How to Play ASHES: Blackout Protocol

How to play ASHES: Blackout Protocol — the short version

ASHES: Blackout Protocol is a competitive post-apocalyptic eurogame from Perro Loko Games for 1–4 players, designed by Jorge J. Barroso, Jesús Fuentes and Eduardo Pavón. Over three rounds, each player manages an underground colony. You construct shelters, rescue exposed survivors, move evacuation vehicles, develop the Phoenix Project and keep happiness from collapsing under radiation.

The most important rule to learn is that your turn offers three main protocols: Pass, Move Your Vehicle or Activate a Survivor. The short publisher product description highlights only the last two, but the official English rulebook confirms all three and gives Pass its own complete procedure. Pass recovers workers, generates income, scores selected colony areas and determines the next round’s player order; it is not simply doing nothing.

Your goal is the highest victory-point total after the third round, including the final radiation check and endgame scoring. This guide walks through the table setup, action sequence, survivor and vehicle rules, shelter closures, Project Phoenix, limited additional actions, radiation and the distinct solo rival. For game specifications and background, visit the ASHES game hub.

Rules here are independently explained from Perro Loko’s June 2026 English rulebook (26 numbered printed pages presented in a 13-page spread PDF). It is a gameplay companion rather than a substitute for the publisher’s diagrams and appendices. Where icons or a special-character ability affects an exception, check the actual player aid or rulebook.

At a glance: game phases, protocols and scoring

The publisher has both a concise game overview and the complete English PDF. The detailed steps below follow the full PDF, which has more precise action timing than the marketing summary.

1. Know the three boards and major resources

Separate the main map, each player’s colony board and the shared Phoenix Project board. The map holds survivors and sites for shelter building, vehicle movement, radiation sectors and action tiles. Your colony board tracks technology activations, happiness, production, incoming survivors and space for materials and upgrades. The Phoenix board provides technologies, scoring rows and the three shared knowledge discs.

The resources you handle most frequently are fuel (to move a vehicle), data (for technologies and special objectives), anti-rad doses (to recover activated survivors when passing) and colony strength (for shelter construction and some other expenses). Strength is tracked on the main board’s tree rather than in loose resource tokens; rising through a branch earns the benefits on the spaces you pass, while going down to pay strength does not grant those rewards again.

The colony board also has a materials pyramid, with storage slots for levels I, II and III. Advanced materials can be manufactured from two different materials of the next lower level, following the printed connections. At first, each slot holds only one material cube; upgrades can expand capacity. Do not treat material colors as freely interchangeable when paying for Phoenix installation.

There are two survivor types: active and essential. Active survivors work in activation spaces, while survivors can also occupy shelter pods and the colony entrance. The rules distinguish them for selection and radiation, so do not use the two colors as though they are identical worker tokens.

2. Setup: map, Phoenix board and individual colonies

The rulebook includes a detailed, illustrated setup that changes by player count. For the central map, use the side without radiation bands for three or four players and the side with radiation bands for two players or solo. Randomize the site tiles and place the area tiles by their levels as the diagram directs. In three-player games, place the specified blocked site and area tiles; these are not used at other counts.

Set the Phoenix Project board to its player-count side. Its knowledge-disc starting positions, available technology slots and achievement-space restrictions depend on the number of players. Randomly populate the designated production technologies and scoring technologies, prepare the milestone and scoring tiles, and reveal the indicated shelter and mission card market. Prepare the fuel, data, anti-rad and material supplies; mix both survivor types in the bag.

Each player receives their color’s colony board, shelter discs, upgrades, score marker, strength marker, vehicles and starting shelter. Place the score marker on 20 VP, one tracker on 3 happiness, and the production discs on the indicated starting positions. One vehicle starts at the common starting shelter; the second marks turn order. Set the colony’s material and technology spaces as illustrated.

For a first game, the publisher recommends the special character cards marked with a star: shuffle those and give one randomly to each player. In later sessions, deal two special character cards per player and let each choose one. Prepare starting resource card plus technology combinations equal to one more than the number of players; players choose them in reverse turn order.

This is an overview, not a license to approximate the setup placement. Use the visual map diagram and full steps on printed pages 4–7 of the official rules to determine exactly which spaces receive each tile or marker. The three-player blocked-space configuration is especially easy to miss.

3. Round structure: the radiation timing matters

The game lasts three rounds. Each round has preparation followed by player turns in turn-order position until everybody has Passed. The first round skips the usual radiation, mission-market refresh and tile reset; its preparation focuses on survivors emerging.

