Aristoocrazy

Aristoocrazy Rulebook

Table of Contents

Goal of the Game and Scoring
Adjusting the Game to the Number of Players
Setup
Start of the Game
Game Round
- Using Character Potential
- Character Actions
Events
Overview of Special Action Cards

Goal of the Game and Scoring

The player with the most points after the set number of rounds is the winner.

During the game a player can gain victory points in two ways:

Through events at the end of each round. At the end of each round, event dice with symbols are rolled. See "Events" on page 6.
Through a large number of territories at the moment when territories are counted.

At the end of the last round the final events are resolved and territories are counted. After that, players may earn one bonus victory point for:

The largest number of characters on the game board.
The smallest number of "dementia traits" on characters.
The largest number of "education" tokens that a player has in his supply behind his screen.
The largest number of "bravery" tokens that a player has in his supply behind his screen.
The largest number of "rulership" tokens that a player has in his supply behind his screen.

Adjusting the Game to the Number of Players

For different numbers of players we recommend different game lengths, that is, different numbers of rounds (playing time approx. 90 min.):

For 2 players: 8 rounds
For 3 players: 7 rounds
For 4 players: 6 rounds

Count out from the event card deck as many cards as there are rounds to be played. Place these cards in a row beside the game board, face down with the purple back side up. These cards in the row represent the round counter. On the following cards in the row place 1 gold victory point token:

For 2 players: on the 4th, 6th and last, 8th card
For 3 players: on the 3rd, 5th and last, 7th card
For 4 players: on the 3rd, 5th and last, 6th card

Example: round counter for 3 players.

At the end of the rounds marked with a victory point token you will evaluate who has how many territories and distribute points accordingly. The player or players who have the most territories at the end of such a marked round gain 2 points, and the players in second place gain 1 point.

Mark the round currently being played on the round counter with one small red token. Whenever you finish a round, move the red token to the next card in the order. This way you will always know which round of the game you are playing and in which round the territories will be evaluated.

Setup

There are 9 traits that characters may have. These traits are represented by tokens. Pour the tokens out into piles by type beside the game board so that they are easily reachable for everyone. Each player chooses the colour of his house. Then he receives 10 characters of this colour (5 women and 5 men).

Place the game board in the middle of the play area. If you are playing with four or two players, each player has a starting territory assigned according to the colour of the coat of arms. If you are playing with three players, starting with the youngest player, each player in turn chooses a territory on the edge of the game board where he wants to start. A starting territory must always have two spaces for character cards. On your starting territory place one of your own characters, a man and a woman.

Each character in the game can have three traits. Now, for each of your first pair of characters, choose 3 traits from the following list, that is, 3 tokens. Place them on the character cards. Choose the traits all at once and in secret.

Combat – fighting with a bow, with a sword and with magic. These traits help you conquer and defend territories. They are also important for defence against the "Barbarians."
Scoring – bravery, rulership and education. These traits can help you towards victory points by a peaceful path.
Management ability – this trait provides you with food (if you do not have food when needed, your characters may lose lives).
Money – a universal trait. You may exchange money for any traits at a rate (2 money for 1 trait of your choice, or 3 money for 2), and you can also use money to buy action cards.
Dementia – do NOT choose this trait! This trait by itself means nothing. It only reduces the abilities of a character (because the character has dementia instead of some useful trait, which is completely useless).
Luck – you must NOT choose this trait; you can obtain it only during the game through action cards.

Each player takes a screen marked with the coat of arms of his colour and 5 small tokens also bearing the coat of arms of his house.

With three or two players it will also be necessary to close some territories. Characters cannot enter these territories and they are out of play. Mark closed territories with character cards of a colour that no player has chosen. Place them face down on the territories. With three players, starting with the youngest player, each player in turn chooses one territory and closes it. The chosen territory must not border the starting territory of any player. With two players, close 2 opposite corner territories of the houses that do not take part in the game, and always all 3 territories adjacent to these corners. In total that makes 8 territories in 2 corners of the board, see examples below.

