Primordial Secrets Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Components
• Primordial Cards
  • Effect
• Intent Cards
• Setup
• Gameplay
  • Plotting Phase
  • Visiting Phase
  • Round End
• Game End
  • Winning
• Actions Glossary
• Hidden Information & Public Knowledge
• Clarifications & Examples
  • Moving cards to the next round's Visiting Party
  • Moving a card to a party mid-visit
  • "When Recruited" effects
  • Duration of effects
  • Invitation Intent example
  • Changing a Primordial's values and the importance of order
• The Primordials

Overview

Each round begins with all players drawing six cards and secretly placing three of these Primordials to visit another player, and three to remain home, to host any potential visitors to their own realm. Players also secretly indicate who, if anyone, they would like to visit this round.

In the second half of the round, everyone's plots are revealed and the visits are resolved in turn. Much can happen during these banquets, trials and masquerades, but the object of the game boils down to two particular outcomes:

• Visitors with high insight might steal a Secret guarded by the hosting player.
• Hosts with high deceit will not only protect those Secrets, they might also trick a visitor into offering itself as a Sacrifice.

After visiting, no matter the outcome, players may use their surviving visitors' devotion to gain new cards from The Court to add to their decks, thus improving their future turns.

When a player has collected six Sacrifices OR six Secrets, they win the game, and the universes shall be theirs alone to mold.

Components

• 1 First Visitor Token
• 48 Starting Pawn Primordial Cards
• 32 Familiar Pawn Primordial Cards
• 90 Court Pawn Primordial Cards
• 25 Royal Primordial Cards
• 45 Starting Intent Cards
• 55 Secret Intent Cards
• 4 Foldout Player Mats
• 4 Player Aid Cards

Deckbuilding Game Golden Rule: Decks and Discard Piles. Primordial cards you acquire through any means go to your Discard. At the end of each round, all Primordial cards you played that round will also go to your Discard.

Whenever you need to draw, move, or reveal a card from your Deck but that Deck has no cards left, flip your Discard facedown, shuffle, and that becomes your Deck. You then continue drawing the remaining cards from this new Deck.

Card Game Golden Rule: Contradictions to the Rulebook. Many cards will have text that contradicts the rules in this rulebook. If card text ever contradicts the rules, follow the card text instead.

Primordial Cards

Each player's Deck consists entirely of Primordial cards. Starting with only basic white-framed Pawns, you will recruit the more powerful blue- and gray-framed Pawns and eventually (with luck) a few black-framed Royals. Once acquired, all Primordials act the same - drawn six at a time from your Deck at the start of the round, placed into your Visiting Party or Hosting Party, then discarded at the end of the round to eventually be shuffled back into your Deck and drawn again.

Card anatomy:

• Tribute cost: Amount of devotion required to recruit the card.
• Sacrifice cost: Amount of collected Sacrifices required to recruit the card.
• Name, Tribe, and Class: These descriptors have no inherent gameplay effects, but some card effects affect certain tribes or classes differently.
• Devotion | Recruiting power
• Insight | Visiting power
• Deceit | Hosting power

Effect

Some Primordials have effects that trigger at a certain time during a visit.

• Most effects state the exact timing of when they must be resolved - these effects start with a "before", "when", or "after" and specify visiting or hosting.
• Effects that begin with "while" are active during the entire visit and don't trigger at a particular time, but may alter another effect or rule as stated on the card.
• With a few Royal exceptions, a Primordial's effect only triggers during the resolution of a visit in which they are a visitor or host, or at the time they are recruited.
• You must trigger all of your cards' effects if possible.

Intent Cards

Intent cards indicate who, if anyone, you plan to visit during the Visiting Phase. Sometimes they have additional effects, such as modifying some of your stat totals during the round, or even forcing a player to visit you.

Once obtained, the dark-framed Secret Intent cards operate exactly the same as the basic white-framed Intent cards that you start with.

Intent card anatomy: Intent Name, Number of Players, Stat Modifier, Priority Number, Intent Direction.

On every Intent card, you will find one of these two symbols:

• A POINTING FINGER indicates that you plan to visit the player it is pointing at. During the Visiting Phase you will compare the Primordials in your Visiting Party with the Primordials in that player's Hosting Party before recruiting Primordials to add to your deck.
• A WINE GLASS indicates that you don't plan to visit anyone. The Primordials placed in your Visiting Party will not be used this round - you won't compare their stats to any Hosting Party, nor will you be able to use them to recruit Primordials.