On the preparations for rounds two and three, resolve radiation, discard and replace the specified two mission cards, reset used area tiles and bring out new survivors. The areas receiving new survivors shift by round: round one uses sectors 1 and 2; round two uses 2 and 3; round three uses 3 and 4. This progression creates pressure to expand outward as the game advances.

After every player Passes, advance to the next round. After round three, the game proceeds directly to its final scoring procedure, which begins with another radiation step. It is therefore more precise to say that radiation happens at round setup after round one and again at endgame, rather than describing a separate identical radiation phase after every single turn.

The core pacing problem is that you can continue acting with unpassed workers and fuel while other colonies may already have secured income and future turn order. You must plan around when you Pass because doing so ends your own round immediately.

4. Your turn: choose one of three protocols

When your position arrives in turn order and you have not already Passed this round, choose exactly one: Pass, Move Your Vehicle or Activate a Survivor. In addition, you may perform qualifying additional actions within their permitted timing windows.

Pass is a substantial administration and scoring turn; it is permanent for the remainder of the round. Move Your Vehicle spends fuel to travel, carry survivors and activate a destination area. Activate a Survivor places an active survivor from your colony entrance into an unused activation zone, triggers its technology and production, then lets you select a main action.

The difference between protocols and main actions is essential. Shelter construction, rescuing survivors and installing Phoenix upgrades are main actions inside an activation (or can be granted by some area tiles), not three separate protocols by themselves. A fourth main action, Rest, is also available. This distinction is why the publisher’s marketing description is useful but insufficient for a complete rules teaching.

5. Pass: recover workers, earn income and choose turn order

To Pass, follow the steps in the player aid exactly. First recover active survivors from your activation zone by paying one anti-rad dose for each you bring back to your colony entrance. Any activated survivors you do not recover go back to the bag and cost one happiness each. If recovery would overload the entrance and force you to discard survivors already there, those discarded survivors also cost happiness.

Next resolve income from occupied shelter pods that qualify under your current happiness level. Resolve that income from the bottom up, because one effect can change happiness and therefore affect eligibility for later income. You always collect one active survivor from the bag as an income step, then proceed with further qualifying income.

Then resolve colony scoring. Your initial board allows you to score up to two scoring areas, although upgrades can raise the number. Five areas are represented: three shelter columns, one materials area and one surviving-population area. A closed shelter column gives 3 VP per closed shelter under its applicable stack limits. Materials scoring gives 2 VP per level II material and 4 VP per level III material up to that area’s cap, and survivor scoring depends on the relevant upgrade.

Finally place your order vehicle on an unoccupied next-round turn-order space and take the corresponding reward. The track uses one row for rounds one and three and another for round two. After Pass, you may take no further protocols or additional actions in the current round. Do not postpone crafting or completing a mission until after Passing.

6. Move Your Vehicle: pay fuel, collect survivors and activate an area

Spend two fuel to use the Move Vehicle protocol. Travel up to your current movement range, observing the map’s impassable red boundaries and adjacency rules. A journey may end where it began, and several vehicles can share an area unless the rules of a particular tile say otherwise.

As you move, you may pick up and drop off survivors at each step but must never exceed your vehicle’s cargo capacity. Both the movement range and cargo capacity can be improved through colony upgrades. Planning a route is therefore more than choosing the closest printed reward; it is about reaching survivors and a useful destination within a finite transport allowance.

After the movement, activate the destination area tile. Its visible effect may give materials, a mission card, immediate colony scoring or an indicated main action. If it was on its main side, flip it to its secondary side; do not flip a tile already showing that secondary side. Area tiles are reset during the appropriate next-round preparation.

Be precise with the starting shelter: the rules say leaving it counts as one movement step. This is easy to overlook when planning a full movement-range route. If an upgrade allows longer travel, count the number of adjacent-area steps—not the number of printed sector boundaries you happen to cross.

7. Activate a Survivor: technology, production and a main action

Take one active survivor from your colony entrance and place it in an activation zone on your colony board. You cannot select the same zone twice during the current round. At the start of the game, you can make up to three survivor activations per round; an appropriate colony upgrade can increase that to four.

The protocol has an order: first resolve the technology tiles in the selected activation slot from top to bottom, then resolve its associated production position, then choose and perform one main action. Production offers a mission card from the display or fuel, data or strength depending on which production track corresponds to the slot. At the top of a production track, some production outcomes also award 2 VP.

These layers explain why technology placement matters. A technology producing a useful input just before you perform a main action can make that action possible without a separate trip. A technology placed in a slot you rarely activate will provide less frequent value even if its printed bonus looks impressive.