Closing territories with three players.

Closing territories with two players.

Special action cards (they have parchment on a brown background) are shuffled and placed face down as a deck beside the game board.

Gold plastic tokens representing victory points are poured out into a pile beside the game board. Likewise small red plastic tokens, which represent the characters' lives, i.e. the "age" tokens. Now the game is set up and you can start!

Note: some trait tokens bear the number 2. These tokens have a value of two. Use them when there is a shortage of tokens in the game. Likewise, if there is a shortage you will find "victory point" tokens with a value of 3 and "age" tokens with a value of 3 among the cardboard tokens.

Tip for experienced players: each player draws 3 action cards at the start of the game. He keeps two and puts one on the discard pile. Action cards are secret only in the sense that they are a choice from 3 options.

Start of the Game

The player who, as the last of the players, kissed someone begins. Once this has been established, the kiss is no longer valid :)

The starting player receives the orange "starting player" card and places it in front of himself.

Game Round

Each round consists of these basic phases:

Using character potential: players may each take a token from the common supply for each of their characters on the game board.
Character actions: players take turns. Each player performs one action with one of his characters. Then the player to the left takes his turn. Each player gets three turns and performs three actions in turn.
Events: the starting player rolls the dice (with stickers) which determine the events for this round. The events are resolved.
Counting territories: this phase is played only in certain rounds (depending on the number of players). In the designated rounds, it is determined who has how many territories and victory points are distributed. The player with the most territories gains 2 points, the second player gains 1 point. (If players are tied for a placing, all of those players gain the points.)
Moving the starting player card. Move the token on the round counter. The next round begins again with the first phase.

Using Character Potential

Each character offers 3 tokens – you can use its 3 traits. For each of your characters you may take one trait token from the common supply and place it behind your screen. In this phase all players act simultaneously: "simply everyone grabs tokens at once." If players trust each other, they may take their tokens in secret. If they do not trust each other, they first place their tokens in front of their screens and check each other's tokens.

Character Actions

Players act in turn, starting with the starting player. On his turn a player always performs one chosen action with one of his characters. Then the next player performs his action. Players take turns in this way until each player has played 3 actions.

The following actions are available:

Moving a character from one of your territories to an adjacent territory of yours.
Swapping two characters in two of your adjacent territories.
Moving into a neutral territory to look for a partner and produce offspring.
Attacking an adjacent neutral territory.
Offering marriage to a character of an opponent that is in an adjacent territory and is of the opposite sex to the player's character.
Attempting an involuntary marriage with a character of an opponent that is in an adjacent territory.
Attacking an adjacent territory that belongs to an opponent.
Using one character – an extraordinary gain of one token from that character and marking its use with an age token.

Buying with money is a free action (the player may do it in addition to any action with a character). A player may give two money tokens to buy one token of his choice from the supply. For three money tokens he may buy two tokens of his choice.

Moving a Character from One of Your Territories to an Adjacent One of Yours

The player moves a character to a free space in his adjacent territory. If no character of his remains on its original territory, he marks ownership of that territory with a token bearing his sign.

Swapping Two Characters in Two of Your Adjacent Territories

The player exchanges the positions of two of his characters that are in two of his adjacent territories.

Moving Into a Neutral Territory to Seek a Partner and Produce Offspring

The player indicates a move with his character onto an adjacent neutral territory on which he seeks a partner. If there is no neutral character on the neutral territory, one must be created there: the player rolls three dice with traits. The roll determines which three traits the neutral character living on this territory will have. If the player does not like the roll, he may roll all three dice once more. The player must accept the second roll. According to the dice, the player takes 3 tokens from the common supply and places them on the neutral territory. These 3 tokens represent the 3 traits of the neutral character.

