Daybreak

One way to win, three ways to lose

Components

Setup

1. 1Put the Current Round token on space '1' of the central board, and the 6 Planetary Effects tokens on their starting spaces.
2. 2Place all 8 Temperature Bands and the 2 dice beside the Thermometer.
3. 3Add Tree and Ocean tokens to the board per the player-count chart (4 players: 24/16, 3: 16/12, 2: 11/7, 1: 6/4).
4. 4Shuffle the Global Project, Crisis, and Local Project cards into separate face-down decks. Do not use the Challenge cards in your first game.
5. 5Choose World Powers for your player count (4 players use all of them; 3 use Majority World, Europe, and the US; 2 use China and the US; 1 may use any).
6. 6Each player takes their World Power's 5 starting Local Project cards and places them face up in their Play Area.
7. 7Set the Energy Demand marker, Dirty/Clean Energy tokens, and Emissions tokens on each board according to the Reference card.
8. 8Add the starting Resilience and Communities in Crisis tokens indicated on the Reference card. Leave the board extenders in the box for now.

A round — 5 stages

1. 1Global stage: review the Forecast Crisis card, then draw 2 Global Project cards and agree as a group on which 1 to place on the board.
2. 2Local stage: each player draws back up to 5 Local Project cards, then plays as many cards as they like from their Play Area, in any order.
3. 3Emissions stage: check that Energy Demand is met, generate carbon equal to Dirty Energy plus Emissions tokens, sequester it with Tree/Ocean/DAC tokens, and move the rest onto the Thermometer.
4. 4Crisis stage: roll the Planetary Effects die once per Temperature Band, then resolve that round's Crisis cards in order.
5. 5Growth stage: if the round marker shows Drawdown, victory is confirmed; otherwise, advance to the next round and increase everyone's Energy Demand.

Playing cards — in front, tucked behind, or discarded

• Play in front: place a card from your hand at the front of a stack to make a new action available. You can then use the tags on every card behind it as well.
• Tuck behind: slide a card behind an existing stack to add to the front card's tag count. More tags make that action stronger (the same technique reduces Crisis effects, supports Global Projects, and supports other Local Projects).
• Discard to pay a cost: some actions require discarding 1 card from your hand. If that action has no 'Limit' printed, you may repeat it as many times as you keep discarding cards.
• Your Play Area can hold up to 5 stacks, with no limit on how deep any stack can go. There's no hand size limit either, and both your hand and Play Area carry over unchanged between rounds.

Energy demand and the Thermometer

1. 1Check demand: your Dirty Energy plus Clean Energy tokens must equal or exceed your board's Energy Demand. If you fall short, add that many Communities in Crisis.
2. 2Generate carbon: take carbon cubes equal to your Dirty Energy tokens plus your Emissions tokens, and place them in the Recent Emissions area of the central board.
3. 3Sequester: remove carbon from Recent Emissions by covering an equal value of Tree, Ocean, and DAC tokens on the board (the removed carbon returns to the supply).
4. 4Check Drawdown: if Recent Emissions is at 0 carbon after sequestering, and uncovered Tree/Ocean/DAC tokens remain, you have reached Drawdown — you may keep sequestering, now drawing carbon from the Thermometer itself.
5. 5Raise temperature: fill the Thermometer with any remaining carbon, using as many columns as there are players. Whenever a row fills completely, replace it with 1 Temperature Band (0.1°C), which adds another Planetary Effects die roll and more Crisis cards to draw.

Resolving Crisis cards

1. 1The number of Temperature Bands sets how many Crisis cards are drawn that round. 1 becomes the face-up Forecast card; the rest stay face down as Unknown.
2. 2During the Crisis stage, resolve every card in play from bottom (earliest placed) to top, with no upper limit — if Temperature Bands increase mid-round, draw and add more cards face down on the spot.
3. 3Flip each card and check who is targeted (some affect everyone, others only a player meeting certain criteria). On a tie, roll the Geoengineering die: the single lowest roll is targeted.
4. 4A targeted player holding matching Resilience tokens may reduce the effect by 1 per token (tokens are not spent, and this only applies to that player). A card tucked under the Crisis during the Local stage, if it meets the stated conditions, reduces or ignores the effect for every targeted player.
5. 5After applying all effects, discard the Crisis card along with any cards tucked beneath it.

Game end — one more round after Drawdown

Reaching Drawdown during the Emissions stage immediately flips the round marker. But that round's Crisis stage still has to happen. If a Crisis card pushes a losing condition first — more Temperature Bands or too many Communities in Crisis — you can still lose even after reaching Drawdown.

Strategy that follows directly from the rules

• Holding at least 1 Resilience token of each type per Temperature Band keeps you safely able to reduce Crisis effects.
• Using a front card's action, then covering it with a new card, keeps the covered card's tags supporting from below while also gaining the new card's action.
• Cards that remove Dirty Energy require you to replace that capacity with Clean Energy to keep meeting Demand, so plan both actions together.
• Tucking a conditions-matching card under a visible Forecast Crisis is the most efficient defense — Unknown cards give you no chance to do the same.

Editions and variants

Frequently confused rules

History and reception

Designed by Matt Leacock (the designer of Pandemic) together with Matteo Menapace, and jointly published in 2023 by the UK's CMYK and Germany's Schmidt Spiele (per Wikipedia). The official rulebook credits Wingspan, Terraforming Mars, and Race for the Galaxy as inspirations.

The game won the 2024 Kennerspiel des Jahres (Germany's Connoisseur Game of the Year award) — Leacock's first win after multiple prior nominations (per Wikipedia). In February 2025, it also received the Lizzie Magie award at France's Rennes en Jeux festival (per Wikipedia).

It has been reviewed in the journal *Science* and is used as a teaching tool at the London School of Economics and the College of the Holy Cross (per Wikipedia). Price-comparison sites confirm Korea Boardgames distributes a Korean edition, but as of 2026-10-11, no dedicated Namuwiki article was found for it.