For a first session, narrate all three steps out loud—slot reward, production, main action. Do not skip the slot just because you already know which shelter, rescue or Phoenix upgrade you intend to perform.

8. The four main actions and when each helps

The rulebook identifies Build Shelters, Rescue Survivors, Install Upgrades in the Phoenix Project and Rest as the four main actions.

Build Shelters spends colony strength to put one of your shelter discs onto an available construction space on a site tile. It provides the indicated site rewards, changes production tracks and grants a shelter card from the shared display. A built shelter creates additional ways to house survivors and potentially earn future income and points.

Rescue Survivors moves survivors from one area adjacent to one of your shelters to your colony entrance. They must come from the same area, and you cannot exceed your entrance capacity—four spaces initially, with a possible fifth through upgrading. You may rescue active and essential survivors, but moving them into a shelter pod is a separate decontamination step.

Install a Phoenix upgrade pays materials and data to acquire and place technology while developing one Phoenix row and its knowledge disc. Costs and access depend on project level and competition for spaces.

Rest, inside the main action system, raises happiness by two and gives one fuel. It should not be confused with Passing, which is the separate protocol that ends your round. That difference is particularly important for players learning the game from a one-paragraph retail description.

9. Building and closing shelters: two very different steps

Construct shelters using your available colony strength. As you move shelter discs from your colony board to valid spaces on the map, you free elements on your personal board, gain construction bonuses and obtain shelter cards. Building also interacts with production upgrades, so its value is not limited to how many people you can house.

A shelter card next to your happiness track has pods that can hold survivors. Putting a survivor into a pod is part of the Decontaminate Survivor immediate additional action. The printed pod can grant an immediate benefit. When every decontamination pod on a shelter card is occupied, you may Close Shelter—another immediate additional action—and move that completed card into one of your scoring columns, returning its housed survivors to the bag.

Closing a shelter changes its economic role. Open shelters can support the occupied-pod income checked when Passing, while closed shelters contribute to shelter-column scoring. A closed column may be scored multiple times if you choose it on later Pass protocols and still meet the scoring-area limit.

Important rule check: You can initially stack only two shelter cards in each closed-shelter column unless an upgrade raises that limit. Do not keep closing shelters into an overflowing column without checking the relevant upgrade and physical space restrictions.

10. Project Phoenix: materials, technologies and the knowledge tracks

The Phoenix Project board contains three levels with their own upgrade costs and scoring opportunities. A level I upgrade requires one level I material plus data; a level II upgrade needs two level II materials plus data; a level III upgrade requires two level III materials plus data. The data cost rises as more upgrades are placed at a level, so the order in which all players install upgrades can matter.

After paying the correct costs, take the technology from the selected project space and assign it to an available colony-board slot. At the beginning of the game, each slot holds up to two technologies; upgrades can increase the limit. Place your own upgrade tile on the cleared project space, then resolve that space’s bonus and advance its matching knowledge disc.

Project row installation also awards immediate points: the rulebook identifies 2 VP for level I, 6 VP for level II and 12 VP for level III. Your technologies can make later colony activations stronger, and the project rows supply a major endgame scoring avenue. A Phoenix upgrade may therefore be valuable in three ways at once: direct points, a new colony capability and an improved scoring multiplier.

Some upgrade classes have prerequisites involving earlier class I tiles and your production-track progress. These cannot be bypassed simply because you can afford the materials. Likewise, having the right material cubes is not enough if you cannot store or manufacture them in the required form.

11. Additional actions: immediate versus limited

ASHES lets you fit useful additional actions around a main protocol, but there are two distinct timing categories. Immediate actions may be taken at appropriate points during your turn, including between completed individual rewards, but never while or after you resolve Pass. Limited actions may be taken only before or after a protocol, not partway through it, and each type can be used at most once per turn.

Immediate actions include decontaminating survivors into shelter pods, closing full shelters, manufacturing advanced materials from the printed lower-level combinations, and cycling the shelter market by spending data. Because you must finish the current action or individual reward first, you cannot interrupt a multi-step resource award to manufacture something in the middle and then resume it.

Limited actions include Scout, Claim a Milestone, and Complete a Mission Card. Scouting pays strength and draws survivors into the area with your vehicle, with special rules for essential survivors and the starting shelter. Milestones require meeting a public condition and paying the data cost for an available achievement space. Mission cards must satisfy their stated requirements and costs before giving rewards.

