Age of Assassins
Age of Assassins Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Overview
A 30 minute game for 3–4 players aged 10 and up.
Age of Assassins is a drafting game, where hands of cards are sent around the table. Each turn you pick a card from those you get, but you can choose whether to play it face up or face down.
If you can outsmart your opponents, you'll get points, and if you get enough, you win. But beware, because the slightest mistake will have you killed.
Components
- 28 Character cards (and 3 extra)
- 4 summary cards
- 76 points worth of point chips
- 5 penalty chips
Character cards
Character cards have a number (top left), a name, and an effect. The number is in which order the cards' effects will happen. At the bottom right, you can see how many of that card there is in the deck.
Preparations
- Place the point chips where all can reach them.
- Shuffle the character cards to a face down deck.
- When playing on 3 players, there'll be an imagined 4th player called the ghost. See rules for the ghost last in the rules.
Flow of the game
The game is played in rounds, until the end conditions are met. Each round is in three steps:
- Deal cards (draft)
- Resolve cards (calculate score)
- Assassinate (check game end)
1: Deal cards
Deal 7 cards to each player. After looking at their cards, each player chooses one, and holds face down before them. When all have chosen a card, on one-two-three, all players reveal their cards, or don't. Card effects are not resolved at this point. Players then send their remaining cards to the player to their left (and get cards from the player on their right) and repeat the above until they have no cards left in hand, but seven cards in front of them.
Cards that were turned face up are considered to be in the front row for that player. Cards face down are in the rear row. The front row can hold 4 characters and the rear row 3 characters, so if you already have 3 face down cards, you must turn your next card face up. Likewise, if you already have 4 cards face up, the next must be face down. They should be lined up like this:
Front row: [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Rear row: [ ] [ ] [ ]
2: Resolve cards
All rear row cards are now turned face up, and the cards effects are resolved in number order. Please note that some card effects only happen if the card is in the front or rear row.
Cards mention both preliminary points and real points. Preliminary points are points you gained this round, and you only get to keep them if you survive the round. Therefore, keep your real points and your preliminary points separate.
If a player is killed, he loses his preliminary points (and cannot gain more preliminary points this round) but remains in the round for all other purposes. Real points are not affected at all. If a killed player is killed again, nothing happens (it does not count as another killing).
Note that each card happens once. So if you have several cards of the same type, the effect will be applied several times.
Once the effects for all cards (1–6) are resolved, the preliminary points, for players who are not eliminated, turn into real points. Real points will not be lost even if the player is eliminated in a later round.
3: Assassinate
If any player now has 15 or more real points, the game ends. If not, collect all the cards, reshuffle, redeal and start a new round.
Game end
Congratulations, the King is dead, long live the King! The player with the most points wins. In case of a tie, the player in the most anti-clockwise direction wins. If all players have the same points, or if they're facing in other, then the dog wins!
The ghost
If you're three players, the game is played with an imagined fourth player called the ghost.
The ghost doesn't participate in the draft. Instead, she's dealt 7 cards before anyone else. The first 4 are face up, and the last 3 are face down. However, if the ghost gets 3 Magicians face up, then reshuffle and redo.
"3 magicians" have no effect on the ghost. If the ghost has 3 magicians, no player is eliminated. If the ghost should be eliminated due to 3 magicians, then the next player to the right is affected instead.
The ghost never chooses to be eliminated when having the Grave Digger.
The ghost can never gain real points. Any real points she gains are just returned to the stock.
The extra cards
The extra cards (Sergeant, Chef and Wizard) can be used once you feel you need to take the game to the next level. You can use one, or two or all three, but using them when playing in 3 isn't a good idea.
When you use them, you must take out one of the corresponding regular cards from the deck, so that the deck you play with has 28 cards. (If you really need it pointed out, Sergeant corresponds to Soldier, Chef to Cook and Wizard to Magician.)
The extra cards' effects are different from the regular cards, but apart from that, they count as their corresponding regulars for all purposes.