Kabaal
Kabaal Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Overview and Goal
Kabaal is a trick taking game played over an indefinite number of rounds until someone has performed 3 sacrificial rituals, summoned the demon and won!
A round consists of 6 turns. Each turn, you play one card in turn. Whoever wins the trick places a cultist (game piece) on the area cards and tries to form vertical or horizontal lines with their cultists. In doing so, you have to push both your opponents' and your own cultists onto adjacent cards. If at least 3 cultists of the same color are placed in an uninterrupted line, you have to perform a sacrificial ritual.
Material
- 36 artifact cards
- 32 color cards: 8 per color, values "1" to "8"
- 4 colorless cards: values "5+", "6+", "7+", "666"
- 16 area cards (front and back)
- 24 cultists (6 per color)
- 10 demon cards (front and back)
- 1 amulet card
Setup
A. Prepare the artifact card deck:
- Game for 2: Remove the card "666" and all color cards with an even numerical value. Place them back in the box.
- Game for 3/4: Use all artifact cards.
B. Use the demon card "Baal". You are now trying to summon this demon. Note: If you've already played multiple games with "Baal", you may instead use one of the other demon cards (see "Modes / The Other Demons" below).
C. Place the area cards in the middle of the table according to the illustration on the back of the demon card.
D. Place 6 cultists of one color in front of you. This is your personal supply.
E. Whoever wears the darkest clothes takes the amulet card and places it in front of them.
Overview of the Game
Prepare each round as follows:
- If you have the amulet card, shuffle the artifact cards and deal 8 cards to everyone. This is your hand. You may look at the cards in your hand, but keep them secret from the others!
- Each of you: Choose 2 artifact cards from your hand and place them face down in front of you. Once everyone has made their choice, pass the two to the player on your left. Afterwards, reveal the 2 cards in front of you. These are your face-up cards. They count towards your hand, but remain face up in front of you.
Important: Whenever your "hand" is mentioned, this also includes your face-up cards. Once you play one of your face-up cards, immediately replace it with a card from your hand. Place this card face up in front of you, so that you have 2 face-up cards in front of you at all times. If you ever forget doing so, make up for it as soon as you realize.
A round consists of 6 turns. Perform these steps each turn:
- Whoever has the amulet card plays 1 card of their choice. From the 2nd turn onwards, the winner of the last trick starts the new turn.
- In clockwise order, everyone else plays 1 card.
- Whoever wins the trick places cultists.
- Check whether you need to push cultists.
- Check whether you may perform a sacrificial ritual. a) If someone performed 3 sacrificial rituals, the game ends. b) If no one performed 3 sacrificial rituals yet, a new turn begins.
Repeat steps 1–5 until you only have your 2 face-up cards left. The round ends now. Place pity cultists, pass the amulet card to the next player in clockwise order and prepare a new round.
The individual steps are explained in more detail below.
1. Open a Turn
Start the 1st turn if you have the amulet card. Starting from the 2nd turn, whoever won the last trick begins.
Play any 1 card. (Reminder: From your hand or one of your face-up cards. If you play a face-up card, immediately replace it, see above.)
This card sets the suit. The color of the played card is the suit color for this turn.
2. Playing Cards
In clockwise order, everyone else has to follow suit. This means that you have to, if possible, play a card of the same color. If you cannot do this, you may play another color. If the trick opens with a colorless card, you have to play a colorless card as well, if possible. In this case, the highest colorless card wins the trick.
Note: You may always play colorless cards, even if you have colors of the set suit.
These are your options:
- If you have cards of the suit color, play one of those or a colorless card.
- If you do not have cards of the suit color, play a colorless card or a card of any other color.
The played cards form the trick. After everyone has played 1 card, whoever played the card with the highest numeric value in the designated suit OR the highest colorless card wins the trick. This also applies if someone played a higher card of another color. Only cards of the designated suit and colorless cards can win tricks. Whoever won the trick takes it and places it face down in front of them.
Colorless cards: Colorless cards have the values "5+", "6+", "7+" and "666". The last one is the highest card in the game and always wins the trick. The PLUS on the other 3 cards indicates that their value is a bit higher than the number, but lower than the following number. Example: The "7+" wins against the values "1"–"7", but loses against an "8" of the designated suit color and the "666".
3. Placing Cultists
Whoever wins the trick places up to 2 cultists.
If you win the trick, you may place your cultists on area cards. Follow these rules when placing cultists:
- You can only place cultists on an area card if an artifact card with the same color and numeric value is part of the current trick.
- Per trick, you can place a cultist on exactly 1 area card per color. If there are multiple cards with the same color in the trick, choose 1 of these cards and place your cultist on the area card with the same numeric value.
