Black Sonata: Strange Shadows Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Stop Cards
• Additional Fog Cards
• Blacker Than Night
• Byways
• Heraldry
• Ferryman
• Cat and Mouse

Components

• 15 clue cards
• 12 Dark Lady cards
• 3 stop cards
• 10 coat of arms cards
• 32 Byways cards
• 4 additional fog cards
• 2 pawns (Historian)
• 11 tokens and tiles
• 1 rulebook

Stop Cards

This small module, made of cards, lets you hold the Dark Lady in place, which can help you catch her.

At the start of the Dark Lady's turn, if you want her to stay where she is for one turn, place a stop card on top of the movement deck. Then continue as usual, moving the top card to the bottom of the deck.

When a stop card becomes the top card of the movement deck, you must immediately flip it over and carry out the instruction on its reverse, then remove that stop card from the game.

Additional Fog Cards

The set includes four additional fog cards with useful effects. You can use them to:

• Increase the fog deck, so that you search for the Dark Lady more often. This is especially useful when playing with the more complex clue cards from the expansions.
• Replace disadvantageous fog cards from the base deck, making the use of fog cards more advantageous but still a risky action.
• Replace random cards of the base fog deck, to increase the variety of their effects.

Blacker Than Night

In contrast to the clues from the base game and The Fair Youth, there are no suits in this module. You must determine the Dark Lady's features in the correct order.

Contents of the module:

• 12 Dark Lady cards
• 15 clue cards (with holes)
• 5 tokens numbered 0 to 4

Setup. Use these cards in place of the clue cards from the base game.

1. Shuffle the Dark Lady cards, take the top card and, without looking at its face, place it under the game board. Return the remaining cards to the box.
2. Shuffle the clue deck and place it beside the game board.
3. Place any two clue cards under the location deck, in the same way that one clue card is placed in the base game. They can be obtained after all locations have been visited.

Gameplay. The game is played by the normal rules.

When you receive a clue, you must choose which side to check the card with.

• One side shows four features. When checked, the hole shows how many of these features are present on the Dark Lady card.
• The other side shows three features. When checked, the hole shows how many features are present on the Dark Lady card, PLUS how many of them are in the correct positions. For example, 2 may mean either that one feature is present on the Dark Lady card in the correct position, or that two features are present but both are in the wrong positions.

To check a clue, place it with the chosen side face up. Without flipping it, place the Dark Lady card on top of this clue card, then flip both cards over to see the number of matches in the hole. Then flip the cards back, remove the Dark Lady card under the board, and mark the number of matches on the clue card with a number token.

When flipping the cards, remember that the number in the hole refers to the features on the other side of the clue card.

End of game. To win, you must meet the Dark Lady and correctly identify all three features in the correct order. If you win, add 5 points to your score.

Byways

This module adds two new types of movement cards to the deck.

Contents of the module: 32 movement cards.

Setup. Shuffle the module's cards and take as many as you like to replace movement cards in the movement deck of the base game. Choose one of the eight given sequences and assemble the movement deck as usual, but insert the chosen Byways cards instead of the ordinary movement cards from the base game. The finished movement deck will contain the ordinary cards from the base game and the Byways cards from this module.

Cards with compasses on the reverse will not work if you assemble the movement deck in reverse order, or if you use the additional sequences from the end of the base game rulebook. The other Byways cards will work correctly.

(The rulebook's diagram labels the base game's cards as "ordinary cards" and the module's cards as "cards from the module".)

Gameplay. Byways cards work exactly like the movement cards in the base game. But instead of a landmark symbol showing the place where the Dark Lady is, they give clues of two different types.

• A compass shows the cardinal direction (north, south, west, east) in which the Dark Lady moved from her previous location. For example, this card shows that she moved south (towards the bottom edge) and west (to the left) to reach her current location.
• The other type of card shows a possible colour of the Dark Lady's current location. In the example, she is in a red or purple location (Shoreditch, St Paul's Cathedral, Eastcheap or Southwark).

End of game. Add 0.5 points for each Byways card added to the movement deck.

Heraldry

The Dark Lady hides behind the shield of her coat of arms. To catch her, you must first determine the symbols on her coat of arms.

Contents of the module:

• 10 coat of arms cards
• 5 shield tiles

Setup.

1. Shuffle the coat of arms cards and place them face down.
2. Take the top coat of arms card and, without looking at its face, place it on top of the Dark Lady card. You must correctly determine the four symbols of this coat of arms before you meet the Dark Lady.

Gameplay. When searching for the Dark Lady, take the top card from the coat of arms deck and place it under the top card of the movement deck instead of a fog card.

When the top card of the movement deck is a coat of arms card, place a fog card under it, and use the coat of arms card as a clue for determining the symbols on the Dark Lady's coat of arms.

Determining the symbols of the coat of arms. When you receive a clue, turn it face up and place it against the Dark Lady's coat of arms card so that the arrow points to one of the numbers on the card. The number shows how many symbols match between the clue and the Dark Lady's coat of arms.

(The rulebook's diagram is captioned: "Clue: 2 of these symbols are on the Dark Lady's coat of arms" and "Dark Lady's coat of arms".)

When you have enough clues, you can determine the symbols on the coat of arms and lay it out from the tiles. Then turn over the coat of arms card and check yourself.