The character seeking a partner and the neutral character on the neutral territory will have a child. The player gets a new character on the game board, which carries some combination of the traits of the "parents" – see "How Children Are Born."

A neutral character lives on its neutral territory, i.e. the 3 tokens of this character remain on that territory until someone conquers it. A neutral character always has whatever sex the player currently needs. No additional neutral character may be added to a territory where a neutral character already lives.

How Children Are Born – New Characters

So that producing children makes sense, there must be a free space for a new character card in one of your territories!
Characters always represent three traits – tokens on the card. The player assigns numbers to the traits of both characters that are about to have a child. Numbers 1–3 go to the tokens on his own character and numbers 4–6 go to the partner's character (a neutral character or an opponent's character). He announces these numbers to the other players. (For example, from top to bottom the tokens on his card have numbers 1–3, and on the second character 4–6.)
Then he rolls 3 black dice. According to the values on the dice, he assigns each die to the token numbers as he announced them to the other players. The dice determine the traits the child will have. If the player disagrees with the result (he does not like the traits), he may repeat the roll once. The second roll must be accepted. A child cannot be renounced.

CAUTION! If the same trait comes up twice on the dice, the character does not receive two identical traits; instead, the player takes the trait "dementia" in place of one of them.
CAUTION! Each type of trait can be given to a child only once. If, for example, one trait comes up several times (the same value on the dice, or the same trait in both parents), that trait is not given to the child twice; instead, the child receives the trait "dementia" in place of one of them.
The player chooses a character from his character cards that he likes, a man or a woman. On this card he places the 3 trait tokens determined by the dice.
He places the new character card with its 3 trait tokens on a free space in any of his territories.

Attacking an Adjacent Neutral Territory

The player moves his character onto the adjacent neutral territory and takes the territory. If a neutral character (represented by 3 trait tokens) lived on the territory, that character dies and the 3 tokens are removed from the game board.

Offering Marriage to an Opponent's Character

The player indicates a move with one of his characters into an adjacent territory of an opponent and offers a "marriage" to the opponent's character in that territory. The player may offer a marriage only to a character of the opposite sex to his own character. The player has only one attempt during this action. If the opponent rejects the marriage, the player may still try to persuade him with a dowry (for example, a gift of an action card, or a token from the supply behind the player's screen). If the opponent definitively rejects it, the player has "wasted" his action.

If the opponent agrees to the marriage, both players produce a child, i.e. both players gain one new character. Now, according to the scheme "How Children Are Born," two sets of 3 trait tokens are created for the two new children. CAUTION! In this case of a marriage with an opponent, the players may NOT repeat the dice roll. The player who is on turn and initiated the marriage chooses first from the two resulting children (i.e. the two sets of 3 trait tokens). The opponent receives the child that is left over. (The opponent's advantage, however, is that he did not need to use an action to produce children.)

Attempting an Involuntary Marriage with an Opponent's Character

The player indicates a move with one of his characters into an adjacent territory of an opponent and declares that he is attacking a specific character and wants to "take" it by force. If the attack succeeds, he may produce a child with that character according to the scheme "How Children Are Born." CAUTION! In this case of an involuntary marriage, the child is born only to the player who initiated it. The condition for success of this action, however, is a won battle. The battle is described in the following paragraphs.

Attacking an Adjacent Opponent's Territory

The player indicates a move with one of his characters into an adjacent territory of an opponent and declares that he wants to conquer it. If there is no character of the opponent in that territory, the player has conquered the territory. If there is a character or characters on the territory, combat takes place.

Combat has these three steps:

Counting the bonus for combat traits on the cards: each combat token on the attacking character's card (bow, sword and magic) counts as +1 for the player. If the player defends a territory, he counts +1 for each combat token on all characters in that territory. CAUTION! In the case of an involuntary marriage, the defending player counts the combat tokens' bonus only from the character being attacked (not from all characters on the territory).
Players secretly prepare an amount of combat tokens from behind their screens in their hand (bow, sword and magic). When they are ready, both players show the contents of their palm. The tokens are counted and returned to the common supply. Each combat token invested in the fight counts +1 for the player.
The player adds together the bonus for the characters and the number of tokens invested in combat. To this he adds one roll of the die. The opponent does the same.

