Enormity
Enormity Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
- What Is the Dark Side of the Sun Demo?
- Fundamental Concepts
- Cardinal Rules
- Gameplay Overview
- Rubicon Stats
- Spacer Pool and Spacer Tokens
- Flow of the Game
- Where to Start
- Extraction Runs
- Locations and Location Books
- Extraction Round Sequence
- Countdown Phase
- Spacer Phase
- Actions
- Revealing New Location Maps
- Board Spaces, Adjacency, Lines, Intersections and Out-of-Bounds Spaces
- Noise Roll
- Blips
- Blip Movement
- Countdown Level Effects
- Revealing Blips
- Scouting
- Rationalizing
- Scavenging
- Exhausting and Rearming
- Spacer Attacks
- Effective Range
- Line of Sight
- Full Reloading
- Fast Reloading
- End of Spacer Turn and Milling the Spacer Pool
- End of the Spacer Phase
- Discoveries
- Open World Discoveries in the Full Game
- Numbered Discoveries — Scenarios: Fixed Discoveries
- Facedown and Random Discoveries — Open World: Random Discoveries
- Resolution Boxes
- Discovery Chains
- Infinite Discoveries
- Penalties and Bonuses
- Discovery from the Countdown Track
- Clues
- Additional Notes on Open World Discoveries
- Extraction
- Extraction and Insertion
- Intruder Phase
- Intruders
- Flow of the Intruder Phase
- 1. Intruders Activate
- Dying
- Attacks of Opportunity
- Surprised Intruders
- C. Resolving Additional Actions
- 2. Blip Patrols
- 3. End of Intruder Phase
- Zero Hour
- Flash Attacks
- Incursions
- Incursion Setup and Loadouts
- Boss Intruders
- Boss Intruder Activation
- Wounding Boss Intruders, and Wounds
- Escalation
- Other Rules
- Abilities
- Keywords
- Stratagems
- Locations
- Coordinates
- Terrain
- Bonus Attacks
- Follow-up Attacks
- Bonus Actions
- Welding Doors and Breaking Welds
- Status Tokens
- Disable Tokens
- Awakening
- Other Places
- Secrets
- Death and Life Spares
- Difficulty Modes
- Time Crystals
- In the Full Game
What Is the Dark Side of the Sun Demo?
The Dark Side of the Sun Demo is a small taste of Enormity, a sampler if you will. It includes most of the core mechanics, from combat to exploration, to stealth and adventuring. It will showcase the dungeon-crawling extraction runs and incursions (boss battles). A perfect run will clock you around 8 to 10 hours, though you still won't see all the content in one go (yes, even our demos are enormous!). Once you finish the demo, you can return to the game, to try out some other gear and ability combinations, and different Spacer team-ups, experience different encounters and look for more secrets.
The Demo is still a work in progress prototype and should be treated as such. Specifically, this extends to:
Production Quality. The number and quality of components is not final. The full game will include hundreds more cards, dozens of different Intruders (including rank-and-file ones, unique specimen and boss-type creatures, like the Slendersuit), dozens of interconnected Location maps, more tiles, hundreds of new Gear, hundreds of Discoveries and more. Simply put, there will be much more of everything. The cardstock and cardboard will be thicker, and the paper content (all the books) will be produced in a different process, will be thicker, and printed on higher quality paper in full color with an upgraded layout. Finally, miniatures will be produced in plastic.
Editing. This book and all Enormity game components have been internally spellchecked and edited, but were not independently edited, which is part of our quality control for a final game product. Final editing will take place once all the content of the game is locked in. As such, there may be some spelling errors etc. Those will be corrected before production.
Difficulty. The difficulty of the Demo has been set at a certain level. The final game will offer options to adjust the difficulty (see the In the Full Game section at the back of the Rulebook for more details). If you're up for a challenge, try the veteran Mothman Battle (10 Wounds).
Balance. The balance of the game, including Spacer and Suit stats, Gear stats and Intruder attacks, is very much a work in progress. Item discovery rates and crafting costs are simplified or automated, as the limited scope of the demo makes it challenging to showcase their full potential.
Unavailable Features. The demo showcases the main features and strengths of the game, the narrative, the Inverted Combat Paradigm 3.0, the Action card system, the Extraction gameplay, the mixture of firefights and stealth, the robust AI mechanics, the co-op actions, Intruder Escalation, exploration, looting and luck mitigation. However, there is still more that Enormity has to offer. We'll highlight those features at the end of the Rulebook.
Fundamental Concepts
Inverted Combat Paradigm
In Enormity, the gameplay doesn't wind down, it heats up. Your wounds, stress levels and time running out don't make you weaker, they make you soar! Intruders don't just get beaten, they power up!
Unlike most games, Enormity has a distinct heroic flow that's always on the uptake. You are playing heroes facing unimaginable terror, and you will do whatever it takes to see it through to the end. Each time you fall, you will stand up stronger. Each time you're knocked back, you'll punch harder.
Against all odds, you will take whatever the cruel universe throws against you and survive!
In Enormity, there's no defeat snowball effect, no negative modifiers that keep stacking up, hindering your options and making you a glorified spectator. There is always a chance at a comeback, the closer you are to death, or the countdown timer is to zero hour, the more powerful you become.
This is the heart of the ICP.
The Intruders don't sit idly by either. They have their own comeback mechanics: smaller ones you meet during Extraction Runs will become fiercer the closer you are to extraction, while boss entities will grow more dangerous and deadly, the closer you are to killing them off. This is what we call Escalation.
Some Intruders escalate gradually, while others completely change forms. The longer the game goes on, the more wounds the Intruder gains, the harder it becomes! This means that an opponent is truly defeated only when the last wound is struck – or when you extract to the safety of your haven!
This dance is what makes the gameplay of Enormity exciting. Victory is never assured, defeat never inevitable. You must be on your toes at all times and use all the options at your disposal.
Hard Co-op
Enormity is a cooperative game about a band of unlikely survivors facing an unknown world of unimaginable horror. Co-op is a big focus, and the hard co-op mechanics take it to the next level.
Basically, when you perform most actions, you are also creating opportunities and openings for other players, either directly, or by leaving special tokens in the 'Spacer Pool', a place for shared resources that enhance your abilities and attacks and allow you to trigger special unique effects and stratagems.
You'll get a taste of this in the demo, but of course the full game will offer even more options for cooperation!
Persistent World
Enormity can be played as one-off game sessions, as well as a campaign with a dedicated end or endless exploration.
However, one thing all games of Enormity have in common is world persistency. Your various extraction runs, adventures and choices will shape the spaceship Shepherd and influence all future games by unlocking new areas of the ship, introducing new deadly Intruders, modifying the ever-expanding loot pool, changing the game spaces with stickers and new permanent rules, and more.
Note: There is nothing stopping you from hard-resetting the game to a default state and starting over (even the stickers are reusable).
Campaigns
If you like, you may play Enormity as a campaign. This Demo provides you with one ready-to-go mini-campaign, the Dark Side of the Sun, which was designed to showcase Enormity's variety of gameplay (both extraction runs and boss incursions), story-telling potential and modularity. On page 2 of the Mythos Book you will find details on how to start this campaign. The Full Game will offer longer campaigns, as well as rules to run custom campaigns – because a single one will barely scratch the surface. You will find more details on how campaigns will work in the In The Full Game section, at the back of this rulebook.
Cardinal Rules
Golden Rule. If there is ever a conflict between rules, the specific rules on cards precede the general rules of the Rulebooks.
Harsh Space Rule. If there's still a conflict, two rules seem equivalent or there is no clear way to discern precedence, or there is ever any ambiguity as to how a rule is supposed to be interpreted, you go with the outcome that is the worst for the players.
Flashback Rule. As long as you have not rolled dice, drawn cards or done any other step to randomize the game, you can undo your last moves as you like (take a different movement action, place different Spacer tokens into the pool etc.). The limit to which you can undo your moves is your memory.
Gameplay Overview
You play as Spacers, astronauts stranded on the Shepherd. To survive, gain resources and information, you go on extraction runs, dungeon crawls that lead you deeper and deeper into the mysterious ship, and maybe even beyond. You choose where to go and what terrors to face, slowly expanding your inter-connected location map. You move from area to area, fighting or avoiding Intruders, scavenging, exploring. The longer you stay, the more dangerous it becomes. At some point – one chosen by you! – you'll have to extract through an Extraction Point or risk losing everything you've worked towards!
At several points in the game, an existential threat will appear, and you will have to deal with an incursion, a battle against a terrible boss Intruder. Extraction run enemies may appear during boss battles, and bosses may invade your regular extractions – especially if you reach the zero hour!
After each extraction and incursion, you will travel to a safe location, where you may craft gear, develop your character and research alien technologies. This will still happen in a physical location on the map, you are never taken out of the survival experience! Note: For brevity's sake, this part of the gameplay has been mostly automated in the demo.
Spacers
In Enormity, you play as Spacers, astronauts stranded on the massive starship the Shepherd.
During a run, your Spacer is represented by a combination of a Character card and a Suit card, joined by the rubicon connector into a player board. You may have noticed the back of the Character card has an intriguing graph on it. In the full game, this graph will be used to develop your Spacer (see Character Progression on p. 43).
The Dark Side of the Sun Demo includes 5 pre-generated named characters — the crew of the NASF Coventry — while the full game will include additional rules and components to create fully custom characters, for unlimited replayability.
Besides their name and Action cards, which you will find listed on the backs (see Action Cards on p. 11), a Spacer is defined by a set of attributes and statistics. Those on the Character card are intrinsic to your character, while the rest depends on your current Suit card.
Character card statistics:
- Class: This tells you about your character's specialization. Others cards may be unlocked or refer to your class. In the full game, you will be able to develop your class.
- Skills: Each character has 5 skills, Intelligence, Dexterity, Strength, Willpower, Perception, represented by a numerical value. You will use these Skills during Skill tests (see Skill Tests on p. 37).
- Abilities: Each Spacer has unique abilities that will help them survive (see Abilities on p. 37).
- Character Rubicon Bonuses: Rubicon bonuses are boons provided to your Spacer when they perform an Adrenaline action. Usually, they take the form of Spacer tokens you place into the Incoming Spacer Pool (see Spacer Pool and Spacer Tokens on p. 8).
- Starting Stress: This box represents your starting Stress level. Place your Stress Indicator on the indicated rubicon connector space.
Suit card statistics:
- Abilities: Each Suit has unique abilities that will help you survive (see Abilities on p. 37).
- Specs: Suits provide Spacers with vital survival systems, including a light source, used for Scouting Blips (see Actions, on p. 14) and other gameplay segments, from traversing a dark corridor to braving the blackness of open space; and slots for support equipment (see the Gear, Carrying Slots and Backpack box on p. 12).
- Space in your backpack. See the Gear, Carrying Slots and Backpack box on p. 12.
- Suit Rubicon Bonuses: Rubicon bonuses are boons provided to your Spacer when they perform an Adrenaline action. Usually, they take the form of Spacer tokens you place into the Incoming Spacer Pool (see Spacer Pool and Spacer tokens on p. 8).
- Vitality Levels: Notice the thin colored bars beneath the rubicon bonuses track. These red, orange and green sections represent vitality levels. They don't do anything on their own, but other game components may refer to them, e.g. Rudimentary Scanner. Simply put, your vitality level corresponds to the position of the Vitals Indicator.
