5 Wards Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup
• Before You Start
• How to Play
  • Phase 1 - Rally and Restock
    • A. Rally
    • B. Restock
  • Phase 2 - Brawl
  • Phase 3 - Deploy and Scheme
    • Recruiting Tiles
    • The Inspector
    • Ward Boss
    • Schemes
  • Phase 4 - Reset
• Final Round and Scoring
• Quick Reference
  • Play a Round
  • Scoring

Components

• Game Board
• 5 Gang Boards
• 200 Thug Tokens (40 of each color, w/bags)
• 10 Copper Tokens (w/bag)
• 36 Landmark Cards (includes 6 Brawls)
• 35 Tactics Cards
• 9 Recruiting Tiles
• 9 Scoring Tiles
• Starting Player Marker
• 12 Dice

Setup

1. Place the Game board in the center of the play area.
2. Choose 5 Scoring tiles at random and place 1 in each of the 5 Wards on the map. Leave the rest to the box. In a 2-player game, use the side with 2 dots in the corner (if present).
3. All players choose a Gang board and bag of matching colored Thug tokens and place them in front of you. Place 1 Thug token on each of your Gang board's 3 white spaces.
4. Create an 18-card Landmark deck by combining 13 random Landmark cards (beige) and 5 random Brawls (red), setting the leftovers aside. Shuffle your deck and place it face down on the board to create a draw pile. Then draw the top 5 cards and place them face up in a row across the top of the board. Shuffle the leftover Landmark & Brawl cards together and stack them face down nearby (they may be needed later).
5. Shuffle the Tactics cards and deal 4 face down to each player. Place the rest of the deck face down on the board to create a draw pile. You may look at your own cards but keep them hidden from other players.
6. Shuffle the Recruiting tiles and stack them face down next to the board, along with the bag of black Copper tokens. Draw the top 5 Recruiting tiles and place 1 face up (Inspector's helmet down) on each of the 5 square spaces below the Landmark cards. To determine the Inspector's starting location, draw 1 Tactics card face up to the discard pile. Then flip the Recruiting tile of the ward number shown in the top right corner, so that it shows the Inspector's helmet.
7. Take a number of dice from the box equal to 2x the number of players plus 2: 2p = 6 dice | 3p = 8 dice | 4p = 10 dice | 5p = 12 dice

Before You Start

In 5 Wards, your goal is to deploy your Thugs to the map to gain control of the city. Each of the 5 Wards has a different Victory Point scoring condition, drawn randomly at setup. Each Ward scores only once at the end of the game, so every point you can muster is precious! The final round is triggered when the Landmark deck runs out, after which the Gang with the most points wins.

Before learning how to play, let's review some of the components and concepts. If you've followed the Setup steps, you should have your Gang board in front of you.

Your board shows your Gang's name, home Ward, and 3 spaces for Thug tokens. Whenever you put tokens on your Gang board, they act as resources you can spend during the game to activate Recruiting tiles (see page 8) and execute Schemes (see page 9). The 3 kinds of resources are:

• Power (crown)
• Capital ($)
• Mayhem (bomb)

At the top of the main Game board is a row of 5 Landmark cards. These are where you'll rally your Thugs in order to deploy them to the map. Landmarks are located in the Ward named directly below the card. In this example, the first card (Cuttey Cross) is in Westchester (Ward #1).

Landmark cards have a number of circle spaces for placing Thug tokens, and white arrows across the bottom that point to the Wards where you can deploy them. All cards have an arrow pointing straight down, so you can always deploy to the Landmark's Ward location. Diagonal arrows give you the option to deploy Thugs to the Wards to the left or right of the card. In the example (Wards in order: 1 Westchester, 2 Northington, 3 Centerville, 4 Southtown, 5 Eastwick), Thugs placed on The Tenements card could be deployed to Centerville (down) or to Northington (left).

Note that if Westchester's card has an arrow pointing left, it "wraps around" over to Eastwick, and vice-versa. Those 2 wards are considered to be adjacent in the row. So in the example above, Thugs rallied to Cuttey Cross could be deployed to Westchester (down), Northington (right), or Eastwick (left, wrapping around).

