Realm of Reckoning - Kickstarter edition

The realm was once a magnificent afterlife, ruled by the Queen of All Souls and held together by the Five Pillars — relics that embodied the forces guiding the land. Civil war shattered the Queen, scattered the relics and left the realm in ruin. Five houses now rise from the wreckage, each certain it alone should decide what the afterlife becomes. Their claims are settled in the great reckonings, and the winners do not merely take power — they define what power means.

Game Mechanics

Nine monuments go up across three Ages, and each one claims a different scoring rule from those ringed around the board. Until they are built, the game has almost no way to score at all.

• Each round everyone secretly picks one card from hand, reveals at once, then passes the rest along.
• Its action deploys acolytes into regions, gathers coins, hires mercenaries or recruits a warden.
• Then tuck the card under one of the two pillars printed on the card — the half you leave showing decides which influence track you climb and which scoring icons you bank.
• Lead a pillar outright, from position 3 up, and its artifact is yours — until anyone catches or passes you.
• Reckoning cards ignite a blind auction. Whoever triggered it moves a claim token into the region, fixing which resources may be spent there.
• Highest bidder picks first, and one reward is a monument that writes a permanent scoring rule. Nobody may sit out, and the last pick is always a penalty.

Bids are paid in acolytes, coins, mercenaries and wardens — or in influence itself, which drags you back down the track and can cost you an artifact. Every monument scores again at the end of every Age, so one raised in the first Age pays out three times and one raised in the third pays out once. After the third Age is scored, the highest total takes the throne.

What Makes It Special

Most games hand you the victory conditions on page one. Here the players write them at the table, and keep rewriting them for three Ages. Area control, set collection, resource management and influence all matter — but which of them wins the game is decided by the nine monuments in front of you, so a strategy that dominated last night can be dead weight tonight. Designed by Max Anderson, Zac Dixon and Austin Harrison, and published by IV Studios, the team behind Moonrakers and Veiled Fate.

What's in the Box

• Boards — 1 game board, 5 player boards, 5 artifact boards, 5 player dials
• 154 wooden pieces — 9 monuments, 75 acolytes, 35 score trackers, 25 wardens, 10 claim tokens, plus 25 coins
• 174 cards — 72 action, 40 mercenary, 36 Reckoning reward, 15 Reckoning location, 5 final Reckoning, 5 guide, 1 first player
• 1 rulebook, plus a cloth bag and 6 tokens for the two-player variant

This product does not include the New Foundations expansion.