Some Intent cards also have this symbol:

• A CROOKED FINGER indicates that you force the player in that direction to visit you this round instead of whoever they had planned to visit. These invitations don't force a player to visit twice in the same round, but rather override pointing fingers. When two or more players invite the same player or if a player who has played a wine glass Intent is invited, refer to the priority numbers within the corresponding direction indicators on the conflicting Intent cards. Whichever number is higher takes precedence.

STAT MODIFIERS apply to the player who played the Intent card, and are in effect for the whole round even if the directional portion of the Intent card is overridden. Whenever that player is required to total up a stat at any point, add or subtract the modifiers from that total.

Setup

• Give each player a player mat and a starting Deck consisting of 7 Messengers, 4 Musicians, and 1 Advisor. Each player should shuffle these personal Decks and place them facedown in the Deck zone on their player mat.
• Give each player a set of 5 Starting Intent cards and 6 Secret Intent cards with the number below the name that matches the number of players. Put the Starting Intents into each player's Intent Deck zone and the Secret Intents into their Secrets zone.
• Remove Royal Primordial cards at random from the Royal Deck so that 5 Royal Cards per player remain and return the rest to the box without looking at them.
• Remove Pawn Primordial cards with a Tribute Cost of 6 or greater from the Pawn Deck. These will be shuffled back into the Pawn Deck at the end of the 2nd round of the game.
• Shuffle both the Pawn Deck and the Royal Deck and deal 7 pawn cards and 7 royal cards faceup in The Court. Place 32 Familiars faceup in this area as well.
• Give the First Visitor Token to the most ancient being among you, and get started!

Gameplay

Each Round of the game consists of two Phases:

• The Plotting Phase where everyone secretly sets up their plans for that round.
• The Visiting Phase where all those plans play out in turn order.

Plotting Phase

Each player simultaneously does the following actions:

• Draw six Primordial cards from your Deck into your hand.
• Choose and place three cards from your hand facedown in front of you into your Hosting Party zone. These will be your hosts during the upcoming Visiting Phase.
• Choose and place three cards from your hand facedown in front of your row of hosts into your Visiting Party zone. These will be your visitors.
• Secretly choose any one Intent card from your Intent Deck and put that facedown next to your visitors into your Visiting Intent zone.

Once every player has made their decisions, move on to the Visiting Phase.

Visiting Phase

All visiting Intent cards, visitor cards and host cards are turned faceup, then visits are resolved in clockwise order, starting with the player with the First Visitor Token.

• During the resolution of a visit only the cards in the visiting player's Visiting Party and the hosting player's Hosting Party are referenced or affected, called visitors and hosts, respectively.
• The resolution of a visit (steps 1-3) and the recruiting that follows it (steps 4-6) is called a turn.

Resolve a visit in this order:

1. Refer to your Visiting Intent card to determine which other player, if any, you will be visiting. Remember to check for invitations on other players' Visiting Intent cards that will change your plans. Refer to the information about Intent cards (above) for more details about how this is determined.
2. Resolve "before" and "when" effects on visitors and hosts, in the following order:
   • Resolve any "before visiting" effects on visitors, in any order chosen by the visiting player.
   • Resolve any "before hosting" effects on hosts, in any order chosen by the hosting player.
   • Resolve any "when visiting" effects on visitors, in any order chosen by the visiting player.
   • Resolve any "when hosting" effects on hosts, in any order chosen by the hosting player.
3. Compare the total insight of the visitors to the total deceit of the hosts.
   • If the visitors' total insight is greater than the hosts' total deceit by 4 or more: the visiting player steals a Secret from the hosting player, looking through the cards in that player's Secrets zone and choosing any one Secret card among them to move to their own Intent Discard zone. That Secret is usable as an Intent card for the rest of the game, and counts toward the victory condition of stealing six Secrets. If you would steal a Secret from a player who has none left to steal, instead steal a Secret from your own Secrets zone, if possible.
   • If the visitors' total insight is less than the hosts' total deceit by any amount: the hosting player Sacrifices a visitor of the visiting player's choice. This Sacrificed card is immediately moved from the Visiting Party to the hosting player's Sacrifices zone where it stays, counting toward Sacrifice costs on Royals (see step 5) and toward the victory condition of collecting six Sacrifices.

