The market buys flexibility, not a guaranteed result
Market access depends on the match configuration. Eligible listings may resolve through sealed bids, while some weapons can offer a legal buy-now path. The item still operates through its action, target, charges, equipment slot, and contest rules. Ownership alone never guarantees success.
A good purchase gives the seat a reachable line that its current kit lacks: survive a likely attack, collect a second evidence channel, reposition, pressure a protected target, or preserve social leverage. A bad purchase spends cash without changing the next meaningful decision.
Use a six-part valuation before entering a bid
Legality
Can the role buy, equip, and use the listing under the current rules?
Reach
Is there a valid target or situation in the next two cycles?
Uses
Do remaining charges justify the price and occupied slot?
Timing
Will the relevant phase arrive before the item becomes obsolete?
Reserve
What future bids, contracts, legal costs, or paid actions still need cash?
Exposure
What public, financial, map, or forensic trail could purchase and use create?
If any answer is unknown, lower the maximum bid. Uncertainty is a cost. An item that looks strong in isolation may be useless to a seat with an occupied slot, no legal target, or a more urgent survival problem.
A sealed bid should express a ceiling, not excitement
Set the maximum price before seeing pressure from other bidders. Your ceiling is the value of the plan the item unlocks minus the value of the best use for the same cash. Do not chase a listing simply because another seat appears interested.
Settlement is second-price. The winner pays one dollar more than the highest competing offer — never less than their own minimum and never more than their bid — and a lot nobody else bid on costs only its minimum. A tie at the top pays the tied amount. Losing bidders learn what the lot went for, never a sealed bid above it.
That rule is why the honest ceiling is the best bid. Bidding above your real value no longer protects you, because you pay what the next seat offered, not what you wrote; bidding below it only risks losing a lot you valued more than the seat that took it.
Settlement affordability still matters. A theatrical bid that cannot survive settlement is not leverage. The safest maximum is a number the seat can still defend after a lost auction or an unexpected phase result. When two seats that can both afford a lot tie, it goes to the seat with fewer lives, then to the one that has won fewer lots this settlement, and only then to chance.
Prices follow the table's cash and the city's books
Weapons and accessories are priced from the middle of the table's spendable cash, with a premium that rises with the item's tier. Armor and utility — the defensive and everyday shelf — are priced from the poorer quarter of the table, so a seat with little cash can still reach protection. Every board also carries one broadly legal anchor lot priced for the seats with the least cash, and it never takes a surcharge.
Prices then move with the city's books. When the Common Good or Evil holds an Edge in Economy Control, its seats pay 10% less and everyone else pays 10% more; a Dominant lead makes that 20%. A Neutral lead lowers prices for every side and for Neutral seats most. Your own price is private, and the market card says plainly whether it is Discounted or Surcharged.
| Condition | What changes |
|---|---|
| Scarcity Surge | One fewer listing, and prices about 25% higher. |
| Smuggler Festival | One extra listing, and prices about 25% lower. |
| Panic Buying | One extra listing, but prices about 15% higher. |
| Counterfeit Wave | The same listings, but each purchase adds 1 Heat. |
| Police Crackdown | One fewer listing, and each purchase adds 2 Heat. |
The opening board never rolls a condition, so Classic always starts with a broadly affordable listing.
Buy now only when timing is worth more than price discovery
A buy-now weapon can remove auction uncertainty, but the premium is justified only when delay closes a real window. Immediate survival, a reachable high-value target, or a narrow endgame can make certainty valuable. Curiosity and fear of missing out do not.
Timing test
If losing the listing still leaves two legal plans with similar value, bid conservatively. If the coming phase is the only safe opportunity to answer a known threat and the item legally fills that gap, buy-now may be worth its higher cash cost.
Group listings by the job they perform
Protection
Cover a known survival gap or preserve a credible public voice through the next hostile window.
Information
Create an independent clue that can confirm or reject a live theory.
Mobility and stealth
Reach the necessary cell, change encounter risk, or reduce the predictability of a route.
Pressure and offense
Threaten a legal target, force protection, or punish a dangerous position without assuming automatic success.
Social and legal leverage
Preserve Influence, courtroom options, contracts, or a sentence path when those mechanics apply.
Economy
Improve future flexibility only when the match is long enough for the investment to mature.
Compare items within the job, not across a fantasy inventory. The cheapest legal protection may be better than an expensive offensive weapon when the seat is unlikely to survive long enough to attack.
The fence buys, improves, and remembers
The market is not only a place to buy. During each market phase the fence offers a handful of services, each with a price and a limit. None of them changes who wins a contest outright; each one changes what your cash, your kit, or your network can reach next.
| Service | Cost | Limit and rule |
|---|---|---|
| Pawn a good | Pays you half its listed price, scaled by uses left | One item per market phase, and only goods that came through the market; starting gear and role-granted weapons are not the fence's to buy. |
| Reinforce | $3 | +1 use on a limited item. |
| Muffle | $2 | Files off the item's public tell. |
| Hone | $4 | +1 attack on a weapon. |
| Back room | $2 to look in; free once trusted | Open from cycle 2 with one premium lot a cycle, sealed bid only, priced without the affordability cap. |
| Pledge to an ally | Up to $6 of your own cash | Toward one living member of your own network, at most two backers each, drawn only for what the buyer's own cash cannot cover. |
| Courier | $1, only if you won something | Collects your lot so you do not walk to the drop cell yourself. |
The fence does one upgrade job per market phase, and each kind once per item. A worked item keeps its lot number, so honing a gun does not clean its history. Counterfeit cash cannot be pledged.