- If the trick contains cards of different colors, you may place multiple cultists. You can place max. 2 cultists per trick. You can never place more than two, not even if there are more than 2 colors in the trick.
- You have to place at least 1 cultist, if possible. If you can place 2 cultists, you may skip placing the 2nd one.
Example: If only red cards were played, you can only place 1 cultist. If the trick contains the colors purple, blue and yellow, you can place max. 2 cultists on 2 area cards of different colors.
Important: Whenever you may place a cultist but do not have any cultists left in your supply, you have to move 1 cultist instead. Choose 1 of your cultists on any area card and move it to an area card whose artifact card is included in the trick.
Area cards: All artifact cards, except for the colorless cards, can be found on the area cards. 2 adjacent numeric values of the same color share 1 area card. There are no colorless area cards. You can never use colorless cards to place cultists. If only colorless cards are included in the trick, you cannot place cultists at all. If you place a cultist on an area card, always place it on the pentagram in the middle of the area card.
If you have placed a cultist on an area card in step 3 on which another cultist stands, you have to push the other cultist. It does not matter whether those are your own or enemy cultists. If you have placed 2 cultists, complete pushing all cultists on 1 area card before you begin pushing cultists on the other area card. You may decide where to place the cultists you push.
4. Pushing Cultists
Important: You may push the cultists yourself, unless a "1" is included in the trick. In that case, whoever played the "1" may push the cultists. If there are multiple cards with the value "1" included in the trick, whoever played the first "1" may push cultists.
Push all the other cultists which already stand on the area card, one after the other and in any order you want, onto horizontally or vertically adjacent area cards. You may place the cultists you push however you want onto the adjacent cards.
You cannot push cultists onto area cards that already contain cultists of the same color. If all adjacent area cards contain cultists of the same color, the pushed cultist is returned to the supply of its cult instead.
Pushing cultists example: You place 1 cultist on the red area card "2/1" (1). You can push the blue cultist only onto the adjacent yellow area card (2). You may push the red cultist onto 1 of the two adjacent area cards (3) and the black cultist has to be returned to its supply (4).
After you have pushed all the cultists that were previously on area cards / returned them back to their supply, the pushing step ends.
Note: You cannot push back! It is possible that multiple cultists stand on 1 area card after pushing them. This does not trigger a chain reaction. Pushed cultists share the space on area cards with other cultists.
5. Performing Sacrificial Rituals
Sacrificial rituals are ancient practices and require the correct setting to perform them.
After you have placed and pushed cultists, check whether 3 cultists of 1 color are in a continuous horizontal or vertical line. Diagonal lines do not count. Each cult that fulfills this condition performs a sacrificial ritual.
To perform a ritual, remove ALL your cultists from all area cards. Afterwards, place 1 of your cultists on your home altar - or the top of the box if you do not have an altar at home. You are now one step closer to your goal of performing 3 sacrificial rituals.
Note: Only remove your own cultists. All other cultists remain on the area cards. They still have to earn the right to be sacrificed.
Edge case: If you managed to simultaneously create 2 lines that fulfill the description above, you may perform 2 sacrificial rituals at once. This also applies if your double line consists of only 5 cultists. The cultist that connects both lines counts for both lines as well.
These are 2 examples for the edge case "2 lines at the same time".
If this was your 1st or 2nd ritual, your dark work is not yet done and the game continues as normal. Repeat the previous steps until everyone has played 6 cards each and only the face-up cards remain. Then continue with the step "End of a Round" (see below).
If this was your 3rd sacrificial ritual, you trigger the end of the game. The game ends immediately after this turn. If you are the only one to have performed 3 rituals, you have demonstrated your superiority and win the game. In the event of a tie, you share the victory.
End of a Round
A round ends as soon as you only have your 2 face-up cards left.
If someone did not win any trick this round, that person may place a pity cultist. Starting from the person with the amulet card and then in clockwise order, you place your pity cultists. Place 1 cultist on an area card of your choice. Push cultists and perform sacrificial rituals as usual.
If you have won at least 1 trick this round, you do not place pity cultists.
If none of you has performed 3 rituals, start a new round. Pass the amulet card to the person on your left. Prepare a new round, see "Overview of the Game" above.
Example: Playing a Round
Red, Blue and Black play a three-person game and thus use all artifact cards. They use the demon card "Baal" and arrange the area cards accordingly. Blue is dressed in the darkest colors and receives the amulet card. She shuffles the artifact cards and deals 8 cards to everyone.
Blue chooses her 2 cards with value "1" to pass to Black. She places them face down in front of her. As soon as the other two have chosen their cards, everyone passes the cards clockwise and reveals them. These cards remain face up.
