Rising for the Throne
Rising for the Throne Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Game Setup
- Each player chooses a Clan to play with the rest of the game.
- Each clan starts the game with its initial support troop card (see Special Clan Actions).
- Shuffle the troop deck and the remaining characters (leaving aside event cards) and draw and flip face up the first 4 cards in the center of the table. After that, shuffle the event cards in the troop and characters deck, and place this deck face down beside the first 4 cards.
- The first player will be the one that rolls more sword symbols in a dice throw.
- The first player starts the game in the Risk Phase.
The Battleground
(Diagram: the table's layout in a 4-player game — the main deck and discard pile beside the Central Market of 4 face-up cards; the Strategic Map (points tracker); and each clan's army laid out in a First line of positions 1º, 2º, 3º and a Second line of positions 4º, 5º, 6º.)
Each symbol corresponds to a number and a position in a player's Army in order to solve random effects.
Card Types
Clans
These cards are each faction's emblems and represent the control over each clan. Each card shows a list of dice combinations that will provide resource points to acquire troop and/or character cards. With those cards you will put together an army to try to defeat the opposing clans.
Troops and Characters
With these cards you will create an army made up of barbarians, knights, ships, characters and other types of troops. Each card has a series of abilities that will help you during a game, either providing you with resources or destroying your opponent's cards, among others.
Card types: Ship, Barbarian, Infantry, Character, Cavalry.
Event Cards
Event cards are resolved as they are revealed, and they usually affect the active player's turn. Once the effect has been resolved, the card is placed in the discard pile and another card is revealed until there are no more event cards in the central market.
Parts of a Card
- Clan card: Clan's name, Banner, Dice combinations, Clan Action. The symbols X, Y and Z represent any face of a die. A triple X combination represents 3 same results of any symbol in the dice.
- Troop or character card: Power, Resource points cost, Illustration, Card type, Name, Abilities.
- Event card: Illustration, Effects.
The Dice
The six die faces: 1. Navigation, 2. Military Strategy, 3. Magic, 4. Spirituality, 5. Politics, 6. Wealth.
Icons and Abilities
- POWER: Victory Points.
- CARD'S COST / RESOURCES.
- EXHAUST: Rotate this card to activate an ability.
- REROLL: Allows to reroll a die with the symbol shown just rolled.
- SCRY: Draw the 3 top cards of the main deck, look at them and return them in any order.
- INFLUENCE: When you buy a Character with this symbol, you may also buy the top card of the deck for free (this card does not count to the limit of 2 cards per turn).
- DESTROY OBJECTIVE: Destroys a card with power X or less (X is the number on the card), or with the type shown on the skull.
- ESPIONAGE: Swap this card with another card with power 3 or less owned by an opponent.
- PROTECT: While you control a card with this symbol, the card behind it (in second line) is indestructible.
- VOLCANO: Each player rolls a die (using the positions shown on the bottom line of the Clan cards) and destroys the card in the position rolled in the die. If a player does not have a card in this position, no card is destroyed.
- STORM: The active player must destroy one of their cards of the "Ship" type.
- FLOOD: The active player must destroy one of their cards of the "Infantry" type.
Card Abilities
Each card has specific abilities that you can activate during your turn. Some of them are passive, and others require you to Exhaust (rotate) the card to use its ability.
Ability Types
- Support abilities: Require Exhausting the card to activate the ability. Can only be activated during one's turn and can't be activated again until the card is Unexhausted (rotated back).
- Resource abilities: While you control this card, you will have new dice combinations to collect resources.
- Alliance abilities: These abilities modify the cost to buy a card depending on the clan that wants to recruit it, or change its power depending on other cards that you own.
- Sabotage abilities: They are resolved after the card is acquired and placed in your army's area. Its ability can't be used again unless the card is bought again (this could happen if the card is placed in the discard pile and is then shuffled back to the main deck when it has been emptied). These abilities must be resolved if possible (that is, there is a valid target).
Special Clan Actions
Each clan has a series of dice combinations that allows them to activate their Clan Action. These combinations are underlined with a black stripe and marked with the "*" symbol in the Clan card. When a player has one of these combinations in their Risk Phase, they have two options: either score the resources shown in their clan card or perform immediately their Clan Action. If they choose the Clan Action, they will resolve it, get 25 resource points and continue as normal the rest of their Risk Phase.
- Valakiem action: Destroy a non-character card with power 3 or less owned by an opponent. +25 resource points.
- Ulferk action: Destroy any card owned by an opponent and one of yours of your choice. +25 resource points.
- Jörmund action: Swap a card you control with power 2 or more with a ship type card controlled by an opponent. +25 resource points.
- Malüs action: Swap a card you own with a card owned by an opponent with exactly +1 power than yours. +25 resource points.
- Gryphonn action: Destroy a character card with power 3 or less owned by an opponent. +25 resource points.
- Agnuth action: Destroy an Exhausted (rotated) card owned by an opponent. +25 resource points.
(The rulebook pictures each clan's support card: Valakiem, Jörmund, Gryphonn, Ulferk, Malüs and Agnuth.)
