| Designed by | Dejan Racković |
| Players | 1 |
| Length | 10-15 min |
| Extra Material | 5 six-sided dice, suit chips, way to keep track of damage |
A solitaire adventure game for the decktet.
The Kingdom is facing the biggest threat ever! Dark, ancient forces have returned and are unleashing their evil and terror causing destruction and mayhem. You, Jacynth's most famous adventurer, have an important task. Retrieve all 6 pieces of an ancient artifact and bring it to the secret chamber where a ritual will be performed to destroy the source of this evil. Its minions will try to stop you along the way.
Setup
Put suit tokens in a general supply within easy reach.
Separate the aces from the deck. Mix and line them up face down. Flip 3, collect three suit tokens for your personal supply. Discard the face up aces. Flip the remaining aces. These become available as you successfully resolve a crown-ranked card along your journey.
Shuffle the rest of the deck and put it face down. Flip 3 cards from the deck and line them up below the aces to represent your journey through perilous locations, morbid events and enticing encounters.
Game play
Goal:
Survive the whole deck with all 6 different suit tokens at the end.
Phases:
1) Roll & Assign Dice
2) Actions & Rewards
3) Consequences of Inaction
4) Exhaust & Replenish
Roll & Assign Dice
Roll 5d6. A 6 on a die is wild, becoming any number from 1-5. Group any two dice into couplets. Assign couplets of dice to cards. The sum of a couplet must match the rank of the assigned card. Crowns are considered rank 10.
Actions & Rewards
Types of cards matter in this game and their effects are different:
Personalities
Evil minions encountered along your path wish to harm you or inhibit your journey. Defeat them or suffer their foul machinations.
Thwart them by assigning a couplet. Discard their card and draw a resource matching one of their suits, representing a profit of means or education. This resource will prove valuable on your journey. If they held a crown rank, you may also discard a face up ace and collect that resource.
Locations
(cards that are both locations and events are considered locations only)
Locations have fallen under bad influences in these troubled times. Survey the land to assure the royal court the way is clear and safe again.
To complete part of your survey, assign a couplet of dice to a location card. Take one resource matching a suit of that location from the general supply and place on the card. Both couplets may be used.
You may spend resources from your supply to enhance your exploration, whether dice are assigned or not. Only one resource from your personal supply may be spent per turn in this manner. Once placed on a location, resources no longer not count as part of your supply and may not be removed.
As soon as a location card has the necessary resources, discard it and the allocated resources. You have successfully traversed that terrain.
For a location with a crown rank, discard a face up ace to collect that additional resource.
Events
Events represent an unfortunate occurrence along your path, forcing you to expend valuable resources.
Assign a couplet of dice to turn the tables on this event, take a resource matching one from the card and discard the card. If it was a crown event, discard an ace and collect a matching resource token.
Consequences of Inaction
Failing to act has repercussions.
Personalities
Personalities will follow along your journey, tripping you up, stealing opportunities or otherwise getting in your way. Unless you thwart them and escape, suffer one point of harm at the end of each turn.
Locations
Failing to complete a survey is exhausting and challenging to your morale and reputation. Each exhausted location causes you 1 point of harm in the form of fatigue. Fortunately, you have extra time to complete these challenges.
Events
Unresolved events cause you to discard one resource from your supply that matches the event card. If you have no matching resources, there is no effect.
Exhaust & Replenish
Locations do not get tiresome the same turn they come in to play. At the end of your turn, rotate any unresolved location to a horizontal position to show an exhausted state.
Discard any exhausted events. Then rotate any current events to a horizontal aspect to indicate their exhaustion. Fortunately, their influence tapers off.
Draw to refill any vacancies in your three card journey.
End Game
If you accumulate 10 or more points of harm at any time, you lose and the game ends.
If you survive through the entire deck, with no more cards obstructing your journey and at least one of each resource in your personal supply, you win!
The extended deck
I haven_t come up with any ideas for extended decktet yet.
Variants
Credits
Links
Comments
For keeping track of damage I usually take a card from the discard and put it face-down in front of me but anything will do (d10, pen & paper, beads, tokens etc…)
When adding resources from your supply to locations be carefull because you still need to have one of each at the end to win the game and some are harder to obtain then others (on person cards this is distribution of symbols: there are 2 of waves, 3 of leaves and wyrms and 4 of suns, moons and knots.)