Example (illustrated): neither a Secret will be stolen nor a visitor Sacrificed, since the visitors' total insight is greater than the hosts' total deceit, but not greater by 4 or more.

After determining the outcome of the visit (whether or not any Sacrifices are made or Secrets stolen), the visiting player will have the opportunity to recruit cards from The Court. Finish resolving the turn in this order:

4. Resolve "after" effects on visitors and hosts, in the following order:
   • Resolve any "after visiting" effects on visitors, in any order chosen by the visiting player.
   • Resolve any "after hosting" effects on hosts, in any order chosen by the hosting player.
5. The visiting player may pay tribute to recruit cards in The Court using the total devotion of their remaining visitors, moving any recruited cards to their Discard zone.
   • You may recruit any number of Pawns and/or Royals each turn as long as you can afford their total costs.
   • While Pawns only require tribute to be paid in order to recruit them, Royals have both a tribute cost and a Sacrifice cost. To recruit Royals you must have at least as many cards in your Sacrifices zone as the total Sacrifice costs of all Royals you are recruiting this turn.
   • No Sacrifices or devotion are permanently removed when used on recruiting, just "spent" for that turn.
   • Unspent devotion does not carry over to future rounds.
6. Repopulate The Court by putting cards from the top of the Pawn and Royal Decks into The Court until there are once again seven faceup Pawns and seven faceup Royals. If either deck runs out, repopulate The Court as much as possible.

That concludes the turn! Move on to the next player's visit, or if all visits have been resolved, move to the Round End.

Round End

Three things happen at the end of every round.

• Pass the First Visitor Token clockwise.
• Move all Primordial cards from your Visiting and Hosting Parties into your Discard zone, noting that some cards may have triggered an effect that carries over into the next round, signified by a symbol on the card.
• Move your Visiting Intent card into your Intent Discard zone, unable to be used again until Intents are reset.

Resetting Intents (End of Every Fourth Round). At the end of every fourth round, you will have one unused Intent remaining in your Intent Deck zone. This is when Intents are reset.

• Choose any five Intent cards from among all of your Starting Intent cards and any Secret Intent cards you have stolen, and move them into your Intent Deck zone, ready to be used over the next four rounds.
• All other Intent cards are placed into your Intent Discard zone.
• Once all players have chosen which Intents to reset, reveal your chosen cards to the other players before the next round's Plotting Phase begins.

Stacking the Pawn Deck (End of Second Round). During setup, the most expensive Pawns were removed from the Pawn Deck.

• At the end of the second round of the game, shuffle those expensive Pawns back into the Pawn Deck. This is also when players will be shuffling their Discard zones into their Deck for the first time.
• Alternatively, you can use the full Pawn Deck the whole game, replacing any Pawns entering The Court that cost 6 or more tribute with a new card from the Pawn Deck during the first two rounds of the game. Shuffle any removed Pawns back into the Pawn Deck at the end of the second round.

Game End

The game ends at the end of the round in which any one of the following three things happen:

• A player steals their sixth Secret.
• A player collects their sixth Sacrifice.
• A player recruits the last Royal.

Winning

• If the game ends via Secrets: The player who has collected the most Secrets wins. The highest amount of Sacrifices collected breaks ties.
• If the game ends via Sacrifice: The player who has collected the most Sacrifices wins. The highest amount of Secrets collected breaks ties.
• If the game ends via Royals: Each Secret, Sacrifice, and Royal collected are worth 1 point each, and the player with the most points wins.

Actions Glossary

• Add, Double, and Set - Change one or more of a Primordial's devotion, insight, or deceit values for the rest of the turn.
• Banish - Remove a card from the game.
• Captivate - Set a Primordial's insight and deceit values to zero for the rest of the turn.
• Move - Physically change the zone a card is in to a new zone, where it will act exactly as cards in that zone normally act.
• Recruit - Pay the tribute cost using your visitors' devotion to move a card from The Court to your Discard zone.
• Repopulate - Put cards from the top of the Pawn and Royal Decks into The Court until there are once again seven faceup pawns and seven faceup royals.
• Sacrifice - Move a Primordial card to your Sacrifice zone.
• Shuffle - Turn the cards in your Discard zone face down and combine them with the cards in your Deck zone, then randomize the card order of this new deck.
• Silence - Set a Primordial's devotion value to zero and prevent its effects from triggering for the rest of the turn.
• Steal a Secret - Choose an Intent card from a player's Secrets zone and move it to your Intent Discard zone.