Blue plays the purple "7". Black does not have any purple cards and may therefore play any other card. The only card with which Black could win the trick is the colorless "7+", because he has no cards of the suit played and the colorless "5+" is lower than the "7" played by Blue. Black plays the "7+", hoping to win the trick.
Red has to play purple. He has purple cards, in contrast to Black, and thus has to play one of his purple cards or his colorless "6+". Red plays the purple "8" and wins the trick, because it matched the suit color and has the highest value. If Red had played his "6+" or purple "1", Black would have won the trick instead, as the "7+" would have been the highest card.
Having won the trick, Red may place 1 of his cultists on an area card. The colorless card is ignored. Because there are only purple cards in the trick, Red can only place 1 cultist. The purple "7" and "8" are on the same area card, which means that Red has no other choice but to place his cultist on the area card with the purple "8/7". There are no other cultists on the area card which means the pushing step is skipped.
Red places the trick face down next to him and begins a new turn. He plays the colorless "6+". Blue has to play the "666", because it is her only colorless card and she has to follow suit. Black also has no choice but to play the "5+".
Blue wins the trick with her "666". Unfortunately for her, only colorless cards are included in the trick, which means that she cannot place any cultists.
Blue places the trick face down next to her and starts a new turn with her face-up purple "2". She has to immediately replace the card with another card from her hand. Black has neither purple nor colorless cards and therefore no way to win the trick. He plays his face-up red "1" and immediately replaces that card with another from his hand. Red plays his purple "1", because the set suit is purple and he has to follow it. He places another card face up in front of him. Blue wins the trick with the purple "2". As there are 2 different colors included in the trick, Blue may also place 2 cultists - 1 on the red and one on the purple area card.
Let's skip ahead a few turns. Blue wins 2 more tricks and Red wins 1 more. 6 turns later, everyone only has their 2 face-up cards in front of them, which ends the round. Because Black has not won a single trick, he may place 1 pity cultist.
He may place it on an area card of his choice and chooses the purple "8/7". One of Red's cultists is already on that card. Black now has to push the red cultist onto an adjacent card. He pushes it onto the blue "1/2". Black's cultist remains on the card he placed it onto. Afterwards, the pushing step ends. Red's and Blue's cultists share their area card. Alternatively, Black could have pushed the red cultist onto the purple "6/5". He could not have pushed the red cultist onto the 3rd adjacent area card, the yellow "1/2", as there is already a cultist of the same color on that card.
Blue passes the amulet card to Black and a new round begins.
During the 1st turn, Blue wins the trick that contains the blue "3". She places 1 cultist on the blue "3/4" area card and pushes one of her own cultists onto the blue "5/6". 3 blue cultists are in a continuous horizontal line now, which means that Blue has to perform a sacrificial ritual. She removes her cultists from all area cards, but leaves the cultists of the other players untouched. She places 1 of her blue cultists onto the box and continues play with 5 cultists, which makes forming lines a bit harder for her. As this was her 1st sacrificial ritual, Blue needs 2 more to win the game.
During the 3rd round, Red, Blue and Black all have performed 2 sacrificial rituals. Red wins a trick and places a cultist and has 3 cultists in a line once again. Before he can sacrifice them, cultists need to be pushed. One of Black's cultists is on the area card where Red placed his cultist. Because Black has played a "1", he may push cultists instead of Red. He pushes his own cultist to the left and forms a line as well. Red and Black both perform their 3rd ritual, summon the demon together and share the victory.
Modes / The Other Demons
We are still not tired of summoning Baal and at the start, you should also only honor him. After all, this game is named after him. If you are already well versed in the game, you may decide which demon to summon during the setup. There are 3 demon cards per difficulty level. The illustration helps you differentiate which difficulty level a demon belongs to - babies are level 1, teenagers level 2 and grown-up demons level 3.
Difficulty level 1 demon cards only change the layout of area cards. Arrange the area cards according to the illustration on the back of the chosen demon card. All other rules remain the same.
Difficulty level 2 demon cards have special rules, which change the normal rules of the game. You have to follow these special rules the whole game.
Difficulty level 3 demon cards have special rules AND change the layout of area cards as well. As such, they are the most difficult demons to summon.
If you have summoned all level 3 demons, you can also combine 1 demon card of difficulty level 1 with a card of difficulty level 2, or even come up with your own arrangements for the area cards.
Explanatory notes for "Dagon": Whenever you perform a sacrificial ritual, turn 1 area card of the formed line face down. If there are other cultists on the card, push them onto adjacent area cards. You cannot place cultists onto face-down area cards. If a trick includes an artifact card whose color and value match a face-down area card, you may flip that area card face up again instead of placing 1 of your cultists.