Negotiation

Between-Turn Actions

After your turn ends and before the next player begins, you get one action. This is where diplomacy happens. Your options:

1. Propose an agreement — compose a card deal and send it to another player
2. Play a standalone card — use Betrayal, Trap, Fortify, or another tactical card directly
3. Self-apply a troop card — gain bonus troops at your next turn start, but incur a deploy debt (next turn’s deploy reduced by half the bonus gained)
4. Discard-gamble — burn 3 cards from your hand (any mix of types), then draw 1 random card from the deck. This is a net loss of 2 cards — use it when your hand is stale

All between-turn actions take effect at the acting player’s next turn start, not immediately. Timing matters: a Trap set now won’t trigger until next round.

Responding to a proposal is free. When someone sends you a deal, accepting or declining does not consume your own between-turn action. You can receive and respond to proposals while still keeping your own action available.

Proposals

All negotiations are 1-on-1 and private. There are no group deals, no public offers, and no way to broadcast a proposal to multiple players. Every deal is a closed-door conversation between two parties.

To propose: select an agreement card from your hand, choose a target player, and fill the proposer slots with value (troop) cards. The cards you commit become locked until the proposal resolves. Send the proposal, and the recipient decides.

The recipient can accept — filling their own required slots — or decline. There are no counter-offers. If the terms aren’t right, decline and negotiate through other channels.

Proposals expire if not responded to within a set number of rounds. On acceptance, the agreement activates at the start of the next round, not mid-turn.

The Event Log

Everything that happens during a game is recorded in your event log. Combat results, agreement activations, signal messages, and public announcements all appear here. You can filter by category: All, Combat, Public, Signals, or Deals.

Fog of war applies to the event log. Territory names outside your visibility appear as "???" — you know something happened, but not where.

Structured Signals

Signals are structured messages built from templates. You pick a template, optionally fill a slot, and send. You can chain two templates with a conjunction to form compound messages — enough to coordinate, never enough to say exactly what you mean.

Slots accept five vocabulary types: player, territory, bonus zone, concept, and agreement type. Any template can be filled with any slot that fits its grammar.

Communication is constrained by design. You can’t type “I’ll attack the north” — but you can hint at it through the right combination of templates. The ambiguity is the point.

Tappable map-links

Filled slots render as typed, interactive links inside the event log:

• Territory slots are teal and underlined. Tap one and the map zooms to the territory and pulses it for a couple of seconds.
• Player slots are coloured with the referenced player’s seat colour and rendered bold. Tap to pulse every territory that player controls.
• Bonus zone slots are amber and underlined. Tap to pulse every node in the zone.
• Concept and agreement type slots stay plain text — they refer to abstract vocabulary, not map features.

Pulsing is local to you. Tapping a link does not broadcast anything to other players — it’s a reading aid, not a gesture.

Rate limited: You can send 1 private signal per game round per recipient, and 1 public signal per round. A reply or reaction from the recipient resets your limit for that player.

Anti-Collusion Rule

To prevent two players from locking the game by trading agreements back and forth, Backchannel enforces cooldowns on repeated deals with the same partner:

• One-off deals are always available. You can make a single agreement with any player at any time.
• Consecutive deals require a ceasefire. After an agreement is accepted, there is a 2-turn lockout before you can propose to the same player again. This gap is waived entirely if you have an active ceasefire with them — a ceasefire is the key that unlocks sustained cooperation.
• Declined proposals trigger the same 2-turn lockout. If a player declines your proposal, you must wait 2 of your turns before trying again with them. Proposals that expire without a response do not trigger a lockout.
• All ceasefires are publicly announced — every player in the game sees who is truced with whom. Entering a ceasefire to enable back-to-back deals is a strategic commitment that the whole table can read.