Rubicon Stats
Rubicon stats are the living heart of the game.
These three statistics represent your Spacer's physical and mental wellbeing, as well as combat readiness, as measured by your EVA suit's internal monitor.
Unlike typical stats, these three are in flux. Adrenaline and Stress will go up as a result of attacking, using abilities, making re-rolls and being exposed to intense fear, while Vitals will go down as the result of getting physically hurt. You will track rubicon stats with plastic stackable Rubicon indicators.
Rubicon stats usually operate on a scale of 0 to 9. Gaining or losing Rubicon stats over or under these values will have dire consequences! Thankfully, these stats will reset after each run.
Vitals. Vitals represent your overall physical condition. Your Vitals will go down as a result of suffering damage from Intruders, the environment or other story-related sources.
If your Vitals would ever go below 1, you suffer a flatline. Draw a Flatline card and check it with the Scanner. As a result of a Flatline, you may die, perform a counter attack or even awaken some unknown force inside you (see Flatlining on p. 30).
Regaining Vitals is difficult, but not impossible, there are abilities and items in the game that facilitate this.
The first time your Vitals and Stress indicators meet or pass each other, you will suffer a Stress Breakdown (see Stress Breakdown on p. 37).
Stress. Stress represents your overall mental condition.
The most important Stress rule is: whenever you roll dice, you may always gain +1 Stress to re-roll any single die once, even if that die was already re-rolled from another source. Remember this always, this is your ultimate lifeline!
Otherwise, you will gain Stress as a penalty from various sources, or as a cost of high-risk actions.
The first time your Stress and Vitals indicators meet or pass each other, you will suffer a Stress Breakdown (see Stress Breakdown on p. 37).
If your Stress would ever go above 9, you suffer a nervous breakdown (see Dying on p. 29).
To lower Stress, you will be using the Rationalize action (see Actions on p. 14).
Adrenaline. Adrenaline represents your overall combat readiness. You gain Adrenaline by performing certain actions, like attacking, scouting or rationalizing (see Actions on p. 14).
If your Adrenaline would ever go above 9, you suffer a heart attack (see Dying on p. 29).
Spacer Pool and Spacer Tokens
The Spacer Pool is the heart of the hard co-op mechanics of Enormity. You will use abilities to place tokens into the Incoming Pool, and will use the tokens from the Active Pool to perform re-rolls, modify your results and pay for various actions and effects.
When you place tokens, they end up in the Incoming Pool. Unless stated otherwise, you cannot use tokens from the Incoming Pool, only those in the Active Pool. At the end of your Spacer turn, all tokens from the Active Pool are discarded, and all tokens from the Incoming Pool are moved to the Active Pool, becoming available to the player that will take their turn.
There are 3 main types of Spacer tokens:
- Discipline: This token reflects your conduct under duress. A single Discipline token allows you to turn 1 Potential into a Success/Power during a Spacer Attack, Skill Test, Scouting Check or Noise Roll.
- Confidence: This token reflects your morale and poise. A single Confidence token allows you to re-roll any single Spacer Attack, Skill Test, Scouting Check or Noise Roll die once. Note: You may later try to re-roll that die with Stress!
- Expertise: This token allows you to pay the cost of many abilities, actions, environment interactions and Stratagems. Additionally, when you are attacked, you may use Expertise tokens to lower received damage, at a ratio of 1 token per 1 damage, to a minimum of 1.
To sum up:
- You place Spacer tokens into the Incoming Pool.
- You cannot use tokens from the Incoming Pool.
- You may use tokens from the Active Pool.
- At the end of a Spacer turn, the Active Pool is discarded and the Incoming Pool becomes the new Active Pool.
- You can only use 1 token of a given type per die.
Flow of the Game
Countdown Phase:
- Move the Countdown Marker one space down the Countdown Track. Skip during the first round!
- If there are Discovery tokens on the current track space, resolve them.
- If there are any Blip tokens or Intruders on the current track space, resolve them. Spawn them adjacent to the Priority Target/Last to Noise Spacer.
- If there is a Blip symbol on the track space, spawn a Blip according to normal Blip rules.
Spacer Phase:
- Play Action cards one at a time; this means that you play a card, resolve its effects and only then proceed to playing another card.
- Once you play your 3 Action cards (or choose not to play any more), end your turn.
- Play then proceeds to another player. Spacers can take their turns in any order they like!
Intruder Phase:
- Intruders activate: Each Intruder acts according to their AI protocols and AI cards.
- Blip Patrols: Blips move in their predetermined directions or, on higher Countdown levels, converge on the Spacers.
- End of Phase: End of Phase effects resolve.
When you perform an action, raise your Adrenaline and apply all Rubicon Bonuses: Discipline, Confidence, or Expertise. Resolve at the end of your turn, or on higher Countdown levels. You can freely use Free Actions (like Fast Scavenge), Location Abilities and Spacer Abilities, including Stratagems. Remember: You can't use the same ability twice.
Exerting. After performing an action from an Action card, gain +2 Adrenaline and place an Exert card in your play area to flip that Action card and immediately resolve any action on it.
Spacer Actions (Overview)
- Attack: Perform an attack with an equipped Weapon. This is an Attack action.
- Move: Move the indicated number of spaces orthogonally (not diagonally).
- Full Reload: Reload a currently equipped Weapon to its maximum ammo capacity. This is a Reload action.
- Reload: Reload a currently equipped Weapon with exactly one ammo. Does not work with Heavy weapons.
- Rearm: Take the Action cards you've played during the last turn back into your hand.
- Rationalize: Lose -2 Stress. This is a Rationalize action.
- Scout: Scout a Blip in your Light field. This is a Scout action.
- Scavenge: Interact with a Console or pick up an Engram, Gear Cache or Objective token for free. This is a Scavenge action.
- Catch Breath: Unexhaust all exhausted Gear cards. You may equip Gear from your backpack and place any currently equipped Gear into the backpack. Reminder: When you loot new Gear, you may switch Gear for free.
Where to Start
Your first Dark Side of the Sun session will be a guided extraction, so we'll start with the rules for Extraction runs. Note that extraction runs and incursions share the majority of their rules. Thus, the incursion rules section will only highlight new rules or major differences. At the end of the rules section, you'll find 'Other Rules', a collection of additional mechanics and smaller rules that didn't neatly fit into either of the former sections.
Extraction Runs
During an Extraction Run, your group of Spacers will venture into one of the Shepherd's locations with the general goal of scavenging gear, tech and engrams, and a more specific objective, like restarting the life support systems, downloading the deck's map or simply finding a way deeper into the derelict hulk. Each time you will face mounting resistance from alien Intruders, which you will have to fight, or evade. Manage your ammo clips and the noise you make carefully, and shoot to kill.
As the Countdown Marker inevitably ticks down towards zero hour, the run will become more and more dangerous. You choose when to extract – but be careful, it's harder than it sounds!
The Goal of a Run
During an Extraction Run, each player controls a Spacer, while the Intruders are controlled by a set of automated mechanics, i.e. the game itself. You want to complete your goals and extract (see Extraction on p. 24), while the Intruders will try to eliminate you.
An extraction run is considered a success if at least one Spacer makes it out alive (extracts). Don't worry, death is not necessarily final (see Death and Life Spares on p. 42) and as long as you have time crystals, you may repeat a failed run (see Time Crystals on p. 42). Still, in the full game, a campaign can very much end in failure if you allow multiple defeats to accrue.
When to Go on a Run?
In the full game, you will be prompted to go on an extraction run by your current Course card or, if you're playing a one-off session, you will simply choose a location to venture into. In the Dark Side of the Sun demo, the scenario cards will prompt you on when to go on a run, starting with Demo card 01.
Preparing a Run
To prepare an extraction run, follow the steps presented in this section:
- Perform Location Setup
- Choose Loadouts
Locations and Location Books
Extraction runs happen on an ever-expanding, ever-evolving inter-connected map of the giant ship, the Shepherd. It is exactly what it sounds – one giant 'Metroidvania'-style map you can freely traverse, with distinct biomes, various routes and secret passages.
To facilitate this grand feat, Enormity utilizes two special Location Books, which you will use alternatively to build a continuous map of the starship. In the full game, you will be able to traverse even several sections during a single run, with special rules to govern token and Intruder persistency.
For total immersion, your Spacers will remain on the board even in-between extractions and incursions, in special safehouse locations.
1. Preparing Location Setup
- Open the Location and Intruder Books: Based on your Course card or chosen one-off Location, open the appropriate Location Book on the indicated page(s). Based on the Location's ecology, open the Intruder Book on the appropriate Intruder's page. Open the Mythos Book on the page indicated in the Location Book.
Spawn Point Clusters
A spawn cluster is one or more spawn points connected by a red line. When a run doesn't explicitly show starting Blip placement, place exactly one Blip per spawn cluster, on any of its spawn points. Note that this will usually be less than the actual number of spawn points available. Spawn clusters are usually used for starting Blip placement only. For example, the first Location you'll encounter will have 5 spawn points, but only 3 spawn clusters.
Loot Dispenser
This structure is used to dispense loot when you find it. The top of the deck in the dispenser should always be covered with a Loot Cache Lid card. When drawing cards from the dispenser, you always draw from the bottom.
Note: The Loot Dispenser has a small cutout at the bottom to make grasping the bottom card easier.
Fixed and Colored Discoveries
Discoveries are all sorts of things you may find on the ship, as well as various events that can happen while you explore it. Discovery tokens are numbered and color-coded.
If the location's setup demands you setup any fixed discoveries, take those tokens and place them face-up on the indicated board and Countdown Track spaces. Do not setup any other Discoveries. Shuffle the rest of the Discovery tokens facedown. When you encounter these discoveries, you will ignore their color and instead check the corresponding Discovery card.
If the location's setup demands you setup random discoveries, take all Discovery tokens, shuffle them facedown, then place them on all Discovery spaces of the board and the indicated Countdown Track spaces. When you reveal these discoveries, you will ignore the number and instead check the discovery in the Mythos book, based on color (see Discoveries on p. 23).
Closed Doors
These cardboard structures represent closed doors. Closed doors can be opened from specific consoles. When a closed door is opened, remove it from the board. Unless otherwise specified, an opened door remains opened until the end of the run.
Note: If there's a standee on a door space, that door is closed.
- Unique Specimen cards: Take the Unique Specimen cards corresponding to the current Intruder, shuffle them facedown and place near the Intruder page.
- Spacer tokens and Power dice: Place the Spacer Pool board near the Location book. Place the Spacer tokens and Power dice within reach of all players.
- Create Blip Pool: Take all the Blips and shuffle them facedown. This is the Blip Pool.
- Engram Pool: Take all the Engrams and shuffle them in an opaque container. This is the Engram Pool.
- Countdown Track: Place the Countdown Track below the Location Book (see Countdown Track on p. 13) and place the Countdown Marker on space '9' of the track. Place the Extraction Marker on the space specified by your current Course card (note: in the Demo, you will find this space in the Mythos Book, in the section corresponding to your current mission).
The rest of setup proceeds according to the instructions you will find in the Mythos Book:
- Scanner Decks: Take the Scanner cards, divide them by color into three decks (white, red and black), then shuffle those decks and place them near the Countdown Track.
