Overview

Defeat enemies by surrounding them whilst keep your warriors alive. Collecting Spirit crystals to acquire Temple Relics for victory points.

Turn

The active player for the turn is shown by the symbol on the active player marker (disc).

The active player chooses a pair of tiles, one for each player.

The player with the weaker strength in the pair decides who will play first, or the active player chooses if the strength is equal.

Each player places their tile and activates it as applicable.

Every warrior who died after both players place and activate their tile determine how far the Spirit Track moves, e.g. if there were 2 deaths for player A and 1 death for player B, the track would move 3 spaces in total.

Draw a new tile from each player's deck to form a new pair, then flip the active player marker to allocate the new active player for the next turn.

Tile Placement

If a player places warrior onto a free space with crystals, the player has to collect all the crystals and put them into personal storage, which holds a maximum of 4 at the end of player's turn. If a player hold more than 4 crystals during the turn, the player must put exceed crystals on the current tile (hot tile) with any combination.

If a player wish to place a warrior onto a space with Temple Relic, the player has to pay up to 4 crystals of which at least one must be a Spirit crystal (white). This cost is reduced by 1 for each tile orthogonal adjacent to the space with Temple Relic, from any of player's warrior. The cost is always a minimum of 1 Spirit Crystal, even if all 4 adjacent spaces are occupied. Place the Temple Relic on personal Acquired Relics track, and randomly draw two crystals from the bag as a reward.

Player can then rotate the warrior tile to any of the four directions.

After orientation is decided, count any support arrow for both orthogonal and diagonal adjacency of your warrior tiles pointing to your current placing warrior tile. Each support arrow that directly points to your current placing warrior tile grants this warrior tile one more strength by placing an Energy crystal (purple) from the general supply. Note this reenforcement only works on your current placing warrior tile, it NEVER works backwards, i.e. the current placing warrior tile does NOT provide reenforcement for old tiles. Once this is resolved, the tile's natural Claw quantity plus its Energy Crystal quantity show its strength, so if it had 2 Claws and 3 Energy crystals were added during placement, it now has a new natural strength of 5.

Each player has two special Warriors, the Elder and the Convert. These are special because their effects are triggered all the time, NOT just on their placement turn. The Elder gains bonus strength equal to the quantity orthogonal adjacent allies, whilst the Convert gains strength equal to the quantity of diagonal adjacent enemies. Remember, the two Special tiles will still get the normal placement bonuses on initial placement.

Finally, the player can add more crystals to the current placing warrior tile directly from the personal crystal storage. If player's personal storage hold more than 4 crystals, any extra must be placed before the end of the turn, but it's the player's choice among all crystals in personal storage. Additionally, the player can also freely use any of the remaining crystals to enhance the current placing warrior tile. If Spirit crystals (white) are added to the warrior tile, these will be worth 1VP at game's end if they remain, but do NOT contribute to the strength, only Energy crystal (purple) increases strength.

As a side note, Spirit crystals (white) still in storage at game's end aren't worth anything, only ones that were placed and retained on warrior tiles are counted VP.

Settling Life and Death

After all placement steps are completed, check to see if ANY tile is now fully surrounded on all orthogonal spaces. (note that corner (2) and edge (3) spaces have fewer adjacent spaces than central (4) spaces do)

Note that a space with a Temple Relic is NOT an occupied space for this purpose, it has to have a player's warrior tile on it to count as occupied.

Warrior fights along! Regardless of the strength of the surrounding allies, only the strength of the surrounding enemy tiles are compared to the strength of the surrounded warrior tile. If the surrounded warrior tile has equal or higher strength comparing to the sum of that of its surrounding enemy tiles, it survives, otherwise it dies.

If the target dies, transfer its Spirit crystals (white) to the recently placing tile regardless of where/who it is and then flip the target tile facedown, whilst Energy Crystals (purple) are discarded to the supply.

If the recently placing warrior tile is the Target, Spirit Crystals (white) are removed from the game.

If multiple warrior tiles are Targeted, and one of them is the recently placing tile (hot tile), resolve the hot tile the LAST, whilst the order of settlements of all others can be resolved in the current player's choice.

Note: The Elder and the Convert have bonus strength depending on what tiles are adjacent regardless alive or dead.

Once all targets, if any, are fully resolved. It is either the second player's turn or the end of the round.

Game End

The game ends at the end of a round when one of the following conditions are met:

1. 6 deaths of any player's warrior.

2. There are one or less free spaces on the map (A Temple Relic space is not a "free space") e.g. there could be 2 temple relic spaces and 1 free space, this triggers end game.

3. All warrior tiles have been played.

Regardless of how game end is triggered, it is scored victory point the same way as following:

1. Each player checks their living warriors for the number of gems (diamond shape) on their foreheads.

2. Each player checks their living warriors for the number of Spirit crystals (white) placed on them.

3. Each player checks their acquired Temple Relics and scores them as: the first is 1VP, the 2nd is additional 2VP, the 3rd is additional 3VP, the 4th is additional 4VP, the 5th is additional 5VP for a maximum total of 15VP.

The player with the most victory points, wins!

If tied, the player with the most living warriors wins!

If still tied, the player who most recently acquired a relic wins!

Standard Game Adjustment

The Standard Game plays the same as the Basic game, with the adjustment on Temple Relic Scoring:

Instead of scoring based on what you collect, they are scored based on when anyone collected it, i.e. the first collected is still worth 1VP, but the second collected by player A OR B is worth 2VP because it is the second relic collected, NOT because it is the 2nd collected by them.