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Archers of Nand

Archers of Nand Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

  • Components
  • Setup
  • How to Play
  • End of Game
  • Difficulty Settings
  • Competitive Mode

Components

  • 7 territory tiles.
  • 32 orcs/warrior tokens.
  • 2 sets of 3 color coins.
  • 20 arrow tokens.
  • 33 action cards: COUNT, NOT, OR, AND, LIKE, XOR and flares.
  • 15 horde cards.
  • 1 archers card.
  • 1 reference card.

Setup

  1. Place the 7 territory tiles as follows, this will be the game board representing the valley of Nand.

  2. Prepare the deck of horde cards according to the difficulty and desired duration of the game. For your first game, use 5 cards of 3 orcs and 5 cards of 4 orcs to play a 10-round game. You can shuffle the hordes deck or leave the most dangerous hordes for the end of the game.

  3. Place the warriors and orcs tokens next to the game board.

  4. Provide your archers with their arrows. For your first 10-round game, take 50 arrows and place them next to the archers' card. See the table "Difficulty settings" on page 7.

  5. Place the coins inside the game box, which you will use as a tray. The game includes 2 sets of coins to place the orcs faster.

  6. Shuffle the action cards and place 4 on the table.

Setup diagram note: the board is shown in the printed example of a game in easy mode. The seven territories are Klifdalholm, Klifnesvik, Beknesvik, Bekdalsand, Bekstenholm, Aenesholm and Aestensand. Their banners in the printed diagram are: Klifdalholm green and red; Klifnesvik red; Beknesvik red and blue; Bekdalsand green; Bekstenholm green, red and blue; Aenesholm blue; Aestensand green and blue. The tile names were read from the board diagram, not from running text.

How to Play

The goal of the game is to resist the wild hordes of orcs attacking the Valley of Nand. If the orcs destroy four of the territories during the game, you lose control of the valley and therefore lose the game. However, if you can stop the orcs from destroying four of the territories after the last horde, you saved the Valley of Nand and win the game!

Each round of play consists of the following steps:

  1. PLACE WARRIORS. Place a warrior unit on any territory.

  2. PLACE ORCS. Draw a card from the hordes deck. Its number indicates how many orcs you will have to place in this round. In addition, for each territory having four or more orcs on it, you must add one to the number in the horde card.

    In order to know where to place each orc unit, toss the coins. The combination of colored banners will indicate the territory.

    If there are no banners in the coin toss, the orcs attack the archers hidden in the mountains. The archers lose arrows in their escape: 1 arrow in easy mode, 2 arrows in normal mode and 3 arrows in hard mode. But even then, they can still throw arrows at the orcs to defend the valley. Flip the archer card to indicate they are escaping.

    If this outcome happens again during this round when the archers have already escaped, they would not lose any more arrows.

    If a territory has 3 or more orcs at this time, it is destroyed by the orcs (flip the tile to show it destroyed).

  3. BATTLE. You can do a maximum of 2 actions with your warriors and archers on each round:

    • Warriors: Discard one of your four action cards without using its effect and move a warrior unit to an adjacent territory. You can use your 2 actions to move the same warrior twice.
    • Archers: Use an action card to warn the archers about the territories under attack. Discard an action card to use its effect (explained later).

    In addition to discarding the card, you must spend archers' arrows to carry out the attack according to the orcs and warriors units in each attacked territory.

    Action Cards

End of Game

The game may end for two reasons:

  • Orcs destroyed four or more territories during the game. Bad luck, you lose!
  • There are no cards left in the hordes deck and at least four territories are not destroyed. Congratulations, you win the game!

It is possible to win the game even if you have no more arrows available thanks to the hand-to-hand combats of the warriors.

To calculate the final score, add 10 points for each undestroyed territory, 1 point for each unused arrow, and subtract 3 points for each orc in the valley.

Difficulty Settings

The printed table is in Spanish; the level names are translated here.

LevelHorde DeckArrowsEscaping
Easy (Fácil)3-3-3-3-3-4-4-4-4-450-1
Intermediate (Intermedio)3-3-3-3-4-4-4-4-5-5-5-548-2
Hard (Difícil)3-3-3-3-3-4-4-4-4-4-5-5-5-5-545-3

Competitive Mode

In the two-player competitive mode, one player controls the humans and the other player controls the orcs. The game setup is the same as for the solo mode, but in the competitive mode the orcs don't use the coins to place orcs, and both players have 4 action cards at the start of each round. These cards are visible to both players during the game.