- Blips and Intruders: If the scenario doesn't explicitly show starting Blip placement intersections (see the Board Spaces, Adjacency, Lines, Intersections and Out-of-Bounds Spaces box), place exactly one Blip per spawn point cluster (see Spawn Point Clusters on p. 10), with the direction arrow pointing towards most Spacers. Place Blips on the indicated spaces of the Countdown Track, if any. Place any Intruders on the indicated spaces. Note: The first Dark Side of the Sun run shows starting Blip placement!
- Loot Deck, Loot Caches and Engrams: First, take the appropriate Loot Deck (each section of the ship has its own unique deck!) out of its envelope, place the Loot Cache Lid card to the side, shuffle the rest of the cards, and place them on the Loot Dispenser (see the Loot Dispenser box). Then, place the Loot Cache Lid card on top. Place the Loot Cache tokens on indicated spaces. Draw random Engram tokens and place them on the indicated spaces.
- Closed Doors: Place the Closed Door standees on indicated spaces.
- Discoveries: Place Discovery tokens on the indicated spaces, faceup or facedown, depending on the Setup Instructions. If the Setup instructions refer to a Discovery card deck, place the deck near the Countdown Track. Note that in the first demo run you only setup fixed Discoveries!
- Other components: At this point place any other components mentioned in the location setup on the indicated spaces, intersections or areas. This may include special Objective tokens or additional Extraction Points. For example, in the Demo you will place Anomalous Reading tokens.
When you're done with Location Setup, you may proceed to choosing your Loadouts.
2. Choosing Loadouts
Knowing what you're up against, you may choose your Loadouts.
- Characters and Suits: Each player takes a Memento card and a rubicon connector, and then selects their oversized character card and their suit card. They then take the standee or plastic figure that match the character/suit.
- Action Cards: Each Character card and each Suit card provides players with different partial Action cards. To find your partial Action cards, simply flip your Character and Suit cards: on the back you will find a list of three partial action cards, for a total of 6 cards.
Each player takes their 6 partial Action cards and combines them, to create three double-sided sleeved Action cards (see the Action Cards box below).
Action Card
Each Spacer has 3 special double-sided sleeved Action cards. These are constructed before each Extraction Run or Incursion by stacking together and placing into a single card sleeve the 3 cards granted by your Character, and the 3 granted by your Suit.
You always stack a Yellow Character card with a Yellow Suit card. You always stack a Blue Character card with a Red Suit card. Yellow cards usually allow you to move and perform minor activities, Blue cards allow you to perform various specialized activities, while Red cards allow you to attack.
Note that the Blue Character card allows you to perform a variety of non-combat actions.
Important: These pairs function as a single card, so you cannot use both sides of a given card during the same turn (unless you Exert).
In the Dark Side of the Sun Demo, each player starts with the same Action cards. Stack them in the following way:
- Stack Steady Walk with Cautious Sneaking
- Stack Hurried Walk with Anxious Sneaking
- Stack Desperate Measures with Stressful Brainstorm
Action Cards in the Full Game
In the full game, each partial action card will be double-sided too, with a basic side and an enhanced side. The enhanced side of the cards will be used during character progression for even more customizability.
Rubicon Indicators
These plastic markers are used to track your Spacer's important statistics, Vitals, Adrenaline and Stress. During gameplay, you will move these indicators along the rubicon frequency to reflect the changes to your status, as a result of combat, anxiety and suffered damage.
- Player Boards: After creating their Action cards, players connect their Character and Suit cards using the rubicon connector to create a player board. They then take the three special plastic indicators, and place them on their player board.
In the demo, Vitals start on space '9', Adrenaline starts on space '0', and the starting space of Stress is indicated on the Character card.
- Gear: Once your Spacer is ready, choose the Gear you will take with you on the run, noting the number of Gear you can carry in hand, as support, and in your backpack (this is usually dictated by your Suit card).
In the demo's first run, your Loadouts have been chosen for you!
- Stratagems: Choose 2 from your available Stratagem cards and place them near the Location Book, facedown. For the demo's first run, we suggest you use Tactical Redeployment and Morpheus Protocol.
- Place Spacers on the board: Finally, place your Spacer standees or miniatures on the spaces indicated in the Mythos Book. Once you're done, you're ready to go!
- Choose Priority Target: Chosen Spacer receives the Priority Target/Last to Noise Marker.
Gear, Carrying Slots and Backpack
Enormity is an extraction dungeon crawler, and as such, will offer you a near infinite amount of lootable Gear! Broadly, there are 2 types of Gear cards: Weapons and Support items.
Weapon cards are horizontal and take up 1, 2 or more 'hand slots'. A typical Spacer has 2 hand slots, so they may equip 2 one-handed items or 1 two-handed item simultaneously.
Support cards are vertical and take up 1 support slot each. Support slots are usually provided by your Suit. The starting suit card has only 1 support slot, meaning you can only equip 1 support Gear card.
Backpack provides additional slots for Weapons and Support cards. Each card in the backpack takes up 1 backpack slot, regardless of how many hands it needs to be equipped. Gear cards in the backpack are not considered equipped. You cannot use them until you equip them with the Rearm action (see Actions on p. 14). Important: Always leave room in your backpack for new Gear cards you may find during a run!
The amount of Support slots and Backpack slots is usually provided by your Suit Card. Weapons can either take up one or two 'hand slots'. Support cards always take one support slot.
Extraction Round Sequence
A single game of Enormity represents one extraction run (or Incursion, see p. 32) that is played over a series of rounds, and each round consists of three phases that players resolve in the following order:
- Countdown Phase: Players move the Countdown Marker one space down the Countdown Track. Players resolve any cards and Blips on the current Countdown space, as well as spawn new Blips.
- Spacer Phase: Each Spacer takes one turn. Spacers can take their turns in any order they like. A Spacer may play up to 3 Action cards per turn, as well as perform any other abilities once.
- Intruder Phase: Players resolve Patrols. Each Blip and Intruder acts once.
Countdown Track
The Countdown Track represents the mounting pressure and Intruder activity in your location. It's divided into 3 levels, Infiltration (white), Eclipse (red) and Extraction (black), which represent the escalating danger. Each level is further divided into 3 spaces, corresponding to game rounds. The final space of the track is called zero hour. The Countdown Track is not a timer, so reaching zero hour does not mean you've run out of time; it just means that the run is now extremely dangerous, and that potentially an Adversary boss Intruder needs to be spawned.
Various things, like Blips, Intruders, Discoveries, may end up on the track; these are resolved during the Countdown Phase.
Besides those immediate effects, the position of the Countdown marker influences the entire run; the particular effect is based on the level. See the Countdown Level Effects box on p. 17 for more details.
Countdown Phase
The Countdown Phase represents the growing tension and mounting resistance to the Spacers' expedition. The longer your run goes on, the harder it will become, and the more Intruders will swarm in to stop you. When the marker reaches the zero hour space, things will become dire, and a special deadly Adversary boss Intruder may start hunting you – you should try to extract before that happens! (see Extraction on p. 24). Note that the rules for Adversaries during Extraction Runs are disabled for the demo, but they will be available in the full game. Each and every boss in the game can become an Adversary.
During the Countdown Phase, resolve the following steps in order:
- Move the Countdown Marker one space down the Countdown Track: This has various in-game effects, some of which you will soon resolve, while others are persistent and influence the entire run (see the Countdown Track box on p. 13 for a detailed explanation). Note: Skip this step during the first round of the run!
- Resolve Discoveries: If there are any Discovery tokens on the current track space, resolve them now. If the Discovery token is faceup, resolve the matching Discovery card from the deck. If it's facedown, reveal it and resolve a normal Discovery (see Discoveries on p. 23).
- Resolve Blip tokens and Intruders: If there are any Blip tokens or Intruders on the current track space, resolve them now. To resolve a Blip token from the track, reveal it. If it's an Echo, discard it and spawn a new one according to normal Blip rules (see Blips on p. 16). If it's Intruders, immediately spawn them adjacent to the Last to Noise Spacer. Do not perform ambush attacks! These Intruders will act in the Intruder Phase.
- Resolve the Blip symbol from the track: If there is a Blip symbol on the track – you will find them on its Eclipse (red) and Extraction (black) levels – spawn a Blip according to normal Blip rules.
Once done, you may proceed to the Spacer Phase.
Spacer Phase
In the Spacer Phase, each Spacer will get one turn, during which they will play up to 3 Action cards to perform various actions, like moving, attacking, scouting or scavenging. They will also perform other free actions and use Spacer abilities, including Stratagems. Remember: Spacers can take their turns in any order they like!
The flow of a Spacer's turn follows a very simple order:
- Clear Action cards: Take the Actions cards you've played during last turn back into your hand.
- Play Action cards: Play Action cards one at a time; this means that you play a card, resolve its effects and only then proceed to playing another card.
- End your turn: Once you play your 3 Action cards (or choose not to play any more), you may end your turn. Play then proceeds to another player.
A word of warning. Even though this is your time to act, Blips will still move in response to Noise (see Noise Roll on p. 16), and previously hidden Intruders may perform ambush attacks that break out a Spacer's turn. In Enormity, you are never safe.
Playing Action Cards and Performing Actions
During your turn, you will spend most of your time playing Action cards to perform actions. You may play up to 3 cards, which coincidentally is the number of cards you have, and in most circumstances you will want to play all three. Note that your Action cards are double-sided (see Action Card on p. 11), so you will still use only 3 out of 6 possibilities.
Some Action cards allow you to perform a single type of action (i.e. Desperate Measures can only be used to perform an Attack action). When you play such a card, simply resolve that action.
Other cards let you choose from two or more actions (i.e. Steady Walk allows you to perform a Move action or Fast Reload action). In these cases, you choose which action to resolve after play a card.
At the beginning of your turn take all Action cards into your hand. Before playing an Action card, you must determine which side to resolve. To keep track of the played Action cards, place them on the table in front of you, keeping the resolved side facing up. They will stay on the table until the beginning of your next turn.
Adrenaline. Actions denoted with an Adrenaline symbol are called Adrenaline actions; when performing such an action, immediately raise your Adrenaline by 1 and apply all Rubicon Bonuses that are to the left of the Adrenaline Indicator, both on the Character and Suit parts of the player board; this will usually involve placing Spacer tokens into the Incoming Spacer Pool (see Spacer Pool and Spacer Tokens on p. 8).
Actions
Below you will find a quick summary of the common actions you will perform during your turns.
Attack: This action allows you to perform an attack with an equipped Weapon (the Multitool is always considered equipped). This is an Adrenaline action. See the Spacer Attacks section on p. 19 for details.
Catch Breath: This is a special action whose effect you resolve at the end of your turn. Catch Breath makes you discard 1 played Exert card and lose -1 Adrenaline. See Catching Breath for details.
Fast Reload: This action allows you to reload a currently equipped Weapon with exactly 1 ammo. Note that some Weapons (with the Heavy keyword) can only be reloaded by the Full Reload action. See Fast Reloading on p. 23 for details.
Full Reload: This action allows you to reload a currently equipped Weapon to its maximum ammo capacity. Note that some Weapons (with the Heavy keyword) can only be reloaded by the Full Reload action. This is an Adrenaline action. See Full Reloading on p. 23 for details.
Move: This action allows you to move the indicated number of spaces orthogonally (not diagonally). See the Spacer Movement for details.
Rationalize: This action allows you to recover 2 Stress. This is an Adrenaline action. See Rationalizing on p. 18 for details.