Use the player aid’s action list for legal timing. Most teaching mistakes come not from forgetting that a side action exists but from performing it in the wrong place during a protocol or trying to take it after Passing.

12. Radiation: how survivors are lost and why vehicles protect areas

The board is divided into four sectors with radiation levels 1 through 4. In the relevant radiation steps, an area containing an evacuation vehicle is protected and skipped. For an unprotected area, remove a number of survivors corresponding to the sector’s radiation level; those survivors return to the bag, and each player loses happiness equal to the number removed.

The removal order also matters. You remove active survivors before essential survivors. Essential survivors are removed only when no active ones remain in that area. These colors are therefore not interchangeable for radiation calculations.

Radiation is resolved at the setup of rounds two and three and again at the very end of the game. The first round skips radiation. The final check takes place before the endgame conversion of resources and other scoring. You should therefore assess whether the vehicle’s position protects survivors at the next check—not merely at the moment you pass beside them.

The main strategic implication is straightforward: rescuing survivors, placing a vehicle in a threatened area and preserving happiness are linked decisions. A vehicle left behind can protect an area from a future radiation step, but the same vehicle might be needed elsewhere to deliver people or activate a useful tile. Protecting one area is not equivalent to rescuing all people on the board.

13. Endgame scoring: four separate calculations

After the third round, perform the final radiation step. Then tally the remaining resources, happiness, freed shelter-disc spaces and the Phoenix Project according to the rules. ASHES already awards victory points throughout the game, especially via construction, missions, colony scoring and upgrades; the final stage adds to that accumulated total.

1. Unused resources into happiness: exchange your remaining fuel, data and anti-rad doses at a rate of one happiness per three resources, regardless of which of those three resource types are combined.
2. Happiness score: score one VP for each point of happiness remaining after the final check and resource exchange.
3. Colony-board score: add the points visible in the vacated shelter-disc spaces on your colony board.
4. Phoenix Project score: calculate each of the three project rows as your installed upgrades × qualifying scoring-tile count × the knowledge-disc tier value. A row is capped at 24 VP.

The distinction between colony scoring when you Pass and Phoenix row scoring at game end is important. They are different calculations with different caps and timing. Do not assume the materials and survivor scores available as Pass areas are simply repeated in the identical way at the end.

If scores are tied, the player farther ahead on the turn-order track wins. The final position can matter even after the third round, so the Pass protocol’s turn-order decision is not only about who acts first in the following round.

14. Original example: one round of competing priorities

Imagine a colony has enough strength to build a shelter but also sees survivors exposed in a high-radiation sector. The vehicle has enough fuel for one movement, and an activation zone can either develop shelter production or advance Phoenix. A nearby opponent is also approaching a public project milestone.

Option A: build. Activating a survivor to build a new shelter might create a rescue location and future income. The downside is delaying the actual rescue if exposed civilians are about to suffer radiation.

Option B: move. Paying two fuel to move the vehicle can transport survivors and trigger an area reward, potentially preventing radiation losses or giving materials. The downside is that you may end with too little fuel for the next useful route.

Option C: improve Phoenix. Installing a technology may produce immediate points and stronger later activations. Its advantage is most obvious early enough to use that technology repeatedly and when the chosen scoring row matches what the colony can produce.

Option D: Pass. You may prefer to recover workers, collect income, score two strong areas and claim a valuable turn-order space. But remember that Pass ends your participation in the current round, so it cannot be used as a temporary rest before one more vehicle journey.

These are hypothetical choices designed to explain the rule interactions. The paragraph does not assign invented printed tile values, claim an optimal answer or assume that every action is simultaneously available in every real game state.

15. Solo: the rival is a card-driven colony, not another human player

ASHES includes an official solo mode with 12 rival action cards and three difficulty cards. Set up the game using the two-player side, with your normal colony components and a separate rival color and board. The rival begins with a vehicle in the second turn-order position and a difficulty marker on its own track.

The rival does not collect or spend ordinary resources and has no happiness track. Its actions are instructed by the action cards rather than evaluated through a simulated resource economy. This is why copying human-player costs or income onto the rival would be a rules error.

Each rival turn, reveal an action card unless its marker has already reached the top of its track and it Passes. The difficulty determines which colored activator arrows advance the rival marker: in normal mode, any of the three colored arrows can advance it; advanced accepts the relevant two colors; expert only the most restrictive one. That changes how long and how aggressively the rival remains active.

Cards specify whether the rival builds, rescues or installs Phoenix upgrades using sector, ordinal and numeric parameters. The exact target location depends on the current round and which positions are available. When no target exists for the instructed action, the rules specify a direct scoring fallback.

