Die Jagd nach dem Gral
Die Jagd nach dem Gral Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
1 Game Material
1 Rule Booklet, 1 Game Board, 1 Notepad with Influence Sheets
- 2 Assassins
- 2 Templars
- 2 Rosicrucians
- 2 Illuminates
- 1 Holy Grail
2 Game Preparation
Before playing the game for the first time, the playing pieces are cut out of the cardboard carefully and assembled as shown in the adjoining illustration.
The eight members of the secret societies are placed in their respective headquarters in the corners of the gameboard: The Assassins in the corner with the knife symbol, the Templars in the one with the red cross, the Rosicrucians start at the golden cross, and the Illuminates at the green triangle. The grail is placed in the middle of the gameboard.
Every player receives an influence sheet. Ideally, the host has pens for everyone at hand and screens behind which players can hide their influence sheets (screens and additional influence sheets may be downloaded from www.argentum-verlag.de). But the game works fine without screens, you just turn around your influence sheet if you don't use it, so that nobody can see what you wrote down.
You do not get your own playing pieces in this game, and you also do not play a particular secret society. Instead, you are free to use all figures on the board, and it is up to you to find out whether you really control the ones which you believe you do!
3 Assigning Influence Points
The influence sheet lists 100 influence points in units from one to ten points which you may spend during the game. In order to gain influence on a specific initiate, you cross out the chosen amount of points and note them in the box portraying the character you want to control. Do not show the other players what you are doing! For every unit crossed out at the left there has to be a corresponding subscription on one of the character's pictures and units may not be split up (i.e., if you cross out a three, you may not assign two influence points to one character and one to another). Furthermore, influence points cannot be taken back or transferred to other characters once they have been assigned!
4 Object of the Game
The player who controls the initiate who brings the grail to his headquarter wins the game. This does not necessarily have to be the player who actually moved the pawn with the grail to the respective headquarter – if someone else turns out to exert more influence on that character (as shown on his influence sheet), than this player wins! Therefore, it is essential to find out which player controls which initiate in order to succeed in this game.
5 Game for two and three Players
First, the rules for two or three players are explained. The rules for four and more players are very similar and the differences are explained in chapter six.
At the beginning of the game, players may distribute as many influence points on the various characters as they want. It is up to you whether you initially invest everything or only very little (or even nothing), and whether you distribute your influence over many characters or concentrate on one character.
The player with the most mysterious look on his face starts the game;, the others follow clockwise. During one's turn, a player may either move a pawn on the board or spend influence points.
5.1 Assigning Influence Points
Instead of moving a pawn, you may announce at the beginning of your turn to assign influence points. You may increase your influence on characters you already spent points on, or on characters which you haven't had on your list so far. You also may assign points to more than one character (but as mentioned in chapter three, you may not share one unit of points between two characters). Or you bluff and do nothing at all.
5.2 Moving Pawns
One pawn is moved to an adjacent field. You start off by choosing one of the initiate and announcing what the selected initiate will do (he will be called the active initiate for the rest of this chapter). It does not matter whether the field he shall move to is already occupied. If the grail is on the field the initiate comes from or moves to, he may take possession of it (this is indicated by placing the grail very close to the initiate). He may take the grail with him, he may drop it before or after the move, or he may keep it. The only thing he cannot do, however, is to take the grail away from another initiate.
You need not to have any influence on the initiate you want to move. If the other players have no objections, the move is executed. If someone opposes against that move, he has to reveal influence on the active initiate. If you still want the active initiate to perform the move, you need to reveal at least the same amount of influence as the opposing player did. If you do, the opposing player (or any other player) may insist on the denial and reveal more influence. This may continue until either your or the opposing player cannot increase, as all influence placed on the active initiate is revealed already, or until one of you does not want to reveal more influence (the more you reveal, the more deductible you become). Influence points are not lost if they are revealed, they are just disclosed to everybody then.
If you succeed, the move is performed. If not, you choose either a different move with the same pawn, or a completely different move with a different pawn. But you may not distribute additional influence points instead of a rejected move! Only if all possible moves (even the ones you do not want to do) are rejected by someone, you may assign new influence points instead.
Players can use their influence on the active initiate to reject a proposed move, but they may not use it to support the move someone else has proposed. Only the player who has announced the move may use his influence to make this move happen.
Also, influence points from different players cannot be added: Players A and B want to decline a move proposed by player C. If player A has five influence points on the active initiate and player B twelve, player C needs to reveal only twelve points on his part.
Players do not reveal their influence sheets before the end of the game. It may be a good idea to memorise (or write down) how much influence other players revealed on a particular initiate. If you are leery, you may control the influence sheets at the end of the game. If you are very leery, all players start with pencils in different colours and change pens whenever requested – you can be sure then that influence point were assigned latest by the time the player gave away the pen writing in that particular colour.