Rearm: This action allows you to both unexhaust all exhausted cards (see Exhausting and Rearming on p. 19), as well as equip Weapons and/or Support Gear from your backpack and place any currently equipped Weapons and/or Support Gear into the backpack. Be mindful of your carry limit. Note: When you loot a Weapon or Support Gear, you may equip it for free (See Picking Up Gear on p. 19 for details).
Scavenge: This action allows you to interact with a Console or pick up an Engram, Gear Cache or Objective token without spending Spacer Tokens. This is an Adrenaline action. See Scavenging on p. 19 for details.
Scout: This action allows you to scout a Blip in your Light's range. This is an Adrenaline action. See Scouting on p. 18 for details.
Catching Breath
There's only one way to discard an Exert card (and only one at a time!) – by performing the Catch Breath action. This is a special action whose effect you resolve at the end of your turn. This action also lowers your Adrenaline by 1, limiting your Rubicon bonuses. Important: You cannot Catch Breath during the same turn you exert!
Spacer Movement
The Move action is, generally, used to move your Spacer around. Each Move action is accompanied by a numerical value.
When you perform a Move action, you can move a number of spaces up to that value. First, declare the space you want to reach, then move your Spacer, one space at a time, resolving the effects of any Terrain tiles you travel through.
There are other general rules and restrictions that apply to all Move actions:
- All movement is performed in cardinal directions. You cannot move diagonally!
- You cannot move through Obstacles, red lines, black lines (walls) or onto Out-Of-Bounds spaces.
- You cannot move through Intruders, but you can move through other Spacers.
- As part of a single movement, you cannot move onto the same space twice.
- You must end your movement on an empty space (a space that does not contain Obstacles, Intruders or other Spacers).
- Most Move actions make Noise (see Noise Roll on p. 16).
- If a space shows a Location arrow, stop on that space and reveal a new Location Map (see p. 15).
- If a space shows a forced direction arrow, that space enforces your movement direction; if you're on that space, you can only move in that arrow's direction.
- Doors on a map are considered closed (or welded, p. 41). You cannot move through a Door unless it is opened (removed) from the board by another effect (like a Console or Keycard).
Exerting
Sometimes the situation will become really desperate and you will need to push yourself beyond your limits to succeed. Sometimes, three actions won't be enough. That is when you will want to exert.
Once per turn, you may exert. To exert, after performing an action from an Action card, gain +2 Adrenaline and place an Exert card in your play area to flip that Action card and immediately resolve any action on it.
An Exert card in your play area acts as a played Action card, but one you don't remove at the start of your turn. From the moment it's played, it is considered to be your first Action card played each turn, limiting you to playing 2 other cards per turn.
You may exert even if you already have an Exert card in your play area, but if you ever take your third Exert card, after resolving any extra action, you die.
Revealing New Location Maps
If you move to the edge of the board marked with a Connecting Location symbol, stop your movement, find the corresponding Location Map in the other Location Book and place it adjacent to your Location Book, as evenly as possible.
The orientation quadrants should have the same alignment. Then, place every Intruder, Gear Cache, Engram, Discovery and door marked on the new Location map. Place starting Blips.
Remember: If you don't have an explicit Blip placement instruction, place exactly one Blip per newly revealed spawn point cluster (see Spawn Point Clusters on p. 10).
Finally, you can resume your movement.
Board Spaces, Adjacency, Lines, Intersections and Out-of-Bounds Spaces
Take a good look at the Solar Ring location map. Notice anything peculiar? It consists of several rooms and corridors separated by doors, and made out of square spaces. These square spaces are called board spaces, and are used for movement by both Spacers and Intruders.
A space is adjacent if it shares a border with another space. Diagonal spaces are not adjacent. Obstacles and red lines block adjacency.
A space can also be adjacent to an intersection – the point of crossing of two perpendicular lines – if it shares a corner with one. Intersections are used exclusively for Blip movement. This reflects the ephemeral nature of those scanner readings; unless an Intruder is revealed, you never quite know where it is.
While Spacers and revealed Intruders are subject to board space restrictions (for example, they cannot move through obstacles or beyond room walls), Blips can travel freely through every intersection on the Location map page (see Blip Movement on p. 16).
For this same reason, the board lines extend beyond the boundaries of the rooms, creating a sort of technical paper grid outside of the game space proper. These 'phantom' spaces are called out-of-bounds, and are rarely used (usually by some cross-dimensional entity that does not obey the laws of physics!) However, the intersections and lines that stretch beyond board spaces are routinely used for Blip movement; this reflects the unseen Intruders moving out-of-sight, through ventilation shafts, crawl-spaces and other hard-to-reach areas.
When you are about to move into a new Location, first check the location number and find the corresponding Location Map in the other Location Book. Make sure that the orientation quadrants (found in the bottom left corner of the pages) have the same alignment and place the new Location adjacent to your Location Book, as evenly as possible.
Any Intruders on the newly revealed Location that are also in your Light field (see Scouting on p. 18) are surprised. Place Surprise Status tokens near their bases to reflect that (see Surprised Intruders on p. 30).
Move-Like Ability
If an ability or any other effect allows you to move without performing a Move action, it is considered a Move-like ability. Move-like abilities are resolved in the same way as Move actions (unless stated otherwise), but they are not considered Move actions for the purpose of other abilities and effects.
Noise Roll
The Shepherd is a derelict starship, dead and silent. It's so very easy for your Spacers to make noise. And noise draws terrible things.
Whenever a Spacer makes Noise, for example when they move hurriedly, they have to make a Noise Roll with the appropriate number and color of dice (usually the number of Blips on the board). Noise uses Danger dice (see the Dice box), which means you look out for Potentials, not Successes. Each die that doesn't show any Potential is quiet. Good job! However, each die showing at least one Potential makes Noise. Noise can trigger various effects, but the most common one is Blip movement. Whenever you make Noise, you assign the results to Blips, which will then move towards you (see Blips and Blip Movement below).
Noise Rolls are subject to the following rules:
- Noise uses Danger dice.
- Noise is usually depicted as an Intruder symbol. This means you roll as many dice as there are Blips on the board. The color of the dice rolled depends on the current Countdown level and can't be found on the Intruder Sheet. Generally, the longer the Extraction Run goes, the more alert the Intruders are and the more severe die you will roll.
- If there are more Blips on the board than there are dice of a given color, substitute the remaining dice with dice of a higher color tier (i.e. if there's 5 Blips on the board and you have to roll red dice, take 4 red dice and add 1 black die). This is called promotion.
- If you have to promote dice and you're already using all the black dice provided, trigger the Overwhelm Intruder effect for each dice missing (i.e. if there's 5 Blips on the board and you have to roll black dice, roll 3 black dice and trigger the Overwhelm effect twice).
- Some actions, and weapons, are so loud, that they always make Noise. Those effects show Noise as a number or modifier – they always make at least that much Noise. If Noise has a stiff bonus, i.e. "+1", apply that bonus as that many Potential results to a chosen die. This means such a Noise roll always results in Noise (unless mitigated).
- If the Noise source specifies the number and color of dice rolled, roll those dice instead. In other words, a specific dice configuration always overrides Noise.
- You may use Confidence tokens and Stress to re-roll Noise dice and Discipline tokens to mitigate Noise (see Spacer Pool and Spacer Tokens on p. 8 for details).
- When you make Noise, you immediately take the Priority Target/Last to Noise marker.
- Noise will trigger Blip movement (see Blips and Blip Movement below).
Remember: Various game effects may check for Noise and instruct you to perform a variety of tasks and tests, but there is one effect that always triggers after a Noise: Blip movement.
Dice
Power Dice: These symbols represent Power dice, respectively white, red, and black dice. When you roll these dice, you count Successes/Power.
Danger Dice: This symbol represents what we call Danger dice. Danger dice are normal Power dice, but after rolling them, you count Potentials, not Power.
A Critical Quadrant (half Power/half Success) — each 2 are treated as Power/Success. A total of 4+ critical quadrants gives you a critical chance.
Blips
Blip tokens represent anomalous signatures showing up on your built-in scanner. They may just be electromagnetic static or vermin crawling through the ducts of the space… or they may be very bad news. You won't know until you scout their area – or until they are on top of you.
Blips move during the Intruder Phase, as part of patrolling (see Blip Patrols on p. 30), but they also react to every Noise made. In other words, whenever a Spacer, or something else, makes Noise, Blips will move towards you. You'd better hope it's electromagnetic static…
Blip Movement
Unlike Spacers and Intruders, who move on board spaces, Blips move along lines, from intersection to intersection.
Blips move from intersection to intersection, never onto spaces. As Blips are not considered Intruders (or miniatures for that matter), they may move through closed doors, obstacles, red lines and all other otherwise impassable spaces and features, including Out-Of-Bound spaces.
To make it simple, assume that wherever there are intersecting lines on the Location map, Blips can move.
Moving Blips as a Result of Noise
Whenever a Spacer makes a Noise Roll, they roll as many dice as there are Blips on the board. Then, they assign each die result to a single Blip. After the Spacer resolves their current action, each Blip will move towards them, by the amount of Noise shown on the die assigned to them, starting with the closest Blip (i.e. if a Spacer assigned a die with '2' to a Blip, that Blip would move two intersections towards them). See Noise Roll on p. 16.
Furthermore:
- If the Blip is on an intersection that aligns with the Spacer's space, it moves in a straight line toward the Spacer.
- If the intersection and the space don't align, i.e. the Spacer and the Blip do not share a board line, the first move should be performed in the direction that would take the Blip closer to potential alignment. After that the Blip will 'zigzag' towards the Spacer (See Intruder Movement on p. 28), alternating directions, until it arrives on an intersection that shares a line with the Spacer's space, at which point it will continue to move in a straight line.
- If the Blip would ever move adjacent to or while adjacent a Spacer, it's immediately revealed (see Revealing Blips on p. 18).
- Blips travel freely between Location map pages; the edges of two aligned pages create a single line.
- If, for whatever reason, the Location map pages don't align, and a Blip is supposed to move from one to the other, it moves to the nearest intersection instead.
- If a Blip ends their movement on an intersection containing another Blip, move that other Blip immediately one intersection towards the Spacer.
Spawning Blips
Unless stated otherwise, a new Blip always spawns on a spawn point closest to the Spacer who triggered the spawn effect, facing the most Spacers. Furthermore:
- If no Spacer triggered the effect (for example, it was triggered by the Countdown marker moving onto a space with a Blip symbol), the Blip spawns closest to the Priority Target/Last to Noise Spacer.
- If all spawn points are occupied, spawn the new Blip on the closest spawn point and immediately trigger Blip movement, as if the new Blip moved onto that space.
Countdown Level Effects
In the Infiltration Level (WHITE), the Intruders are unaware of your presence:
- During the Countdown Phase, no Blips spawn from the Countdown Track.
- During the Spacer Phase, Blips moving as a result of Noise do not change their patrol direction.
- Revealed Blips spawn WHITE Intruders.
In the Eclipse Level (RED), the Intruders have become wary:
- During the Countdown Phase, spawn 1 new Blip.
- During the Spacer Phase, Blips moving as a result of Noise change their patrol direction to face the source of the Noise.
- Revealed Blips spawn WHITE and RED Intruders.
In the Extraction Level (BLACK), the Intruders know of you and will try to eliminate you. You should think of extraction!
- Most Intruders' Noise Die becomes much better, making for faster Blip movement.
- During the Countdown Phase, spawn 1 new Blip.