Illustration caption: "Bonus za postavy" (bonus for characters).

The players compare their results:

a. If the attacker wins:

In the case of a battle for a territory: the defeated player must place one red plastic age token on each character from the conquered territory (the characters lose a life). Then he must withdraw his characters from the conquered territory. CAUTION! He may withdraw them only into his own adjacent territories where there is room for them. If there is no room for them, the player removes them from the game board.
In the case of an involuntary marriage: the defeated player adds 1 age token to his character. He does not withdraw the character from the territory. The attacking player, as a reward, gains the option of producing a child with the defeated player's character.

b. If the defender wins:

In the case of a battle for a territory: the attacker returns to the territory from which the attack was launched. He places one red plastic age token on the attacking character's card (the character loses a life).
In the case of an involuntary marriage: the defeated attacking player adds 1 age token to his character. His character returns to the territory from which the attack was launched.

c. If there is a draw:

In the case of a battle for a territory: both the attacking and the defending characters each lose one life (the players place red plastic age tokens on the characters). The territory does not change hands.
In the case of an involuntary marriage: the attempt fails and no child is produced. Both characters lose one life.

Events

At the end of the round, the starting player rolls three symbol dice. The symbols on the dice determine which events occur:

Food – players must pay food tokens. For 1–4 characters, one food token; for 4–8 characters, two food tokens. For each food token that is missing, the player must place an "age" token on 3 of his chosen characters. At most one per character (even if he has fewer than three characters).
Bravery, Education, Rulership – an auction for a victory point. For example, if "bravery" comes up, players secretly prepare bravery tokens in their hand from behind their screens. At one moment the players show the contents of their palms. Whoever offers the most gets the victory point (more than one player may win it). All the tokens that the players used in the auction must be returned to the common supply.
Swords, Bows and Magic – an attack by Barbarians. Each player will defend himself against the Barbarians. A player defends himself if he gives up a combat token of the same kind as the one that came up on the die. If a player does not defend himself against the Barbarians, he must "harm" three of his chosen characters. He either places an age token on them, or changes one of their traits to dementia (the Barbarians drove them mad). Each character may suffer at most one penalty.
Money – players may buy action cards for money. An action card costs 1 money and a player may buy at most 3 action cards. The player hands in money and secretly takes cards from the action card deck and keeps them.
Dementia – the player who has the most dementia in total across all of his characters decides which of the two remaining event dice will NOT be played.

Overview of Special Action Cards

Action cards may be played only during the player's own turn, as an action with a character.

Castle – the player may place it on a free space for a card in any of his territories. That space is permanently occupied by the castle, and the player may not place a character on it. If an opponent attacks this territory, the player automatically gains +3 for defending it. If there is no character on the territory with the castle, the player does not place tokens in the battle; he only rolls the die and adds +3.
Victory Point – the player exchanges the card for one gold plastic victory point token.
Herbalist Granny (Babka kořenářka) – the player may exchange one dementia trait on any of his characters for any other trait. Then he hands in the card.
Fate (Sudička) – the player may exchange any one trait (even dementia) for the trait Luck. A character with this trait has 6 lives. During the phase of using character potential, the player may place two red age tokens on that character at once and take two tokens from the supply instead of one (he still chooses only from the traits that the character has as its abilities). This trait can be inherited further.
Genetics – within the production of children, the player may change the result of a roll. He may roll two of the dice again, or order his opponent to do so.
Commander – if the player wins a battle for a territory, he places 3 red age tokens on one defeated character instead of one.
Love Potion – during courtship the opponent must agree to the marriage and to producing offspring. Children are born to both players as usual.