Dioses!
Dioses! Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Anatomy of the Cards
In Dioses! you will find three types of cards: Myth Cards, Objective Cards and Help Cards.
All Myth Cards have the same structure:
- A. This icon indicates the type of card (God, Place or Object).
- B. This icon indicates which mythology the card is from (Greek, Egyptian or Norse).
- C. Conditions that must be met for the card to score. (See page 6.)
- D. Points the card gives if the conditions are met. (See page 6.)
During the game you will exchange the Myth Cards in your play area, trying to fulfil the conditions of each one of them to obtain the highest score.
Objective Cards add new ways of scoring with your Myth Cards. You can choose whether or not to play with them.
Help Cards give you a summary of the turn and explain the symbols that appear on the cards. Deal one to each player so they can refer to it whenever they need to, especially in the first games.
Setup
For now, set the Objective Cards aside; you will not use them in your first game. If you want to see how to play with them, go to page 7.
Shuffle the Myth Card deck well and deal 12 cards to each player. Without looking at them, each player must place all their cards face down in front of themselves, in 3 rows of 4 cards each.
Then, leave the deck in the centre of the table within reach of all players and then reveal the first card of the deck and place it face up beside the deck. This will form the discard pile.
Choose the starting player at random and, lastly, each player turns face up 2 of the 12 cards in their play area, of their choice, and...
You are ready to play!
NOTE: Don't cheat, don't look at the rest of the cards.
(Diagram: Play Area - deck and discard pile in the centre; each player's Player Area of 12 cards in 3 rows of 4, two of them face up.)
How Does a Game Turn Work?
On your turn you will perform a single action from among the following:
Draw from the Discard
When doing this action, you may take the card on top of the discard pile and exchange it for one of those in your play area. You may exchange the drawn card for one already revealed or for a face-down one, so you may end up being a dummy and lose a good card by playing it. Bad luck.
Draw from the Deck
When doing this action, you may draw and look at the top card of the myth deck. Then, you can do two things with it:
- Play the card: Just like when you draw from the discard, exchange the card with one of those in your play area, whether face up or face down, and discard the card you have replaced.
- Discard the card: If you do not want to add the drawn card to your play area, you may discard it directly. When doing this you MUST swap the positions of 2 cards in your play area and, immediately afterwards, turn face up one card of your play area.
The card that is turned face up can be any one of your play area; it does not have to be one of the exchanged ones.
Translator's note: the manual is reported to be misprinted here. Per BGG thread 3193899 (a community report, not part of the rulebook), the manual and the game's Help Cards differ on this action, and the Help Card is the correct version. The text above is transcribed as printed in the manual.
Play the Card (example)
Pascu draws "Barco" (Ship) from the deck and places it beside "Hera". In doing so, he uncovers "Ojo Solar" (Sun Eye), which has to be discarded face up onto the discard pile.
Discard the Card (example)
On the next turn, Pascu draws "Odín" from the deck and does not want it, so he discards it. In doing so, he exchanges "Barco" with his third card. Pascu can now turn over any card in his play area and decides to reveal the card he has moved, which in this case is "Anubis".
NOTE: When you have finished your action, it is the next player's turn, clockwise.
When Does the Game End?
Players take turns clockwise until a player has all the cards in their play area face up at the end of their turn.
Immediately afterwards, the rest of the players play one additional turn and the game moves on to the final scoring.
Scoring
Once the game has ended, players who still have face-down cards turn those cards over until their entire play area is uncovered. Each player checks, one by one, whether their cards meet the conditions required to score, and finally adds up the points obtained.
In case of a tie, the player with the most gods in their play area is the winner. If the tie still persists, the players share the victory.
Scoring Example
- Hera (Greek goddess), 2 points: "2p: It is next to an Egyptian."
- Hela (Norse goddess), 2 points: "2p: It is in the front row."
- "Barco" (Egyptian object), 1x: "1p: Per god in each row."
Case: a Hela and a Hera card side by side. In this case we would not obtain any points because none of the conditions is met. 0 POINTS.
Case: Hela, Hera and the Egyptian object card side by side. In this case we would obtain 2p for being next to an Egyptian card and 1p for each god in the row. As we have two goddesses, we win 2p, which makes a total of 4 POINTS. (If we were in the front row we could have 2p more thanks to Hela.)
NOTE: If another Egyptian card were placed on the other side of Hera, you would still get no more than 2p.
Objectives Variant
Objective Cards add to the game a common objective that, at the end of the game, will give extra points to the players who meet its conditions.
Objective Cards are divided into two groups of cards, one with the objective to be met and another with the element to take into account to meet that objective. For example: divine grouping, earthly supremacy, etc.
Changes to Setup
Follow all the setup steps as usual.
Before starting the game, shuffle each deck of Objective Cards, reveal a pair of cards and place it beside the myth deck.
EXAMPLE: In this case we would have "Agrupación" (Grouping) and "Egipcia" (Egyptian), which would give each player 2 points for each Egyptian card in the largest group they have in play.
A group is a set of orthogonally adjacent cards.
At the end of the game, players must add to their final score the victory points they have obtained for meeting the objective.
EXAMPLE: Following the previous example, each player will earn 2 points for each Egyptian card in the largest group. The objective scores will be as follows:
- Player 1: their only Egyptian group is made up of three cards, so they add 6p to their final score.
- Player 2: their largest group is four Egyptian cards, so they add 8p to their final score.