- During the Spacer Phase, Blips moving as a result of Noise change their patrol direction to face the source of the Noise.
- Patrolling Blips move towards closest Spacer.
- Revealed Blips spawn WHITE, RED and BLACK Intruders.
Revealing Blips
When you are forced to reveal a Blip, flip it. If the Blip turns out to be an Echo, it is removed from play, and a new Blip is spawned according to normal spawn rules (see Spawning Blips on p. 17).
If a Blip turns out to be an Intruder, or Intruders, immediately spawn that Intruder on a space adjacent to the Spacer. If no such spaces are available, spawn them on the nearest empty space. Then, return that Blip to the Blip Pool (but don't spawn a new Blip).
- If, for whatever reason, no more Blips can be spawned, for each Blip that should spawn, trigger the Intruder's Overwhelm ability, ignoring any Blip removal instructions.
Sneaking Past Blips
Until revealed, Blips are just that, vague readings on a foggy display. Whatever they are, they may not even be on the same deck as you. Consequently, a Spacer can move past a Blip, or end their movement on a space adjacent to a Blip, and not reveal it. However, if a Blip would ever move adjacent to or while adjacent a Spacer, it's immediately revealed!
A Spacer moving past a Blip does not cause it to be revealed. However, if the Blip moves onto an intersection adjacent to a Spacer, or is about to move from an intersection adjacent to a Spacer, it is immediately revealed.
Overspawn
If, for whatever reason, no more Intruders can be spawned, for each Intruder that should spawn, immediately activate the farthest Intruder.
Unique Specimen
If a revealed Blip turns out to be a Unique Specimen, spawn it normally, then draw a random Unique Specimen card and place it on the Intruder Board. Then, place a corresponding number token under the spawned Intruder to denote this.
Ambush Attacks
If a Blip reveals itself in the manner described above, the spawned Intruder immediately acts (see B. Resolving AI Protocols on p. 28).
If you reveal the Blip through another means, like the Scout action, you do not perform an ambush attack. In fact, if you reveal a Blip with a Scout action, you will be able to turn the table on the Intruders and perform an immediate attack against one of the spawned enemies at no extra cost! (See Scouting).
Scouting
Scouting is an Adrenaline action that allows you to stay on top of the Intruders, as it allows you to proactively check out a Blip signal and verify if it is a glitch or if maybe something terrible is coming your way – and say hello with your firearms.
Each Suit is equipped with a default Light source, which may be upgraded by a variety of means later during the game. Each Light source has a field, which follows the rules for Weapon range (see Effective Range on p. 21), and intensity, measured in Power dice. The basic suit has an intensity of 1.
You can only scout Blips that are within your Light field. If there is an eligible Blip within range, you may perform the Scout action against it. When you do, you perform a Scout Roll - roll as many Light dice as shown on your Light source:
- If you roll at least 1 Power, you may reveal the Blip. If it's an Echo, discard it and spawn a new Blip, according to normal spawning rules.
- If it's an Intruder, you may flip it back or immediately spawn the Intruder on an eligible space. Then, if you want, you may flip the Brainstorm card and immediately perform an Attack against one of the newly spawned Intruders, using an equipped Weapon. You do not gain a second Adrenaline boost, but you do leave Spacer tokens. This free attack does not Exert you (see Exerting on p. 14).
- If you don't roll any Power, you failed to scout the Blip.
- You may use Confidence tokens and Stress to re-roll your dice, and Discipline tokens to turn Potentials into Power/Success (see Spacer Pool and Spacer tokens on p. 8 for details).
Note: As an Adrenaline action, Scouting raises your Adrenaline and allows you to leave Spacer tokens!
Full Game: In the full game, Scouting will have additional uses.
Rationalizing
Rationalizing is an Adrenaline action you can perform to keep your nerves in check and push through to extraction. RATIONALIZE is one of the simpler actions you can take, as it simply lowers your Stress by 2. As Stress is used for re-rolls and having more than 9 Stress results in death (See Death and Life Spares on p. 42), you want to keep it low.
Note: As an Adrenaline action, Rationalizing raises your Adrenaline and allows you to leave Spacer tokens!
Full Game: In the full game, Rationalizing will have additional uses.
Scavenging
Scavenging is an Adrenaline action that allows you to search your immediate surroundings, open Gear Caches, find Engrams, interact with Consoles, and more. SCAVENGE is one of the simpler actions you can take, as it simply allows you to collect a Gear Cache, Engram or Objective token on your space, or interact with a Console on your space without spending Spacer Tokens.
Note: As an Adrenaline action, Scavenging raises your Adrenaline and allows you to leave Spacer tokens!
Full Game: In the full game, Scavenging will have additional uses.
Fast Scavenging
If you don't have time to stop and perform a Scavenge action, you may always perform Fast Scavenging during a Move.
To perform Fast Scavenging, you must first perform a Move action that takes you to or through a space with an Engram, Gear Cache or Objective token, or a Console. You must also discard 1/2/3 appropriate Spacer tokens from the Active Spacer Pool. The exact number of tokens depends on the current Countdown level (White = 1, Red = 2, Black = 3):
- To pick up an item from a Cache, use Expertise tokens.
- To pick up an Engram, use Discipline tokens.
- To interact with a Console, use Confidence tokens.
- To pick up an Objective token, use the type of token indicated by the Objective instructions; if the instructions do not specify the token type, use any token type. All the tokens must still be of the same type.
Note: Fast Scavenging is considered an action.
Picking Up Gear
A Gear Cache token in a Location space represents an unlooted Gear Cache. When you perform the Scavenge or Fast Scavenge action on a space with an unlooted Gear Cache, you remove the token from the board, to indicate it has been looted, then draw a card from the location's loot deck.
When drawing from the loot deck, draw from the bottom and avoid disturbing the deck's lid. You immediately gain the card you drew. You may immediately equip it (moving any equipped items to your backpack) or put it in your backpack. Observe your equip, support and backpack slot limits! If you don't have any available slots, you may be forced to discard something. All discarded Gear cards are lost.
Important: In the full game, Gear cards will be double-sided. Remember to always gain the Gear card corresponding to your Parsec number (Blue One (1), Yellow Two (2) or Red Three (3)). If the card does not have the appropriate parsec number, you gain the lower one available.
Picking Up Engrams and Objective Tokens
Engrams represent useful devices and materials specific to your current Location, while Objective tokens represent objectives pertinent to your current mission or side mission. When you perform the Scavenge or Fast Scavenge action on a space with an Engram or Objective token, you simply collect it.
Engram tokens are double-sided. One side shows the device you're collecting, while the other the raw resources you will gain from it once the extraction run is finished. When you gain an Engram, you always gain it device-side up. Here are the general rules of Engrams:
- Until the end of the current run, you may use the device according to the rules of your Location.
- When you use a device-side up Engram, flip it to the resource side to show it has been used. Note that you will still gain the Engram resources after the run is finished.
- When the run is finished, flip any unused Engrams to their resource side. This means there is no point in 'saving' the Engram ability, as its only usable during the run the Engram was gained!
- Engrams don't take up any slots.
Interacting with Consoles
Consoles are interactable elements of locations, used to open or close doors, restore gravity, vent oxygen, disable or enable security systems and cameras, and more. When you perform the Scavenge or Fast Scavenge action on a space with a Console, refer to the corresponding number in the Mythos book.
In the Full Game, some consoles will be security-locked, and will require a test to access.
Exhausting and Rearming
When instructed to exhaust a card, you should turn it 90 degrees to the right to denote it. It is still treated as equipped, but you cannot use it as an active weapon, use its defensive statistics or activate any of its abilities except effects triggered by exhaustion (e.g. "if exhausted") or effects resulting in it unexhausting (e.g. "When you are knocked down, unexhaust this card"). Note: Passive abilities remain in effect even if a card they are printed on is exhausted. Similarly, traits are always active. Cards remain exhausted until they are unexhausted by another effect (see below), most commonly by the use of the Rearm action.
Rearming is an action that allows you to both unexhaust all exhausted cards, as well as equip Weapons and/or Support Gear from your backpack and place any currently equipped Weapons and/or Support Gear into the backpack. Be mindful of your carry limit. Note: When you loot a Weapon or Support Gear, you may perform Switch Weapons for free.
Spacer Attacks
Attack is an Adrenaline action used to attack Intruders. To perform a Spacer Attack action, resolve these steps, called the attack sequence, in the following order:
- Choose Weapon and Target
- Raise Adrenaline and Depleting Weapon
- Resolve the Attack Roll
- Intruder Responses
- Leave Spacer tokens and Suppress
- Generate Noise
Weapons and Support Gear
Each Weapon and Gear card in Enormity has a set of stats and attributes that describe it and makes it unique. It's good to learn what your equipment does before you equip it!
- Attack Dice: This shows the number and color of dice you will roll when attacking.
- Attack Modifiers: Sometimes a weapon grants you a Discipline, Confidence or Expertise modifier during the attack. These work exactly like the corresponding Spacer tokens, but are not tokens and are only applied to the current attack.
- Range: This shows the range, in board spaces, the weapon can attack at.
- Suppressing Power: This shows the number of Suppressing Power tokens you leave when you fail to wound. See Suppressing on p. 22 for details.
- Critical Threshold: This shows you how easy it is to Crit with the weapon. Generally, the more red quadrants the weapon has, the easier it is to crit with. See Check for Critical Chance on p. 21 for details.
- Ammo: These bullet shaped symbols show you the number of Ammo 'units' the weapon starts with. After you deplete all your ammo, you won't be able to use it until you reload it. See Full Reloading on p. 23 and Fast Reloading on p. 23. Some weapons and items have Charges instead of Ammo. Charges are used in the same way as Ammo, but once depleted, they will stay that way.
- Noise: When used, most weapons generate Noise, and this stat shows exactly how much.
- Type: One-handed, two-handed, three-handed, armor or support. Each Spacer can carry up to 2 one-handed items or 1 two-handed item. Support slots vary depending on your Suit. Note: You always have access to the Standard Multitool weapon card, it is considered constantly equipped.
- Keywords: Common weapon abilities, like Linear, Melee or Reach (you'll find a list of keywords at the end of this Rulebook).
Some items require you to exhaust them to use them. If that's the case, turn the card 90 degrees to the right to denote this. Weapons with the Discharge keyword will unexhaust at the beginning of your next turn, but all others will remain exhausted until you use the Rearm action. See Exhausting and Rearming on p. 19 for details.
Some defensive items may also feature Damage Reduction, which lowers the damage from each incoming attack according to its value (to a minimum of 1).
1. Choosing Weapon and Target
Choose the active weapon, then choose an Intruder as your target. You can only choose a target in that weapon's effective range (see Effective Range on p. 21) and LoS (see Line of Sight on p. 21).
To become an active weapon, the weapon has to meet certain requirements:
- It needs to be equipped
- It cannot be exhausted
- If it has an Ammo or Charge attribute, there must be at least 1 Ammo or Charge token left
- It cannot have a Discharge Status token
If you cannot choose a legal active weapon, there are no Intruders in your effective range or you don't have LoS, you cannot perform an attack. Do not resolve any further steps of the attack sequence. If an Attack ends in this step, it does not cause a Chain Break (see p. 29).
2. Raising Adrenaline and Depleting Weapon
Raise your Adrenaline value by 1. If your active weapon has an Ammo or Charge attribute, discard 1 corresponding token from it (note: some keywords and effects may force you to discard more than 1 Ammo/Charge token per attack). If your active weapon has the Discharge keyword, place a Status token on it.