The rounds are the same in competitive mode except for step 2 which is when the orcs are placed. In this mode, the horde deck only serves to count the number of rounds to be played and the number of orcs on the card is ignored. Instead, the player controlling the orcs chooses one of their 4 action cards to place as many orcs as stated by the action card.

Since the action cards of the player controlling the humans are in sight, the player controlling the orcs can think of the strategy that causes the most destruction in the Valley of Nand and cannot be easily fought back by humans.

At the end of each round, the player controlling the orcs will draw one new action card and the player controlling the humans will draw two, so both players have 4 action cards at the start of the next round.

Example: the orcs choose the NOT card to play "NOT green" and place three orcs in the territories not having the green banner. If they had used a flare, they would have placed only one orc, but in whatever territory they wanted.

As in solo mode, the game can end in two ways:

  • Orcs have destroyed four territories during the game: Orcs win!
  • Humans have managed to stop the orcs from destroying four of the territories after the last horde: Humans win!

You can adjust the differences in expertise of each player (apprentice vs. expert) by modifying the number of arrows available at the beginning of the game or the number of hordes that will attack the valley.

  • FLARE. Archers will fire at the territory of your choice. Its inhabitants are firing a flare to warn the Archers that they are in danger.

  • COUNT. Choose the number 1, 2, or 3. Archers will fire at territories that have 1 banner, 2 banners, or 3 banners. Example: "COUNT 2" fires arrows at the three territories having 2 banners (green/red, blue/red, and green/blue).

  • LIKE. Select one of these words: Klif, Bek, Ae, Sten, Dal, Nes, Vik, Holm, or Sand. Archers will fire at territories containing that word. Example: "LIKE BEK" fires arrows at Beknesvik, Bekstenholm, and Bekdalsand.

  • NOT. Choose one color. Archers will fire at all territories NOT having the color chosen. Example: "NOT red" fires arrows at all territories that do NOT have a red banner.

  • OR. Choose two colors. Archers will fire at all territories that have ANY of the chosen colors. Example: "green OR red" fires arrows at territories that have either a red or a green banner. You can choose the same color twice. Example: "green OR green" fires arrows at all territories with a green banner.

  • AND. Choose two colors. Archers will fire at all territories that have ALL the chosen colors. Example: "red AND green" fires arrows at territories that have both the red and green banners. You can choose the same color twice. Example: "green AND green" fires arrows at all territories with a green banner.

  • XOR. Choose two colors. Archers will fire at all territories that have ANY of the chosen colors, but NOT BOTH. Example: "green XOR red" fires arrows at territories having a red or a green banner, but not having a red and a green banner.

  • If the territory contains orcs but no warriors, remove one orc unit and reduce the number of available arrows by 1.

  • If the territory contains neither orcs nor warriors, reduce the number of available arrows by 2.

  • If the territory contains warriors but no orcs, remove one warrior unit and reduce the number of available arrows by 3.

  • If the territory contains both orcs and warriors, remove one orc unit and one warrior unit, and reduce the number of available arrows by 4.

If you don't have enough arrows to perform the action, you cannot use that action card.

Important: It is not necessary to use your two actions. Sometimes it is preferable to save arrows for the next hordes. However, you always have to discard 2 action cards in each round. If you have not done two actions, discard the corresponding cards to have just 2 action cards in your hand at the end of the round.

Example: Player decides to use the COUNT card to do a "COUNT 1" and attack all territories having 1 banner. This attack costs 6 arrows (1+1+4) and one warrior from Bekdalsand, but it kills 3 orcs. One of them was in the destroyed territory of Aenesholm which was going to add an extra orc in the following round.

Once your actions are completed, hand-to-hand fighting takes place between warriors and orcs in the same territory. Since orcs are twice as strong as warriors, each orc unit removes two warrior units and vice versa. Remove units from each territory accordingly until 1) only warriors are left; 2) only orcs are left; or 3) they are empty.

Example: 2 orcs and 4 warriors kill each other in Klifdalholm. The lonely warrior of Bekstenholm is not enough to kill the orc.

  • END OF THE ROUND. At the end of the round, discard the horde card, draw two new action cards to have 4 on the table and begin a new round with step 1: "Place warriors". In addition, if the archers escaped during this round, flip their card to show them deployed again in their position.