• If your guess is correct, you gain the chance to meet the Dark Lady at the end of the game.
• If your guess is wrong, the Dark Lady defends herself against you, and you lose the game.

End of game. If you win, add 10 points to your score.

Ferryman

The ferry is the fastest way to travel around London. It lets you get from any coastal location (marked with a boat symbol) to any other coastal location in a single turn. But this has a price: the ferryman protects the Dark Lady and does not let you search for her in coastal locations. In addition, you must collect location cards in a specific order.

Contents of the module: 1 ferry token.

Setup.

1. Return the coastal location cards (Blackfriars, Liberty Clink and London Bridge) to the box. Since these cards are not used in the game, you cannot search for the Dark Lady in these locations.
2. Shuffle the remaining location cards and place them as a stack on top of the clue card matching the Dark Lady's suit. If you are playing with the Blacker Than Night module, place the stack on top of two clue cards.
3. Place the ferry token in any coastal location.

Gameplay. You must collect location cards in order, one at a time, starting with the top card of the location stack. To take a location card, you must visit the corresponding location on the map. You cannot search for the Dark Lady in a location whose card you do not have. You cannot take a clue card from under the location stack until you have collected all the location cards.

The Dark Lady moves as usual, but your movement now depends on the river. You can cross the river via London Bridge, but you cannot cross the river between Blackfriars and Liberty Clink without the help of the ferry.

You can use the ferry if your pawn is in the same location as the ferry token. On your turn you may move your pawn and the ferry token to any other coastal location. This counts as a movement action. When your pawn moves, the ferry stays in place.

If you are in a coastal location without the ferry, you may spend a movement action to summon the ferry to you. You will be able to use it on your next turn.

Translator's note: the source states both that the pawn and the ferry token move together when you use the ferry, and that the ferry stays in place when your pawn moves. These are transcribed as printed; the official English wording should be checked if it becomes available.

End of game. If you win, add 10 points to your score.

Cat and Mouse

This is an asymmetric game for two players. One player is the Dark Lady, and the other is the Historian, who tries to track her down and expose her.

Contents of the module:

• 2 Historian pawns
• 2 cards that assemble into the map card
• 1 Dark Lady victory card
• A screen (for example, the lid of the box)

Goals.

• The Historian wins if they successfully find the Dark Lady three times and collect three tokens.
• The Dark Lady wins if she can visit all the locations on the map before the Historian catches her.

Setup for the Historian.

1. Lay out the board and place your pawns on any two locations of the same colour.
2. Place next to you 7 clue tokens and 4 guess markers from the base game.

Setup for the Dark Lady. Work behind the screen.

1. Assemble the London map from two cards, and place your pawn (from the base game) on any location. The Historian must not see your card, but you must see the board and the Historian's pawns.
2. Shuffle the location cards and, without showing the Historian, remove one from the game. Place the remaining ten cards on top of the Dark Lady's victory card behind the screen.
3. Find the 20 movement cards with numbers from 7 to 26 in the lower left corner. Shuffle them and place them face down on the table, leaving space beside them for a discard pile.
4. Place one fog card on top of the deck (2 cards in favour of the Dark Lady, none in favour of the Historian). Then take the top five movement cards and lay them out on the table so that both players can see them.

Translator's note: the parenthetical in step 4 is transcribed as printed in the Russian text, and the Russian text of step 3 places the cards face down "with the landmark symbols". Their exact meaning should be checked against the official English rules.

Turn order. Players take turns. The Dark Lady moves first.

The Dark Lady's turn. A Dark Lady turn has two steps.

1. Optionally, move your pawn to an adjacent location. You are not obliged to move every turn, but to confuse the Historian, always pretend to move.
2. You must do one of the following:
   • a. Place the top card of the location deck on the discard pile, if it shows your current location.
   • b. Place one card from your open hand on the discard pile, if it matches your current location. Fog cards match all locations. Then refill your hand with a card from the deck.
   • c. Only if you cannot do any of the actions above, discard all movement cards (but not location cards!) from your hand and replace them with cards from the deck.

When the deck runs out, shuffle the discard pile to form a new deck. In this way, location cards can come into your hand, but they can be played only if they match your current location.

To win, try to play all the cards from the location deck as quickly as possible, but remember that doing so reveals your exact location.

Keep an eye on the cards in your hand and the top card of the deck, to plan your moves and avoid traps. If on your turn you cannot discard a card, the Historian wins!

The Historian's turn. You may use guess markers to mark the possible locations of the Dark Lady.

On your turn, the Historian must do one of the following:

• a. Move one of your pawns to an adjacent location, or
• b. Search for the Dark Lady.

To search, place a clue token on a location where one of your pawns is. The Dark Lady's player must say whether her pawn is in that location.

• If yes, place this clue token in any empty clue slot on the board.
• If no, remove this clue token from the game.

Whatever the result of the search, the Dark Lady's player may choose to flee, moving her pawn a number of steps not exceeding the number of clue tokens lying in the clue slots on the board. Then the turn passes to the Dark Lady.

End of game. The game ends when:

• The Historian has collected three clue tokens (Historian wins);
• The Historian has lost five clue tokens (Dark Lady wins);
• The Dark Lady's location deck has run out (Dark Lady wins);
• On her turn, the Dark Lady cannot discard any card (Historian wins).