Trusted standing
A seat that buys cleanly earns the fence's trust: after two cycles with a clean purchase, or one for a seat with no network to back it. Trust takes a dollar off every listed price and opens the back room for free. Several lots in one night count as one night, and falling into bad standing resets the count. Your standing is private and shows only on your own standing card.
Second-hand lots
Goods nobody is using come back. A dead seat's loot cache left unclaimed for two cycles, a prisoner's market goods, and anything pawned wait in a resale queue, and up to two join each board at $2 below the board's price, keeping any fence work done on them. The bulletin names the second-hand item, never where it came from.
The fence only takes what it could have sold. A role's own weapon, such as a Sniper Rifle, stays in the cache where it fell. Prison ends a seat's trading for good: a prisoner can no longer bid, buy or use the fence's services, and anything it still holds goes to the locker at every restock, not only the first.
Cash reserves preserve future decisions
Spending to zero trades every later option for one current item. Keep enough cash for the next likely listing, paid action, contract, legal consequence, or response to a failed plan. The correct reserve changes with role objective, cycle count, threat level, and the remaining market.
Late game compresses the horizon. Cash that will never be used has no strategic value, while early-game reserves buy flexibility. Ask how many meaningful purchase windows remain rather than following one fixed savings percentage.
A market good is also a reserve. If a loan repayment you cannot cover falls due, pawning your most valuable market good is the answer to a default, and a good you no longer need is worth more to the fence than to an occupied slot.
A purchase can become context without proving alignment
Helpful, hostile, and independent seats all use the market. The mere possession of a weapon or tool is not a confession. Market evidence becomes useful when the purchase contradicts a public plan, supplies means for a later event, or combines with location and timing.
The market leaves three kinds of trail, and none of them names a buyer on its own:
- Heat. Buying a weapon adds 1 Heat, which the suspect board reads; nothing else on the shelf does, unless a Counterfeit Wave or Police Crackdown is running.
- The drop. Each cycle the fence publishes one drop cell, usually an alley, dock, warehouse, garage, or park. Every seat that won a lot collects there in person unless it paid the courier, and a pickup can be witnessed like any other act on the map. A sighting names nobody until repeated observation has earned it. A seat held in a jail or detention cell cannot walk to the drop, so it pays the courier automatically; if it cannot afford one, its lots are carried to it in the open and the pickup can still be seen.
- Lot numbers. A weapon bought on the market carries a lot number. If it kills in a declared attack, ballistics later publishes the victim, the weapon's class, and the night the lot sold — but only when at least two seats took weapon lots that night, and one trace in five points at a different qualifying night. Otherwise the report says the serial was filed off.
When questioned, explain function and timing: what gap the item filled, why the price was acceptable, and which action you expected to take. A consistent pre-existing plan is stronger than an explanation invented after a suspicious outcome.
Alignment changes the objective, not the need for discipline
Common Good
Buy tools that protect information, test a case, or reduce the cost of a wrong accusation. Avoid flashy purchases that expose key roles early.
Hostile roles
Create threat or misdirection without forming a readable purchase network. A legal item does not excuse an implausible public story.
Neutral roles
Spend toward the actual role objective—survival, contract, leverage, or a specific end-state—rather than copying faction purchases.
Worked budget: armor now or information later
A player has enough cash for one armor buy-now purchase or two modest future bids. Their current defense is exhausted, a credible threat has named them, and their private lead is not yet corroborated. Buying armor preserves the seat long enough to test the lead, so survival and information value point in the same direction.
If the threat were speculative and the player already had protection, the same purchase would be wasteful. Reserving cash for an information tool could create a public case. The listing did not change; the legal plan, timing, and opportunity cost did.
Market FAQ
Should I always buy the strongest weapon?
No. Price, legal target, slot, uses, timing, and exposure can make a cheaper utility or defense item more valuable.
What does the winning bidder actually pay?
The runner-up's offer plus one dollar, so bidding your true limit never costs more than the lot was worth to the next seat. The charge stays between your own minimum and your bid, and a lot with no rival bid sells at its minimum.
Can I sell something back?
Yes, one market good per market phase, for half its listed price scaled by the uses it has left. Starting gear and role-granted weapons cannot be pawned.
Does a suspicious purchase prove guilt?
No. Connect the purchase to means, opportunity, timing, and a contradictory story before treating it as a case.
Where can I learn the broader plan?
Read the strategy guide, the evidence guide, and the complete rules walkthrough.
Revision history
Dated changes to this guide, newest first.
- — Prisoners can no longer trade, a held buyer pays the courier or is seen at the drop, and a role's own weapon stays in the cache where it fell.
- — Full editorial review. Rewrote bidding for second-price settlement and added pricing, market conditions, the fence's services, trusted standing, second-hand lots, the drop point, and lot numbers.
- — First published.