Fields of Fortune is a press-your-luck card game of medieval city-building.

In the game, players attempt to build the most prosperous city while avoiding barbarian raids. The game consists of a 102-card fortune deck, with most cards being beneficial to a player's city, such as castles, city squares, military structures, religious structures, and treasuries. However, the deck also contains barbarian horde cards of varying strength that may result in a raid.

On a player's turn, they may choose to either hire mercenaries (if available) or add cards to the field. A player adds cards to the field by turning over cards from the fortune deck, one at a time and laying them out in the play area between all players (the field). The player may continue to add cards to the field until they choose to stop, barbarians raid the field, or eight cards are in the field. When a player chooses to stop, they then choose up to three cards from the field to add to their city. The cards are sorted in the player's city by type as the player is trying to maximize points by completing sets of the different types.

Each barbarian horde card has a strength value of 1-3. A barbarian raid occurs when a player is adding cards to the field and a total of 5 or more strength points worth of barbarian horde cards is revealed. When this happens, the field is swept (all cards are removed to the discard pile) and the player's turn immediately ends.

Alternately, instead of adding cards to the field, a player may choose to hire mercenaries if there are any available in the general supply. Mercenaries will help the player defend against barbarian raids by destroying barbarian horde cards in the field of equal or lesser value, just as a player's regular army cards do. A player who chooses to hire mercenaries may still collect cards from the field, if any, that were previously placed there by another player.

When the fortune deck runs out and no mercenaries cards are left in the supply, the player with the most points based on all cards in their city wins.

—description from the publisher

Games