The solo rulebook has its own complete illustrations and exceptions on printed pages 16–19. For a first solo game, learn the human protocols first, then follow the rival parameters mechanically rather than choosing the action that seems strongest for it.

16. Ten common ASHES rules mistakes

1. Forgetting Pass: it is the third protocol and determines worker recovery, income, scoring and turn-order placement.
2. Passing and then taking actions: no additional or main actions remain after you Pass that round.
3. Repeating an activation zone: the same zone cannot be used twice within the round.
4. Skipping technology bonuses: an activation resolves its slot rewards before production and the main action.
5. Confusing an active survivor with an essential survivor: only active survivors are used for worker activation.
6. Miscounting vehicle movement: leaving the starting shelter counts as one step; cargo may never exceed capacity.
7. Closing a shelter that is not full: all its decontamination pods must be occupied first.
8. Interrupting a protocol with a limited action: limited actions are used before or after, never during a protocol.
9. Resolving radiation every turn: it occurs during specified round setups and the final game procedure, not after every individual action.
10. Using the wrong scoring cap: Pass-area scoring limits and Phoenix’s 24-VP-per-row endgame cap are distinct.

The player aid, not a memorized overview, should be your final reference for exact icon ordering. The official PDF also contains appendices for special characters, colony upgrades and project scoring tiles.

ASHES: Blackout Protocol rules FAQ

How many rounds are there?

Three. A round continues until every player has used the Pass protocol, then the next round begins.

How many players can play ASHES?

One to four. Solo has an official rival automa using dedicated action and difficulty cards.

What are the three main protocols?

Pass, Move Your Vehicle and Activate a Survivor. Shelter construction, rescue, Phoenix installation and Rest are main actions nested within activation or enabled by some area effects.

What happens when you Pass?

You recover activated survivors by spending anti-rad doses, take eligible happiness-track income, score permitted colony areas and choose an available next-round turn-order space. You then stop acting for the round.

Can I activate the same survivor zone twice?

No. The zone may be used only once each round; initially you can activate up to three zones, with an upgrade increasing that limit to four.

How much fuel does moving cost?

The vehicle protocol costs two fuel. Then move within your current distance allowance and cargo limits, and activate the destination’s area tile.

Can the vehicle protect survivors from radiation?

Yes. Areas containing at least one evacuation vehicle are skipped during the radiation step.

When does radiation occur?

At the start of rounds two and three and once after round three before final scoring. It does not occur in the first round’s setup.

Can you use both active and essential survivors in worker slots?

No. Activating a survivor requires an active survivor. Both types may serve other roles, including shelter-related effects, according to the rulebook.

How do you close a shelter?

Fill all decontamination pods on the shelter card with survivors, then take the Close Shelter immediate action and place the card into a permitted scoring column.

What does Rest do?

Rest is one of the four main actions. It grants two happiness and one fuel; it is not the same as Passing.

How are materials upgraded?

Higher-level materials are manufactured from two different lower-level materials according to your colony board’s cable connections and storage limits.

How do you score the Phoenix Project?

Each of its three rows scores installed upgrades multiplied by qualifying tile elements and the shared knowledge-disc value, capped at 24 points per row.

What breaks ties?

The player farther ahead on the turn-order track.

Does the solo rival use normal resources?

No. It follows rival action cards, does not collect or spend ordinary resources and has no happiness marker.

Where are the official English rules?

Download the publisher’s June 2026 English rules PDF, also linked from its official game page.

Verified rules sources and editorial scope

Primary source: Perro Loko Games, ASHES: Blackout Protocol English Rulebook (June 2026). Consult printed pages 4–7 for setup, 8–9 for the round cycle, 10–13 for protocols and primary actions, 14–15 for additional actions, 16 for final scoring and 16–19 for the solo rival. The publisher’s game page confirms the high-level three-round structure.

Secondary cross-check: the publisher-uploaded English rulebook on BoardGameGeek and Dragones y Losetas’s retail explanation independently describe the Pass protocol and final scoring. Where a short product description omits a rules step, the complete official rulebook is authoritative.

Written independently for BoardGameArchive on 2 November 2026. This article summarizes mechanics rather than duplicating the rulebook; visual setup diagrams, special character exceptions and all icon references remain in the official PDF. Hypothetical decision examples are identified and no firsthand playtest or quantitative win-rate claim is made. No embedded advertising scripts or copied board artwork appear in this page. For a general overview see ASHES game hub; see our editorial policy for corrections.