Game Objective
Once a player reaches a certain amount of Victory Points in the Recount Phase (depending on the number of players), the game ends and that player wins the game. Victory points are the sum of the power points of your cards, plus other modifiers that add or subtract points.
| Players | Victory points needed |
|---|---|
| 2 | 20 |
| 3* | 19 |
| 4* | 18 |
| 5* | 17 |
| 6 | 16 |
* Recommended player counts.
| Extra victory points that can be obtained during the game | Bonus |
|---|---|
| While you own 3 Infantry cards | +1 |
| While you own 3 Ship cards | +1 |
| While you own 3 Cavalry cards | +1 |
| While you own 5 Infantry cards | +3 |
| While you own 5 Ship cards | +3 |
| While you own 5 Cavalry cards | +3 |
Game Phases
Risk Phase
At the beginning of this Phase, the current player will Unexhaust all of their Exhausted cards.
Then, they will roll the 6 Risk Dice and will score depending on the combinations showing on their clan and recruited cards. Next, they put aside the dice that have been already used and decide whether to stop and keep the resources already collected or keep rolling the remaining dice to get more resources.
- It's not mandatory to score all the dice. It may happen that in a roll 2 dice may produce resources, but a player may only want to score one of them.
- If a player makes a roll and cannot match any combination available, they will lose half the resources (rounded up) that they have gained so far, always in multiples of 5.
- Each dice roll is independent from any previous rolls (that is, dice cannot be matched with any previously used dice). It's recommended to group and set aside the dice for every independent roll.
When a player decides to stop rolling or does not gain any resources, they proceed to the Recruitment Phase.
Example of a Risk Phase: At the start of the turn, Susan rolls the dice. The Agnuth clan starts the game with a Support ability that allows Susan to reroll a Spirituality result. Susan chooses to reroll this die and gets a Military Strategy face. Susan decides to turn the matching dice to get resource points (15, 5 and 10 resources), and then decides to stop with a grand total of 30 resource points in a single roll. If Susan had instead chosen to keep rolling, she could have obtained a roll that does not have any matches, so she would have lost half her resource points rounded up and would settle for just 15 points. Then, Susan would proceed to the Recruitment Phase.
Recruitment Phase
In this Phase players can spend the resource points obtained in the Risk Phase to buy cards and thus recruit troops or characters for their Armies.
- The cost of each card is shown inside the bag icon.
- Cards are bought one at a time, and once the card is placed in a player's Army, Sabotage Abilities are resolved (if any). Next, the Central Market is replenished with the next top card from the main deck.
- Your army must be organized in two rows with 3 cards each. When a player acquires a card, they must place it in one of these 2 rows in any of the 6 possible positions.
- Each player may only have up to 6 cards recruited at any time. If they already have 6 cards, once they acquire another and want to keep it they will have to discard one to make room for the new one. Otherwise, the card is discarded.
- Each player may only buy 2 cards per turn.
- Players may spend 25 resource points to perform a Sweep Action (limit once per turn). With this action, the 4 available cards are discarded and the Central Market is replenished with the next 4 cards from the main deck.
- If the main deck runs out of cards, the discard pile is shuffled to create a new main deck.
Once a player decides not to spend more resource points or is unable to do so, they proceed to the last phase of the turn, the Recount Phase.
- Unspent resource points are lost and cannot be kept for following turns.
- At the end of this phase, you can rearrange your army cards as you prefer.
Recount Phase
In this phase, players have to count and update the number of Victory Points they have. Sum up the Victory Points from the different players, as they may have suffered some changes, and update the Strategic Map.
There are some card combinations that may give extra points: take them into account in this Phase.
Once this Phase is over, the active player's turn is over, and the next player on the left takes their turn.
Solo Mode
To play the game solo you will need the Strategic Map, the Yugth Clan card and another Clan of your choice along with its starting card.
The game objective is getting 20 Victory Points before the Yugth Clan.
- The game starts with the player taking their turn as normal.
- Calculate the Player's Victory Points and check if they have crossed any event point in the Strategic Map. Those are located at the 6, 10, 15 and 18 points. Each time that the player reaches these points, they will roll a die and destroy the card indicated by the die's face if applicable.
- Event points only affect the player once in every event point, so they will suffer as many as 4 event points during the game.
- The card destroyed in an event point depends on the rolled die. The position affected by that roll depends on the rolled symbol and will be compared with the last line that appears in the Clan cards.
- The Yugth clan takes its turn. The Yugth clan will automatically buy the most expensive card available. In case of a tie, determine randomly which card is bought. If the Yugth clan's Army already has 6 cards, the card with the lowest amount of Victory Points is discarded (in case of a tie, choose randomly).
- If the Yugth clan already has 6 cards, the new card will only be bought if the lowest card in the Yugth clan's Army has a lower value than the new card. It can replace a card with the same value, but its recruitment cost must be lower.
- Sum up the Yugth clan's Victory Points and check if it has crossed any event points on the map. In that case, the Yugth clan takes an extra turn.
- The same way that affects the player, the Yugth clan may take as many as 4 extra turns per game.
Then, it is the player's turn again, so turns will be taken back and forth until a clan wins the game.