5.3 Blowing the Cover of an Initiate
When players announce their moves, they can declare that the active initiate will blow the cover of another initiate (even if they are from the same secret society). Both the active initiate and the about-to-be-decovered initiate have to be on the same field. As usual, other players may reject the move, but they have to reveal influence on the active initiate, not on the one who is about to be decovered! If the move is performed, the decovered initiate is removed from the game board immediately, and all players reveal how many influence points they spent on him. The grail will remain on the field if the decovered initiate possessed it.
Decovering an initiate costs ten influence points which the player who performed the move has to deduct from the influence points he assigned to the active initiate. That means that you have at least ten influence points assigned to an initiate at the moment you announce that he is going to blow the cover of another initiate, otherwise you must not do so! Of course, the influence points only have to be paid if the attempt was successful; you keep them in case the move is rejected.
Blowing the cover of an initiate terminates a move. This means that the active initiate cannot move to a neighbouring field after he blew the cover of another initiate. But he may take the grail if it has been dropped by the decovered initiate. He may also move to the field first and then blow the cover. In this case, both actions (movement and blowing the cover) have to be announced in advance.
Decovering another initiate is the only activity which costs influence points, but it might still be a good option. Because all the points assigned to the decovered initiate are lost (hopefully more than the ten points you invested). All players have to declare how many points they lost, so you may deduce the maximum influence on any other initiate they still may have. This is actually another reason not to reveal too much influence on an initiate: It might become very attractive for other players to blow up his cover ...
5.4 End of the Game
If an initiate carries the grail to his own headquarter, the game ends immediately. All players turn around their influence sheets. The player revealing the most influence points on the bearer of the grail controls him and wins the game. In case of a tie, the player who moved the initiate to the headquarter wins the game. Influence points not assigned so far do not count.
It is possible to move the initiate bearing the grail to a different headquarter, but this will not end the game. Even if he drops it there, it has to be taken up by a member of the secret society whose headquarter it is first in order to end the game.
6 Game for four and more Players
The game for four and more players differs in two ways: If a player announces to assign influence points, he may spend as many as he wants, but only to one initiate per turn. If he wants to increase his influence on a second initiate as well, he has to postpone this to his next turn. It is still possible, however, to distribute influence points to as many initiates as you want during the opening of the game.
Second, you may either move an initiate to an adjacent field, or you may blow up someone's cover, but not both in the same turn. This actually means that initiates can only blow the cover of other initiate residing on the same field as the active initiate. Players have to cooperate now: The first player brings the active initiate into position, and the second player blows the cover during his turn (the ten point fee has to be paid by the second player alone – no sharing of influence points between players)!
7 Variant: "The Original"
A very nice variant for four players is playing the rules as explained in chapter six, but players do get assigned headquarters. Players may still move all initiates on the board, but to win the game, the grail has to be brought to the own headquarter. That means that the player with the Templars' headquarter wins the game when any initiate (not necessarily a Templar!) brings the grail to the Templars' headquarter, no matter how many influence points the player assigned to him.
8 Example
Gregor announces to move Alberto Castellano, the tall Templar, from Tortosa to Akkon, but Manuel opposes, revealing one influence point on Alberto Castellano. Gregor wants to stay with this move and reveals one influence point as well. Manuel increases to two influence points, and so does Gregor. Manuel: "five!" - Gregor: "me too!" - Manuel: "ten!" - Gregor: "me, too!" - Manuel: "twelve!" Gregor thinks about it. He actually has more influence on Alberto Castellano, but he does not want to reveal too much of it. So he gives in and moves Adam zu Weisenheym from Malta to Prague, as nobody opposes against that.
Now it's Ingas turn, and she announces to move Mansur Al-Jallah from Masyaf to Akkon and blow Alberto Castellanos cover. Manuel has assigned five points to Mansur Al-Jallah, so he could oppose against that move. But it would be pointless, as Inga has at least ten points on Mansur Al-Jallah. She wouldn't be able to blow Alberto Castellano's cover otherwise, and she wouldn't loose anything using these ten influence points against Manuel in the first place. So Mansur Al-Jallah moves from Masyaf to Akkon, Alberto Castellano is removed from the game and Inga subtracts ten influence points assigned to Mansur Al-Jallah from her influence sheet. Gregor reveals that he had assigned 15 influence points to Alberto Castellano, Manuel had the twelve points he revealed already, and Inga had none. The outcome is not too bad for Inga – the others lost more influence points than she did, and she can assume that neither Gregor nor Manuel have much influence assigned to Mansur Al-Jallah, as they would have tried to avoid his dismission otherwise.
The example would be different when playing with four. In this case, Christian (the fourth player) and Inga have to agree that either of them moves Mansur Al-Jallah, while the other would blow Alberto Castellano's cover. If Christian moved Mansur Al-Jallah, Manuel could have used his five influence points, as Christian might have moved him with no influence assigned at all.