The Council

(Originally posted on BoardGameGeek.)

The Council is a drafting game for 3 to 5 players that takes elements of Blood Rage’s pillage and A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition)’s wildlings bid (where the total bid is what matters, not an individual’s bid) and mixes them with Medieval Academy’s draft suits.

Your goal is to be ready to take over when the empire collapses. You do this by positioning yourself as the strongest in the area where the empire is weakest. Watch out for traitors, who gather strength as the empire falls.

Components

  • A decktet. (obv.)
  • A bunch of decktet suit chips or cubes.
  • Six track cards – one for each suit – from 0 to 6.
  • Six pawns per player, one for each track.
  • Six empire pawns, one for each track.
  • Traitor chips or cubes.

Setup

  • Place all player pawns on rank 0 of each track.
  • Place all empire pawns on rank 6 of each track.

Play

The Council is played in hands consisting of a draft phase followed by an events phase. At the end of each events phase, if the empire has fallen to below a player’s rank in any suit(s), the game ends and players score the collapse.

The Draft

  1. Deal six cards to each player.
  2. Draft the cards:
    • Choose one card and pass the rest, clockwise.
    • Discard the last card in a hand to the table, face-down.
    • Reveal chosen cards, and take a chip for each suit on each card.

    (Keep your cards face-up in front of you. Once all players have taken their five cards and associated chips, begin the events phase.)

The Events

Reveal the top card of the deck. This is the event. Starting with the dealer and going clockwise, offer a bid for the event:

  • To bid, select a number of chips from your supply that match one or more suits on the event card. You must match the suits exactly (no wildcards). (The number of chips and the suits you offer are public.)
  • Once you have offered your chips, you may also choose to reveal one or more of your drafted cards. Once all players have passed, simultaneously reveal cards and resolve:
    • An Ace adds unlimited chips of its suit to your bid.
    • A number breaks ties in its suit; lower numbers are better.
    • A Pawn adds one chip of each of its [valid] suits to your bid.
    • A Court gives you a traitor chip if the event fails.
    • A Crown grants you a rank in its suit.

(The player who reveals the low card, as in the previous phase, will start the bidding on the next event.)

If the total number of chips bid (matching the card’s suits) meets or beats the rank of the event card, the empire succeeds, otherwise it fails. (The rank of an Ace is 1, while the rank of Pawns, Courts, and Crowns is zero – impossible to fail.)

  • If it succeeds, the highest bidder in each matching suit gains a rank. (If tied and no number card was played to break the tie, nobody gains a rank.)
  • If it fails, the lowest bidder in each matching suit trades a rank of that suit for a traitor chip. The empire also loses a rank in each matching suit.

The Collapse

If any player has more ranks in a suit than the empire itself, the game ends. Otherwise, continue with another hand, as above.

If the game ends, score the collapse: Each player scores their traitor chips + the number of ranks they have in any suit where the empire has dropped below at least one player. If you have more ranks than the empire in a suit, double your ranks in that suit for scoring.

So, if I have five ranks in Moons, three in Waves, and two traitor chips, and the empire has four ranks in Moons and four in Waves, I score (at least) 12 points: 10 for Moons and 2 for traitor chips. If another player has five or more in Waves, I score 15 points: 3 more for my Waves ranks.

The player with the highest score wins. In the case of a tie, the tied player who revealed the lowest-ranked card in the last event wins.

Archive