Rules and Mechanics

[indiekid]

A place where I will keep details of gameplay and update the rulebook.

[indiekid]

This is the current rulebook, though it is quite out of date and very rough. I used for the text Lyx (https://www.lyx.org/ and Inkscape for the figures (https://inkscape.org/en/). I have uploaded it in MS word format so the formatting is not great, I will try to address this in future.

[indiekid]

One of the figures from the manual - uploaded separately due to its large size. It corresponds to Figure 3 in the uploaded manual.

[indiekid]

The two central mechanics:

1. Players take three actions in a turn, and the "value" of those actions deteriorates as the turn progresses. For each action, players choose either Build, Move or "something fancy". Build and Move work in the same way each time; the "something fancy" is different in each action and represents the manifestation of divine powers. The three available actions in action 1 are as follows: "Build up to 3 troops and/or ships", "Move a stack by up to 3 tiles" and "Create a hero". Each of these actions has a value of 3, and the following turns have values of 2 and 1, respectively. Action 1 is chosen and executed by all players at the same time, and likewise for actions 2 and 3. In addition, each player's God Card gives them unique a bonus of value 1, which will trigger if they create a hero or summon a creature during the turn. A turn, in other words, has a maximum "value" of 7, and trying to optimise a turn (or, prehaps more accurately, knowing when it is prudent to be sub-optimal) is a core of the strategy.

2. Players can only maintain control of a certain quantity of tiles (hexes), and this quantity increases as the game progresses. This is represented by the number of stacks a player can support. The more cities, heroes and played Knowledge cards a player has, the higher their support. At the end of each turn, a "disband phase" occurs, in which players who have exceeded their support limit must remove stacks from the board until they are back within their limit. All stacks have a maximum height of 4. The game, therefore, punishes players for spreading out thinly (one stack of four is preferable to four stacks of one, for example). To score victory points, however, players will need to spread out and control the right combination of tiles.