How to Play

5 Wards is played over a number of rounds. Each round has 4 Phases and they move pretty fast. There's a Quick Reference on the back of this rulebook, but let's go into detail on each Phase here.

Phase 1 - Rally and Restock

To begin every round, the starting player rolls all the dice to create the selection pool. Then all players take 2 turns selecting dice, "snake draft" style (i.e., 1 die each in clockwise order beginning with the starting player, and then 1 die each in counter-clockwise order beginning with the last player).

On each turn you may use 1 Tactics card from your hand. These have abilities at the bottom that allow you to modify your dice selection or how you can place Thugs.

After selecting a die from the pool on your turn, place it in front of you and immediately take 1 of these actions: A RALLY or B RESTOCK:

A. Rally

Take 1 Thug from your bag and place it on any Landmark card space that matches your die.

Every Landmark card has a bonus space marked FIRST, LAST or ALL. If placing your Thug on the card satisfies that condition, you get to place an extra Thug from your bag onto the bonus space for free.

• FIRST means yours was the first Thug placed on the card.
• LAST means your Thug took the last unclaimed die icon space on the card.
• ALL (shown as ALL with a black dot) means all the die icon spaces on the card are filled with your Thugs.

Note that Thugs on bonus spaces can't be moved with the Vagrant Tactics card.

Notice that the ALL bonus space has a slash with a black dot. Often, 2 or more Gangs will rally Thugs to the same Landmark, and they'll squabble over that bonus space. After the Landmark card is filled, if 2 or more Gangs are present, place a black Copper token on its bonus space at the end of the Phase to maintain order. In Phase 3, that Copper will be deployed to the map following the white arrow pointing straight down to that Landmark's Ward. During final scoring, each Copper will arrest (or remove) 1 Thug from every Gang there that's not affiliated with the Ward Boss (see page 9).

B. Restock

CHOOSE 1: Draw 2 Tactics cards, add 2 resources to your Gang board, or draw 1 Tactics card and add 1 resource.

When you Restock Tactics cards note that your maximum hand size is 4, so if you draw more you must immediately discard down. Also note that you can't immediately play a card you just drew.

When you Restock resources, grab tokens from your bag to place onto any of the 3 spaces on your Gang board. You may assign them to 2 different resources or 2 of the same, and you can stack them to have as many of each as you like.

When taking the Restock action, you must always declare your option verbally before taking it. In other words, you can't draw 1 Tactics card, look at it, and then decide to take another card or a resource.

After all players have taken their 2 turns, keep your dice and proceed thusly:

• If there are red Brawl cards in the Landmarks row, proceed to Phase 2.
• If there are no Brawl cards but at least 1 Landmark card is filled, proceed to Phase 3.
• If there are no Brawl cards and no filled Landmark cards, pass the dice and starting player marker clockwise and repeat Phase 1.

Phase 2 - Brawl

If there are any red Brawl cards in the Landmarks row, they are resolved one at a time in order from left to right. First check the Brawl icon at the top left of the card. To win a Brawl, you must play the most of that icon from 2 sources:

• A. The dice you selected from the pool.
• B. Any number of Tactics cards from your hand with the matching Brawl icon in the top left corner.

Next, beginning with the starting player, play any number of Tactics cards face down in front of you. Note that you can play non-matching cards to bluff your rivals, or none at all if you think your dice are sufficient or you don't wish to participate.

Finally, all participants simultaneously reveal the cards they played and add those icons to any qualifying dice they have. If one player has the most of the Brawl icon on their dice and cards, they win the Brawl!

Example: Brawl icon = Hat; 1 Hat die + 2 Hat Tactics cards = 3 Brawl icons.

When you win a Brawl, you get to rally your Thugs to both spaces on the Brawl card, which can later be deployed anywhere (see page 8). You also collect the Brawl card after it's deployed, which is worth 1 point at the end of the game.

In case of a tie, tied Gangs rally 1 Thug each to the card and the Brawl card is discarded after deployment, not collected. If there are more than 2 tied players, turn order determines which tied players get to rally a Thug.

All Tactics cards played in the Brawl are discarded. After all Brawls are resolved, proceed to Phase 3.

The Champion is a Brawl-specific Tactics card with a "wild" Brawl icon.