Hidden Information & Public Knowledge

Always hidden to all players:

• Players' Decks
• Pawn Deck
• Royal Deck
• Royals removed during setup
• Secret zones

Always revealed to all players:

• The Court
• Sacrifice zones
• Players' Discard and Intent Discard zones are always faceup, but only the top card is revealed

Always hidden to other players:

• Players' Intent Decks
• Players' hands

Hidden during the Plotting Phase, Revealed during the Visiting Phase:

• Hosting and Visiting Parties
• Visiting Intent

You now have all the knowledge you need to play a full game. The following sections contain some examples and clarifications to further illustrate some of the more complex interactions.

Clarifications & Examples

Moving cards to the next round's Visiting Party

If you move a card to your next round's Visiting Party, move it from wherever it is to a place, faceup, near where you place your visitors.

• If this card was hosting, and you entertain another visiting player this round, you'll find yourself short-staffed, as this card is no longer wherever it previously was.
• Each round, you always draw six Primordial cards and set three into your Visiting Party and three into your Hosting Party, no matter how many time travellers are already waiting in this round's Visiting Party from last round.
• At the end of the next round, the additional visitor will go to your Discard zone with the rest of your visitors, regardless of if you visited anyone or not.

Moving a card to a party mid-visit

Cards like Herald can add a card to the party mid-visit. If the new card has an effect that would trigger at a point during the visit that isn't passed yet, you must apply that effect when that time comes as normal. Cards with effects that happen "before visiting", or "before hosting" are too late to have an effect when Herald announces their arrival.

"When Recruited" effects

Cards with "when recruited" effects will trigger that effect as soon as they are recruited by paying tribute. These effects will not trigger if you gain the card in any other way, such as directly moving it to your Hosting Party.

If a shuffle is part of the resolution of a "when recruited" effect, the recruited card is considered already in your Discard zone and will therefore get shuffled as well.

Duration of effects

Silence, captivate, and other stat-changing effects only last the duration of one turn, not the entire round, so if you are hosting two different visiting players in one round, a host that got captivated or a host that gained additional deceit during the first visit will have reverted back to their base stats by the time the second visit begins. However, effects that move, banish, or sacrifice cards will remove or add entire cards from the party and will certainly change what that second visit of the round looks like. Note that duration does not matter for Visiting Parties because visitors will never visit twice in the same round (yet!). Likewise, you will only have a chance to host more than once per round in three or four player games.

Invitation Intent example

In a 3-player game, all three players play Performance Intents in the same round (Player A, Player B, Player C).

• In this example, since Player B is the only player being invited by more than one player, the only priority numbers that need to be compared are those in the inward-pointing indicators on Player A and Player C's Intent cards. Since Player C's Intent card has a higher priority, Player B will visit them this round.
• No one is inviting Player C, so they will visit the player their pointed finger is pointing toward, Player B.
• One person is inviting Player A, so they will visit the person inviting them, which also happens to be Player B.

Changing a Primordial's values and the importance of order

There are three ways to change a Primordial card's devotion, insight, or deceit value: addition, multiplication, or replacement. This can result in different final values depending on the order in which they are applied.

Replacement example: If a player is savvy enough to combo a Dawn Prophet, a Puppeteer, and an Emissary in a visiting party, using the Puppeteer first to add 3 to the Emissary's devotion will result in a 7 insight, 7 devotion Emissary after the Dawn Prophet's replacement effect is applied.

That same player could choose to apply the effects in the other order if for some reason they want the Emissary to end up with 7 devotion but only 4 insight.

The Primordials

Abyssals are legion. An unstoppable force when they move as one. Combine the abyssals that bring friends to the party with one of the many that buff your team for unrivaled raw power. They tend to have high insight and deceit.

Infernals are the life of the party. They excel at disrupting other players' strategies. One well placed infernal could dismantle a rival's best laid plans singlehandedly. They tend to have high devotion and deceit.

Celestials are the intangible and indescribable. They see and touch all. Typically these beings have big effects, greatly strengthening another pawn, creating mortals to join your cause, or completely altering the rules of the game for the turn. They tend to have high devotion and insight.

A favorite hobby of many celestials is the creation of puppets and toys. These Mortal creations are usually made to serve specific purposes, and so tend to excel at one particular thing, but be useless when set to any task other than for what they have been designed.