3. Resolving the Attack Roll
Intruders are otherworldly beings that are hard to wound and almost impossible to kill. To reflect this, when attacking an Intruder or a Boss Intruder, you won't be dealing direct damage; instead, you will be checking if the Total Power of your attack is equal to or higher than the Intruder's current Antinomy Threshold (AT for short). If it is, you will wound it, if not, tough luck!
To perform the Attack Roll, follow these steps:
A. Create the Power Pool. First, gather your Power Pool. The pool is comprised of Power dice of various colors (white, red and black, green and orange) and, sometimes, of raw Power points. The higher the number of dice in the pool, the better your chances of wounding an Intruder. Most of your Power dice will come from the active weapon itself, but sometimes you will gain Power bonuses from other sources, like your Rubicon, equipped non-weapon Gear, other cards and other applicable game effects.
B. Roll the Dice. To perform the Attack Roll, simply take all the dice in your Power Pool and roll them. Each Power symbol gives you one Power. Then, add all the raw Power you have, each of these is simply treated as another Power symbol. Finally, each two Potential give you another +1 Power.
C. Power Re-rolls, Potentials and Other Modifiers. Before you resolve the Attack Roll, you have the chance to modify it to your advantage in a variety of ways, using tokens from the Active Spacer Pool, weapon modifiers and Stress.
First, you may re-roll dice using Confidence tokens from the Active Pool or weapon modifiers. One Confidence allows you to re-roll exactly one die once, and you must declare all dice you wish to re-roll with Confidence before re-rolling any of them.
If you wish to re-roll dice, and you have no Confidence, you may still use Stress as a substitute:
- Gain +1 Stress for each die you want to re-roll in this way.
- Other than your overall Stress level, there is no limit on the number of dice you may re-roll using Stress.
- You perform Stress re-rolls after normal Confidence re-rolls.
- You may re-roll a die already re-rolled with Confidence.
- Each die may be re-rolled with Stress exactly once.
- Going over 9 Stress results in your Spacer's death.
Each Potential result on a die gives you one potential. These do not provide you with any benefits by themselves, but they can be turned into Power using various effects. The most common of those effects are the Discipline tokens from the Active Pool or weapon modifiers.
The third type of Spacer token, Expertise, does not have a direct use in an attack, but may pay for many other abilities and effects that influence it.
D. Check for Critical Chance. After you're done with all the re-rolls, check if you have gained a Critical Chance. To do it, you have to have a total of 4+ critical quadrants between your dice and weapon.
If you've managed to get 4+ critical quadrants, your attack may result in a critical wound. However, this will only happen if you managed to beat the AT value. Hence, it's called a critical chance.
Compare Power and AT. After using all re-rolls, symbols and all other applicable abilities, sum up all Power. This is the Total Power of this Attack. Remember, to successfully wound an Intruder, your Total Power must be equal to or higher than the current AT value!
You will find the Intruder's AT value on its sheet, in a space corresponding to the current Countdown level or, in the case of a Boss Intruder, directly on the BP card (see Wounding Boss, Intruders and Wounds on p. 34).
If your Total Power is equal to or higher than the Intruder's AT value, you deal a Wound. If you gained a critical chance, you deal a critical wound instead! Most baseline Intruders die after being wounded once, but Boss Intruders will take much more punishment (see Incursions on p. 32). Some particularly powerful baseline Intruders can have multiple Wounds, too; whenever you wound a baseline Intruder with a Wound stat, place a Wounded Status token near their base to reflect the Wound. As soon as the number of Wounds is equal to or higher than the Intruder's Wound stat, they are killed.
If your Total Power is less than the AT value, you fail to wound. Note: Some game elements have additional effects that trigger (or may activate) on a Wound or Fail. Remember to always resolve all "Wound:" and "Fail:" effects.
Effective Range
In Enormity, most weapons are ranged, meaning you can attack with them from a distance. The Range weapon statistic shows the exact distance you can shoot at, measured in spaces. You count the distance just like you would count spaces for movement purposes, in other words, range is also measured cardinally, and never diagonally.
If the range symbol is crossed out, the weapon is considered a Melee weapon and requires the Spacer to be adjacent to its target (see the Board Spaces, Adjacency, Lines, Intersections and Out-of-Bounds Spaces box on p. 15).
Some ranged weapons require simple trajectories that limit their flexibility. If a weapon has the Linear keyword, it can be shot only in straight lines. If a weapon has the Reach keyword, it means it's actually not a ranged weapon, but a particularly long Melee Weapon. You still count the distance just like you would for range, but are not considered to be using a ranged weapon for other game purposes. This attack is considered a melee attack. Finally, if the weapon has the Deadzone keyword, it means it cannot be used on an adjacent target.
Line of Sight
A model is in LoS if you can draw a straight, uninterrupted line from any corner of the space occupied by the attacking miniature to any corner of the space occupied by the potential target of attack. If the line passes through Obstacles, Intruders, walls (black lines) or red lines, it is considered interrupted and there is no LoS. If the line passes along the edge of such space, it is also considered interrupted. Conversely, if the line only touches a corner of such a space, it is uninterrupted, and there is LoS. Important: A miniature never blocks LoS to itself.
A Spacer must have LoS to the Intruder to attack it. An Intruder must have LoS to the Target only if the command line requires it to be in front or in sight.
4. Intruder Responses
Intruders are powerful, otherworldly beings, and they do not stand idly by when attacked! Almost every Spacer Attack will garner some form of response. Most responses are resolved immediately after the Attack Roll, with the exception of the deadly Reprisal Attacks (performed by the Intruders) and devastating Follow-up Attacks (performed by Spacers), both of which happen after the current Spacer Attack is fully resolved.
The exact nature of an Intruder response depends on the result of the Attack Roll:
- If you scored a Wound, you resolve the Wound response. Note: You resolve the Wound response even if the Intruder dies, which will usually be the case with the lesser aliens.
- If you scored a critical wound, resolve the Critical response (and ignore all other responses).
- If you failed to wound the Intruder, you resolve the Fail response.
- Sometimes an Intruder will also have an Instinct response that you have to resolve regardless of the attack (and in addition to any other normal response; the only exception to this is a critical wound, which would make you ignore an Instinct).
If the response doesn't involve any new attacks, resolve it during this step. If there are no appropriate responses (for example, you failed to wound, but the Intruder Profile doesn't have a Fail response), nothing happens. If multiple responses apply, resolve them in the order of your choosing. Unless stated otherwise, a response should be resolved regardless of the Spacer's positioning (like adjacency).
Reprisal and Follow-up Attack responses. When these come up, note what kind of attack you are meant to resolve, then finish up the current attack sequence. The new Attack will happen immediately after this one is completely resolved and will not cause a Chain Break.
Note: Unless stated otherwise, responses are resolved by the Intruder against the Spacer (e.g. to resolve Wound: Pushback 4, the Intruder would push the Spacer 4 spaces).
5. Leaving Spacer Tokens and Suppressing
Regardless of how you fared during the attack – if you managed to wound or kill the Intruder or not – you will still contribute to your team's effort. This support comes in the form of leaving Spacer tokens and potentially suppressing an unharmed Intruder.
Spacer tokens. First, you may activate all applicable abilities from your Rubicon, like Discipline, Confidence, and Expertise, that are below the Adrenaline indicator threshold, as well as any Discipline X, Confidence X and Expertise X abilities from your active weapon and any other equipped non-weapon cards. Only the attacking Spacer activates these abilities. Unless stated otherwise, all the tokens generated with these abilities land in the Incoming Spacer Pool (see Spacer Pool and Spacer tokens on p. 8).
Note: Some keywords, like Fallback X, may also trigger at this time.
Suppressing. Failing to wound an Intruder is a dire outcome and may put you in grave danger. There is a silver lining, though: your attack might not have penetrated the Antinomy Threshold field, but it did suppress it, if only for a little while.
If your Attack doesn't penetrate the Intruder's Antinomy Threshold field (AT for short), i.e., doesn't result in a Wound, you will leave Suppression tokens up to the value of your weapon's Suppressing Power. Place those tokens near the Intruder's base.
Suppression tokens have a variety of game effects. Until the Intruder's next activation:
- each Suppression token counts as -1 Speed
- each Suppression token counts as -1 AT
- a suppressed Intruder does not perform Attacks of Opportunity (see Attacks of Opportunity on p. 30)
Important: Suppression tokens from different Attacks do not stack. An Intruder is always Suppressed up to the highest Suppression value (i.e., if your weapon has Suppressing Power of 1, while an Intruder already has 2 Suppression tokens, it will not gain another token, as the previous suppression value was higher than yours).
6. Generating Noise
You are almost done, almost through… there is still one more grim duty you have to perform. Check if anything else heard your life and death struggle, and is about to drop in with a visit.
If your active weapon is not Noiseless, it will generate some kind of Noise. You perform this roll just like any other Noise Roll, rolling the indicated number of Danger dice. If your Noise box shows an Intruder symbol, check the Intruder Sheet and take the die corresponding to your current Countdown level.
Sometimes the Noise box shows a Danger die followed by a slash and an Ammo symbol. This means 'per shot' and is used by weapons capable of burst fire (see below).
Remember: Whenever you make Noise, Blips move towards you. This means that your Attack may result in a Blip reveal and an Ambush attack!
Burst Attacks
The longer an extraction run goes, the harder it becomes, and there may be times when you become overwhelmed by the sheer number of Intruders rushing your way. Thankfully, some of the high-powered automatic weapons at your disposal may even the odds.
If a weapon has a Burst X frame, it may be used to target more than one Intruder with a single attack action, up to X Intruders. A Burst Attack is considered a normal attack, but is subject to the following additional rules:
- Choosing weapon and target: You declare the Burst Attack during the 'Choose Weapon and Target' step; each target needs to be within your effective range and your active weapon needs to have at least 1 Ammo token per target; if you don't have enough Ammo for each target, you cannot declare that target.
- Raising Adrenaline and Depleting Weapon: During the 'Raise Adrenaline and Deplete Weapon' step, discard 1 Ammo token per target; you still only gain +1 Adrenaline.
- Resolving separate Attack Rolls: You resolve a separate Attack roll for each target, in your chosen order; only once you fully resolve one Attack roll, do you proceed to the next one.
- Single Spacer Pool and modifiers: The Spacer tokens in the Active Pool and your weapon modifiers are not duplicated; you have to be careful and make do with what you have!
- Separate Intruder responses: You proceed to Intruder responses only after resolving all Attack rolls; resolve responses in the same order you have resolved Attack rolls; if a single response makes another response unattainable for any reason, ignore it.
- Leaving tokens and Suppression: You do not double the Spacer tokens you leave, but you do suppress each target (if eligible).
- Generating Noise: You generate Noise once, but the Noise level accounts for each additional target.
Full Reloading
Reloading is an Adrenaline action that allows you to reload a currently equipped Weapon to its maximum ammo capacity.
- Some Weapons (with the Heavy keyword) can only be reloaded by the Full Reload action.
- You may fully reload a weapon even if it still has some Ammo tokens.
- A Full Reload action will not restore used Charges or remove a Discharge Status.
Note: As an Adrenaline action, Full Reloading raises your Adrenaline and allows you to leave Spacer tokens!