Phase 3 - Deploy and Scheme

If a Landmark and/or Brawl card is filled in Phases 1 or 2, Phase 3 is when you get to move, or "deploy", those Thugs to the map. Each time you deploy at least 1 Thug from a card, you may execute a Scheme (see page 9).

Deploy from filled Landmarks/Brawls one card at a time from left to right, starting with the Ward where the Inspector is currently located (see below) and "wrapping around" from Eastwick to Westchester, if necessary. If a filled card has Thugs from multiple players, deploy them in turn order beginning with the starting player. On your turn, deploy all your Thugs to any Wards the card's white arrows point to. If you have more than 1 Thug on a card you may deploy them to different Wards.

In this example, Thugs will be deployed from 3 Landmarks, starting in Southtown.

Thugs on Brawl cards can be deployed to ANY Wards. If both Thugs are yours, collect the card after deploying for 1 point at the end of the game.

Coppers are always deployed to the Ward named directly beneath the Landmark card (i.e., follow the arrow pointing straight down).

Each round, create a new stack of your newly deployed Thugs somewhere inside a Ward's borders. If you deploy Thugs to a Ward from multiple Landmarks this round, add them all to this same stack. Thugs you deploy in the current round can be used to overtake the Ward Boss (see page 9).

Recruiting Tiles

When deploying to a Ward, you may also take advantage of its Recruiting tile. This provides an opportunity to increase your presence by discarding the specified resource from your Gang board to add additional Thugs to your deployment.

In this example, you may pay 1 Mayhem to turn 1 Thug into 2 when deploying from a single Landmark card. If you're deploying 2 Thugs there, you may pay a second Mayhem to trigger the Recruiting tile again, turning 2 into 4.

2 rules about Recruiting tiles:

1. You must pay the required resource each time you trigger a tile.
2. Thugs must deploy from the same Landmark. For example, in order to trigger a "2 to 3" tile, you can't deploy 1 of those Thugs from one Landmark and the other from a different Landmark.

The Inspector

1 of the 5 Recruiting tiles is always flipped to show the location of the Inspector. When the Inspector is in a Ward, all Gangs are blocked from deploying Thugs there (even from Brawls). The Inspector moves at the end of each round by drawing a Tactics card and referring to the Ward number at the top right.

In this example, the Thugs on the Lodging House and Shipping Yards are blocked from deploying to Southtown and must be deployed to Eastwick.

Ward Boss

Each Ward has a Ward Boss space. To occupy this space, you must deploy the most Thugs to that Ward in a single round. Each time you deploy there, compare your current round's stack of Thugs to the Ward Boss' stack (even if it's your own). If your stack is taller, move it onto the space to take over! Only your current round stack matters (not stacks from previous rounds), so feel free to combine old stacks if you wish. Be sure to keep the displaced Ward Boss' tokens inside the Ward for game end scoring.

Example A: Forty Fiends' (yellow) current round stack is the same but NOT taller than the Ward Boss stack, so Gorilla Gang (blue) holds onto it.

Example B: Forty Fiends' (yellow) current round stack IS taller, so they take over the space and the Gorilla Gang (blue) stack is displaced from the Ward.

Tokens on the Ward Boss space also count towards final scoring, but holding the position when the game ends provides 2 additional benefits:

1. Each Ward Boss space you hold earns 1 point.
2. As Ward Boss, your gang is immune from Coppers arresting (removing) your Thugs from that Ward.

Schemes

Each time you deploy at least 1 Thug from a Landmark or Brawl card to the map, you get a chance to execute 1 of the 3 Schemes shown across the middle of the board. To do so, simply discard 1 of the Scheme's required resource to do what it says. Schemes allow you to manipulate Thugs and Coppers already on the map, and even break the Inspector rule.

• BOLSTER - PAY Power: to move 1 of your Thugs from one Ward to another.
• BRIBE - PAY Capital: to (a) deploy your Thugs to the Inspector's Ward, or (b) move a Copper from one Ward to another.
• BLAST - PAY Mayhem: to remove 1 of every rival's Thugs from any Ward you also occupy.

A few rule clarifications about each Scheme:

BOLSTER - When you use this Scheme to move a Thug to a different Ward, you may add it to your current single round stack for Ward Boss purposes.

