwise.
• Gold substitutes for any resource — but resources don't substitute for gold.
• Mark victory points on the scoring track immediately as soon as you receive them.
• Card text always overrides the general rules (the Golden Rule).
• Exhausted locations (turned 90°) can't be used — abilities and Harvest never exhaust a location.
• Discard = from hand to your discard pile. Remove/place aside = from your realm to your discard pile.
• Unlike the base Imperial Settlers game, there is no option to trade 2 workers for 1 resource or 1 card.

First steps — a strategic take on rounds 1 and 2

The following points aren't rules — they're our own take on getting started. Empires of the North is an engine-building game: the more resource sources and locations you build early, the more options you'll have in later rounds.

Priority 1 – get resource sources into your realm early

Without resource sources, you'll barely have goods to build with or pay location actions in rounds 2 and 3. Building or free-building an extra resource source in round 1 almost always pays off.

Priority 2 – build up workers, but don't overspend them early

Every worker you spend during the Card phase isn't available for other card effects this round. In the early rounds, 1–2 new cards per Card phase is usually plenty.

Priority 3 – don't sail too early

Sailing costs a clan disc and ties up a ship until the Expedition phase. In round 1 you usually still lack the resources to grow your realm and make good use of an island at the same time.

Priority 4 – plan your construction bonuses on purpose

A construction bonus only applies once, at the moment of building. If you're holding a card with a strong bonus, build it when the bonus does the most good — not just at the earliest opportunity.

The 6 most common mistakes

• Mixing up Harvest and free-Build: Harvest takes goods from a resource source. Free-Build places a card into your realm for free. Two separate tile actions.
• Placing a clan disc on a tile with no viable option: the tile action must be executable — without a matching card for free-Build, the disc can't go there.
• Using exhausted locations anyway: exhausted locations are locked for the round. Only abilities and Harvest never exhaust.
• Forgetting or misusing a construction bonus: it only applies at the moment of building, never after.
• Raiding after someone has passed: a player who has already passed is fully protected.
• Counting assigned goods in the final score: they don't count there.

Playing with 2–4 people — what changes

Turn structure and order

The Action phase is an open back-and-forth: whoever holds the starting-player tile moves first, then everyone else takes exactly 1 action clockwise, or passes. There's no fixed number of turns — the phase ends once everyone has passed. Passing early saves resources but takes you out of the action sooner. Whoever is left last may take as many further actions as they like, until they pass too.

Interaction between players

• Raiding a location: paying 1 destruction token lets you exhaust a non-exhausted opponent's location — a good way to break up a strong combo.
• Expedition order: whoever sails first gets first pick in the Expedition phase. A coveted island can be snatched away this way.
• Starting-player tile: passes clockwise after every round.

Solo play (separate solo-play booklet)

Solo play works differently than you might expect: there is no automated opponent. Instead, you play one of several scenarios from the separate solo booklet — each with its own flavour, its own extra rules, and a fixed victory-point threshold you have to reach or beat. You should already know the base rules from a few multiplayer games first.

Example scenarios and their victory-point thresholds:

Note: this is an unofficial quick-start guide and has no connection to the publisher or manufacturer of the game. It's based on the original German rulebook and the separate solo-play booklet (Pegasus Spiele) and has been checked against scanned original pages. No liability is accepted for the content of linked pages.

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