Fast Reloading
If you can't spare the time for a full reload, there are other ways to load that ammo – just not all of it! The Fast Reload action allows you to reload a currently equipped Weapon with exactly 1 ammo.
- Some Weapons (with the Heavy keyword) can only be reloaded by the Full Reload action.
- You may fast reload a weapon even if it still has some Ammo tokens.
- Most Fast Reload actions demand you pay some additional cost, like Stress or Adrenaline; if you cannot pay the cost, you cannot perform the action.
- A Fast Reload action will not restore used Charges or remove a Discharge Status.
End of Spacer Turn and Milling the Spacer Pool
After you resolve all of your played Action cards (or choose not to resolve them), use any abilities and use any unlocked Stratagems (see Stratagems on p. 39), and are ready to pass the turn to another player, mill the Spacer Pool.
To mill the Spacer Pool, first discard all tokens from the Active Pool. Then, move all tokens from the Incoming Pool to the Active Pool.
End of the Spacer Phase
Sometimes a game effect will trigger at the end of the Spacer Phase. In such a case, it's resolved after all of the Spacers take their turns, but before they proceed to the Intruder Phase. If there is more than one End of Phase effect, players resolve these in any order they like.
Discoveries
The Shepherd has visited places none of Earth have dreamed of. Those experiences have left a mark. Scars. During your mission, you will uncover them. You need to uncover them – why else risk your necks out there?
Discovery tokens represent interesting, and potentially dangerous, things going on within the ship. Events, encounters, enemies, friends, clues. A Discovery token may be any or none of the above.
Making Discoveries has its own rewards (like finding new Gear) and penalties (like disturbing something that should not be disturbed), but it is also your overarching objective during Extraction Runs: Extraction from your mission will become possible only after making a certain number of Discoveries! (See Extraction on p. 24 for details).
Resolving Discoveries is straightforward:
- Whenever a Spacer ends their move on a space with a Discovery token or a Discovery token triggers from the Countdown Track, resolve it.
Note: Resolving fixed Discoveries and random Discoveries flows slightly differently (see below).
Open World Discoveries in the Full Game
In this Demo, each section has a limited amount of Discoveries, while the full game will sport nearly 1000 of them. Discoveries will be tied to a campaign or persistent world (if you decide to run your one-off sessions in one!) and reset after you finish that campaign or retire a world.
In the full game, Discoveries will be grouped in sets. Whenever a set of Discoveries becomes fully marked (or the only unmarked discoveries are those you have not fulfilled special conditions for), mark the special top space of that set. From now on, that set becomes wild: if you ever make a Discovery from such a set, you will roll to see which one you got!
In the demo, once you run out of Discoveries from a given section, that's it! Sorry, the demo needs to end somewhere…
After you resolve a Discovery token, discard it onto a Discovery discard pile.
- Finally, move the Extraction Marker on the Countdown Track one space toward the '!' zero hour space.
Important: In most runs this is necessary to make extraction possible (see Extraction below).
Numbered Discoveries — Scenarios: Fixed Discoveries
In the first scenario of the Dark Side of the Sun Demo, you will be using revealed Discovery tokens showing numbers. When you enter a space with such a token, simply check its number and look up the corresponding Discovery card. Then, resolve the card. Note that a Discovery card may then send you to read a paragraph in the Mythos Book. If that's the case, it will be accompanied by a 4-digit code.
Facedown and Random Discoveries — Open World: Random Discoveries
If the setup didn't instruct you to use fixed Discoveries, you will be using random discoveries instead. In that case, when you reveal a Discovery token (either from the board or Countdown Track), ignore the number and instead check its color, then find the appropriate section and chapter: your current Location (i.e. Solar Ring), current Parsec (i.e. First Parsec), or current Intruder (i.e. Automas).
Each section contains a set of Discoveries numbered in an ascending order, starting from '1'. To make a Discovery, roll a d10 and add X to the result, where X is the number of Discovery tokens already in the Discovery discard pile (regardless of color).
Resolution Boxes
Most Discoveries have resolution boxes besides their names. When you resolve a given Discovery, mark its resolution box with a vinyl sticker (in the Full Game) or pencil. That Discovery has been resolved and you will not be resolving it again. When you draw this same Discovery later:
If it's a chained Discovery, you will resolve the next one in that chain.
If it's the last Discovery in a chain – it ends with an end symbol – skip it and resolve the next Discovery on the list.
Discovery Chains
Notice that some Discoveries are connected. Usually, the first Discovery in a chain is a numbered one, while the rest are connected to it with the chain symbol. When your Discovery's resolution box has been marked, if it's a chain Discovery, resolve the next Discovery in that chain. Some chains will be made of several Discoveries!
Infinite Discoveries
Some Discoveries have an infinity symbol instead of a resolution box. These are never checked. Consequently, you will always resolve infinite Discoveries.
Penalties and Bonuses
If not stated otherwise, Discovery bonuses and penalties affect only the Spacer who made them.
Discovery from the Countdown Track
Whenever you make a Discovery from the Countdown Track (a fixed or random one), if the Discovery is not global, and doesn't specify who made it, it is made by the Priority Target/Last to Noise Spacer.
Clues
If a Discovery tells you to gain a Clue, make a note of it. Clues are shared by every Spacer present, though you only note them once (in other words, they are campaign-wide).
Additional Notes on Open World Discoveries
Some Discoveries may have special conditions that need to be met before you can make them. If the special condition is not met, you will proceed to the next Discovery on the list.
Some Discoveries may outright exclude others (by asking you to cross them out).
Some Discoveries may direct you to ongoing storylines, if you have any.
Some Intruder and Location Discoveries may still be locked by the Parsec you're currently on.
Extraction
You've fulfilled your objectives, grabbed as much loot and engrams as possible, and you've held your own against the Intruders. Yet, sooner or later, you will become overwhelmed, and it will be time to go. If you manage to do it, congratulations, you've successfully completed a run! We call this tactical retreat an Extraction.
Extraction has 4 prerequisites:
- There needs to be an Extraction Point on the map.
- Extraction needs to be made available.
- You need to initiate Extraction.
- You need to wait for the way to open and then escape through it.
1. Locating an Extraction Point on the Map
Extraction Points are clearly marked with a special large symbol. If the Location you're in does not have an Extraction Point, you may need to locate it, using Consoles, revealing Discoveries or moving the story forward!
2. Making Extraction Available
When you go on a run, you have an overarching mission, to learn what happened on the ship – you will be hard-pressed to abandon it if you have not learned anything substantial. This is represented by the fact that Extraction Points need to be activated. In other words, Extraction – returning from your mission – is not an option from the start of a run!
During setup, you've placed an Extraction Marker on the Countdown Track, on a space specified by your current Course card or a scenario setup. Whenever you make a Discovery (fixed or random, from the board or from the track, it doesn't matter), move this marker one space toward the '!' zero hour space (see Discoveries above).
Important: Count Spacer turns, not game rounds or Spacer phases!
As soon as you move it onto the '!' zero hour space, remove it from the Countdown Track altogether. From this point on, Extraction becomes available from any Extraction Point located on the map. Remember, even if Extraction Points are activated, you still need to initiate Extraction manually (see below).
Important: In some cases, Extraction may become available even if there are no Extraction Points currently on the board. Once an Extraction Point is located, Extraction is immediately available. Neat!
3. Initiating Extraction
Extraction is available, you can initiate Extraction from a space adjacent to the large Extraction Point space by using a Fast Scavenge or Scavenge Action.
When you initiate Extraction, several things happen. First, place X Exfiltration Status tokens on that Extraction Point, where X is the current number of surviving Spacers. From this moment onward, at the start of each Spacer's turn, discard 1 token from the Extraction Point. As soon as you discard the last token, the Extraction Point becomes a board space reachable from any adjacent space. Any Spacer who ends their movement on that space extracts safely and is removed from the board. When all Spacers are either extracted or dead, the run ends and, if at least 1 Spacer extracted, it is considered a success (if any of your Spacers died, don't worry, you have more lives, see Death and Life Spares on p. 42).
Blips and Initiated Extraction
Sounds simple, right? Not quite. Extraction is loud and draws the attention of Intruders who become fully alert. At the beginning of every Intruder Phase every Blip turns to face the Extraction space, and always moves towards that space, utilizing zigzag movement. As soon as a Blip on full alert moves adjacent to the Extraction Point (as a result of patrolling or a Noise Roll), it is revealed.
Extraction and Insertion
One man's exit is another man's entrance. Each Extraction Point you discover during your runs will become a new starting point for future runs, creating a network of fast travel starting points, accessible via an intraship tram system.
When you revisit a Location, you will start from that Location's Extraction Point which, for the purposes of Spacer setup, will be called an Insertion Point. In such a case, setup your Spacers adjacent to that Insertion Point, or adjacent to other Spacers. This allows for some flexibility in Spacer setup on a return visit.
There is one more important rule to keep in mind when entering a Location through an Insertion Point. For this run, it stops being an Extraction Point and is unavailable for Extraction. In other words, you cannot get out the same way you came in! As there is at most one Extraction Point per Location map page, you will always have to move to at least one more Location page to find a usable Extraction Point.
Intruder Phase
In the Intruder Phase, the alien and unknowable comes for your Spacers. Blips patrol the map or converge on the Spacers, while revealed Intruders act. Intruders are not controlled by a specific player. Instead, their behaviors will be dictated by AI protocols, and AI and BP cards.
Intruders
Intruders are all sorts of extraterrestrial – or extradimensional? Or… — beings you can encounter on the Shepherd. They are alien, unknowable, powerful… and they will be the doom of you. Kill them, sneak past them, outrun them, do whatever you have to do to survive. The Intruders you face during extraction runs, called baseline, are relatively weaker and more predictable than Boss Intruders – but they are oh so numerous…
Intruders are enemies represented by standees or miniatures and usually take up a single board space, just like Spacers. An Intruder is defined by various attributes and statistics found on their oversized Intruder Sheet (in the Full Game, this will be an Intruder Manual book!), as well as Unique Specimen cards. Note: Boss Intruders have additional AI, BP and Trait cards, making them much more formidable (see Boss Intruders on p. 32).
Anatomy of an Intruder — Intruder Sheet Statistics
- Name: This is the name of the Intruder type you're facing, as named by the Spacers.
- Level: This shows you the level of the Intruders you are facing. The applicable level depends on many factors, like the zone of the ship you're in, the Course card you're on and Escalation. Thankfully, in the demo, only level 1 is available.
- Speed: This shows the basic movement speed of this type of Intruder.
- Baseline Intruders: Note that the Speed, AT and Noise Awareness values of baseline Intruders depend on your current Countdown level. See Countdown Escalation on p. 27 for details.
- Boss Intruder: Most Boss Intruders have unlimited Speed.
- AT: This shows the strength needed to break through the Intruder's Antinomy Threshold to deal a Wound (see Spacer Attacks on p. 19).
- Baseline Intruders: Note that the Speed, AT and Noise Awareness values of baseline Intruders depend on your current Countdown level. See Countdown Escalation on p. 27 for details.
- Boss Intruder: The AT values of Boss Intruders fluctuate even more; you will find them on the BP cards.
- Wounds: Some especially powerful Intruders have multiple Wounds.
- Baseline Intruders: Baseline Intruders don't have separate cards to show Wounds. You use the Wounded Status token to denote them (see 3. Resolving the Attack Roll on p. 20).