BRIBE - When you use this Scheme to deploy Thugs to the Inspector's Ward, your gang may use the other side of his Recruiting tile. Also, your Bribe works for Thugs you deploy to his Ward from any Landmarks/Brawls during the current round (you do not need to Bribe him again to deploy there from other cards).

BLAST - When you use this Scheme, rival Thug tokens can be removed from the Ward Boss space if you wish.

After all deploying and scheming is done, proceed to Phase 4.

Phase 4 - Reset

Phase 4 is a quick reset to prepare for another round. Follow these steps:

1. Replace all deployed Landmark and Brawl cards, along with their Recruiting tiles (if the Recruiting tile stack runs out, shuffle them and place them face down to create a new stack). If the Landmark deck is depleted, proceed to the Final Round and Scoring (see page 10).
2. Draw and discard a Tactics card and refer to the number in the top right to move the Inspector, flipping the Recruiting token in that Ward to show his helmet. If the Inspector is still visible in another Ward, flip that tile face up so that he is only in 1 location.
3. Pass the starting player marker and dice clockwise.

Final Round and Scoring

When the Landmark deck runs out, the final round is triggered. First, refill any empty spaces in the Landmarks row from the leftover deck set aside during setup. Then proceed with Phases 1, 2 (if applicable) and 3. In this final round, all Thugs on all Landmark cards are deployed, even from cards that aren't filled. Coppers, however, are not added to bonus spaces unless ALL the other spaces are filled. Don't forget to execute your final Schemes!

When the final round is complete, proceed to Scoring to see which Gang is victorious. Place a token from your bag at the bottom of the scoring track. Then add up your points from these 5 sources:

1. Score points for each Ward based on their Scoring tiles. Before counting your Thugs, remove 1 for each Copper there, unless you're the Ward Boss.

   If there is a tie in a Ward where "MOST" comes into play, the points for the tied players are combined and divided equally between them (round up). For example, if MOST gets 4 points and 2nd MOST gets 2 points, two tied players would get 3 points each (3rd MOST is unaffected).

2. Score 2 points if you have the most Thugs in your Gang's home Ward, shown on your Gang board (no ties).

3. Score 1 point for each Ward Boss space you occupy.

4. Score 1 point for each Brawl card you collected.

5. Score points for your total leftover resources + Tactics cards, as shown at the bottom of your Gang board.

The player with the most points is the winner. The player with the least is the loser. Everyone else just played. In case of a tie, the winner is the Gang with the most total Thugs on the map. If there's still a tie, play again to settle it.

Note that in rare cases where order of operations or tie-breaking is undefined in the rules, resolve them with turn order.

Quick Reference

Play a Round

Phase 1 - Rally and Restock

1. Roll all dice. Players take 2 turns selecting a die (snake style). May use 1 Tactics card per turn.
2. After each selection, spend your die to (a) place a Thug on a Landmark, or (b) draw 2 Tactics cards, 2 resources, or 1 of each.
   • If there are Brawls, go to Phase 2.
   • If there are filled Landmarks, go to Phase 3.
   • If neither, repeat Phase 1.

Phase 2 - Brawl

1. In turn order, total your Brawl icons from the dice you selected and any Tactics cards (optional, played face down and revealed simultaneously).
2. The player with the most Brawl icons rallies 2 Thugs to the Brawl card and also collects it. If there's a tie, tied players each rally 1 and the Brawl card is discarded.

Phase 3 - Deploy and Scheme

1. Move Thugs from filled Landmarks and Brawls to the map, going from left to right starting at the Inspector's Ward. You may pay resources to activate Recruiting tiles.
2. For each Landmark/Brawl you deploy from, you may pay a resource to execute 1 Scheme.

Phase 4 - Reset

1. Replace deployed Landmarks and their Recruiting tiles. If the Landmark deck is depleted, the Final Round is triggered.
2. Draw a Tactics card to move the Inspector.
3. Pass the starting player marker and dice clockwise.

Scoring

• Points for each Ward based on their Scoring tiles.
• Most Thugs in your Gang's home Ward (2).
• Each Ward Boss space you occupy (1).
• Each Brawl card you collected (1).
• Leftover resources + Tactics cards.