- Boss Intruder: Boss Intruders have a whole deck of BP cards to represent Wounds.
- Noise Awareness: This shows the type of die rolled when performing an Intruder symbol Noise Roll.
Facing
Every miniature has a front, the direction it is facing. Some targeting instructions and other game elements may refer to a miniature's facing, like front or rear. To find out if a miniature or any other game element is in front of another miniature, draw an imaginary line passing along the edges of the spaces occupied by the active miniature's front. All spaces beyond this line in the direction the miniature is facing are considered to be in front (see diagram).
Rear designates only the spaces adjacent to the miniature, directly behind it (in relation to the front). White spaces and intersections are in front, while the orange space is considered a Rear space.
First Contact
First Contact is always frightening. As soon as the first Intruder of a given type is revealed, immediately perform their First Contact ability. Note that Blips are not considered Intruders.
Countdown Escalation
In Enormity, your enemies grow in power throughout the game session, just like the Spacers. Boss Intruders follow special rules tied to gaining Wounds, called Escalation (see p. 35 for details), while extraction run Intruders get stronger with the growing level of the Countdown Track.
Whenever an effect or attribute shows several values in Countdown colors, cross reference that effect or attribute with the Countdown level and apply the corresponding statistic.
Stats dependent on the current Countdown level. The most common attributes that escalate with the Countdown level are Speed, AT and Noise Awareness. For example, on the white Countdown level, the Grin have an AT value of 3. However, as soon as the marker moves onto the first red Countdown space, their AT rises to 4.
Note that this progression is not linear. Sometimes an attribute can stay the same even if the Countdown level goes up. For example, the Grin have a Speed value of 3 on both the white and red Countdown level.
Finally, if an attribute is shown as dice (like Noise Awareness), their color does not necessarily correspond to the color of Countdown level. For example, on the white Countdown level, the Grin use white dice during Noise Rolls. On the red Countdown level, those dice remain white. Remember: Always check the Intruder Sheet for Intruder statistics!
Distance
Sometimes you will have to check the relative distance between two game objects, usually a Spacer and an Intruder (e.g. Closest or Furthest). Distance in Enormity is always measured in spaces, and always orthogonally (in cardinal directions), never diagonally.
Unique Specimen
Not all baseline Intruders were made equal. Some rare specimens are stronger, faster or just straight weirder. Whenever a Unique Specimen is revealed, draw a random Unique Specimen card of the Intruder type, place it on one of the numbered spaces on the Intruder Sheet and place a corresponding numbered token underneath the standee or miniature instead.
Unique Specimen cards modify the basic stats and behavior of that baseline Intruder. The modification may be straightforward, for example, the Intruder may have a bonus to Speed or AT, but may also be more complex, like a new AI Protocol that replaces one of the basic Protocols for that given Intruder, a passive trait or something else.
Flow of the Intruder Phase
During an Extraction Run, the Intruder Phase observes the following order:
- Intruders activate: Each Intruder acts according to their AI protocols or AI cards.
- Blip Patrols: Blips move in their predetermined directions or, on higher Countdown levels, converge on the Spacers.
- End of Round: End of Round effects happen.
Important: The Intruder Phase during an Incursion flows slightly differently; see p. 32 for details.
1. Intruders Activate
Activate each revealed Intruder on the board, starting with the one closest to a Spacer. If two or more Intruders are equally close, players choose the order of their activations.
When a baseline Intruder activates, it establishes a target (A), performs the first AI protocol from their protocol array that applies (B), and then resolves any additional actions, if applicable (C).
Note that a Boss Intruder's activation flows differently – see Boss Intruder Activation on p. 33.
A. Establishing Target
When activating a baseline Intruder, first check their Target box – this indicates the Spacer that will become the target or focus point of their action. Usually, this will be the closest Spacer to the Intruder (see the Distance box on p. 27).
Remember, an Intruder needs LoS to the Target only if the protocol requirement or AI card command line requires it to be in front or in sight. Most baseline Intruders do not need LoS to activate!
B. Resolving AI Protocols
Unlike Boss Intruders, which have a broad range of behaviors (represented by AI cards, see p. 32), each type of baseline Intruder behaves differently, but in a somewhat predictable manner. This is represented by AI Protocols.
After establishing the target of the Intruder's action, go through the list of AI Protocols in descending order. Each AI Protocol has a distinct name, description and an additional bolded requirement, usually defined as the target's proximity to the Intruder (see the Distance box on p. 27).
Go through the AI Protocols one at a time, and perform the first one whose bolded requirements are met. Do not check further protocols. Note: There will always be at least one protocol you can perform.
Usually, protocols will instruct you to perform an action: move the Intruder, attack a Spacer, or both.
Intruder Movement
Unless stated otherwise, when an AI protocol or AI card instructs an Intruder to move, it will always try to move as close to the Target as possible, up to its Speed value, stopping only when it becomes adjacent to the Target.
Note: Some Intruders don't have a Speed value; this means they can move as many spaces as needed to reach their Target.
Note: An Intruder performing a ranged attack (like Shooting) will stop as soon as it is within range.
At the beginning of movement, an Intruder will always turn to face the Target. Then, it will move along the shortest possible path, that is, through the fewest number of spaces. It can move through any other game components (including other Intruders, Spacers and Terrain). Unless explicitly stated otherwise, it will not move through walls (black lines).
An Intruder always moves one space at a time, in cardinal directions (never diagonally!). If the Target is not in a straight line from it, the Intruder will "zigzag" towards the Target, switching movement axis after every that cardinally, space it travelled until it reaches a position that would allow it to continue moving towards the Target in a straight line (see example below).
In such cases, the players may decide the starting direction (horizontal or vertical) of the movement.
If two or more routes are considered equally short, the players choose which one to use.
If any effect would cause the Intruder to move past the board edge, it will continue to move along the edge prioritizing a direction that will initially lead it away from the most Spacers (if possible).
Intruder Movement Example: The Grin moves towards the Spacer. As it occupies a space in a different row, it will use "zigzag" movement. The players decided to first move horizontally, then vertically and then continue to move horizontally (as at this point the Grin is in the same row, so it will move in a straight line). Note that the players could have also moved up first, and then continued to move in a straight line toward the Spacer.
Intruder Attacks
For an Attack to be resolved, the Target must be within attack range. This is very easy for baseline Intruders, as proximity is usually the requirement dictating which protocol you're using.
To perform an Intruder Attack, simply take the indicated number of colored dice, as shown in the AI Protocol or on the AI card, and roll them.
Damage
The number of Power rolled is the amount of damage you receive. Before applying damage, you may lower the amount by using any applicable Gear, as well as Expertise tokens (each discarded token lowers the damage by 1), to a minimum of 1.
Gated Effects
Some AI protocols and AI cards have additional or stronger effects depending on your Stress level or the amount of damage dealt. This is always indicated by a special banner, showing the Stress level or damage needed for the effect to trigger, such as "3+: +1 Damage". In this example, if your Stress was 3 or higher, you'd have to roll an additional red die.
Other Harm
Some attacks may deal additional negative effects other than damage or instead of damage. For example, some Attacks deal Stress instead of damage, while others deal Radiation or Infection tokens in addition to damage.
Receiving Damage
After performing the roll and applying damage mitigation, you must lower your Vitals by the amount of damage received. This brings you one step closer to death, but may also have other, more immediate effects:
- If your Vitals go below 1, you have to perform a Flatline Check (see Flatlining on p. 30)
- If your Vitals and Stress indicators meet or pass each other, you suffer a Stress Breakdown (see Stress Breakdown on p. 37)
Vitals Levels. Your Suit's Rubicon bar indicates your Vitals levels – green, orange and red; the Vitals level does nothing by itself, but other game components may refer to it (for example, an orange Vitals level may be a requirement to unlock a new ability).
Tac Scanner
Part of standard NASF equipment – each Spacer has one – the Tac Scanner is a general-purpose device used primarily to scout unfamiliar areas, make a detailed examination of living things, and record and review technical data.
In gameplay terms, the cardboard Tac Scanner features a double red-foil window used for a variety of mechanics across the whole Enormity experience. These include, but are not limited to:
- Determining Blip movements during the Intruder Phase (see Blip Patrols on p. 30)
- Flatlining (see Dying on p. 29)
- Determining random coordinates (see Coordinates on p. 40)
- Looking for secrets with the 'magnifying glass' second window (see Secrets on p. 42)
- And much more…
After Action Effects and After Attack Effects
After resolving the AI protocol's action, resolve any After Action Effects. After resolving an AI card's effect, resolve any After Attack Effects. Resolve this even if the action itself was not resolved (with the exception of Chain Break, see below).
Window of Opportunity
Most protocols, AI cards, as well as some BP cards and other game elements, give the players an opportunity to react to the situation, most often an Intruder Attack, outside of their normal turn. These are called windows of opportunity and are represented by a special symbol. On protocols and AI cards, the symbol will be always placed on the left side of the card, next to an Intruder action.
Whenever you encounter the symbol preceding an AI instruction, you may activate Reaction abilities immediately, before you resolve that instruction. During a single window of opportunity each Spacer may activate any number of abilities in any order, but no more than one ability with the same name per Spacer.
If, for some reason, a Spacer moves outside of the Intruder Attack's range after becoming its Target but before the Attack Roll, the Attack cannot be performed and the roll, as well as any tied Attack effects, is not resolved. Instead, the Intruder resolves any lingering movement towards the Target, then proceeds straight to the After Attack actions and effects.
Chain Break
Some cards, abilities and other game elements may allow Spacers to act during an Intruder or Spacer Attack, slightly disrupting the natural flow of the game. If the disruption is big enough, it may trigger a Chain Break, immediately ending the original Attack and invalidating all of its lingering Attack effects, as well as After Attack effects.
If a Spacer Bonus Attack or additional Intruder Attack is triggered during an Intruder Attack, it causes a Chain Break and the original Intruder Attack immediately ends.
If any game element instructs you to Chain Break, the Attack currently taking place (if any) immediately ends.
In the case of Intruder Zone Attacks, a Chain Break performed by one Spacer ignores any lingering Attack effects and After Attack effects for this Spacer only. Any other Target of the Attack must still resolve them.
If, for any reason, a Spacer moves out of their weapon's effective range after they attack the Intruder but before they perform the Attack Roll, it causes a Chain Break and the Attack immediately ends.
If a Chain Break happens during a Spacer Attack, resolve the Leave Spacer tokens and Suppress step before you proceed to resolving the effect that caused the Chain Break.
Note: Spacer Bonus Attacks triggered during a Spacer Attack are considered to be Follow-up Attacks. They do not cause Chain Breaks and are instead resolved after you finish resolving the current Attack, much like Intruder Reprisal Attacks.
Dying
In Enormity, there are numerous ways to die. Here's just a few of them:
- If your Stress would ever go above 9, you suffer a critical breakdown and die.
- If your Adrenaline would ever go above 9, you suffer a heart attack and die.
- If your Vitals go below 1, usually as a result of receiving damage, you suffer a flatline, which may result in death.
- If you gain your 5th Radiation token or Infection token, you die.
- If you ever take your third Exert card, after resolving the extra action, you die.
- If an Intruder attack or environmental hazard results in instant death.
Flatlining
As you can see, that's quite a list. However, the most common way of dying is through receiving damage, having your Vitals reduced to below 1, and flatlining. Whenever your Vitals go below 1, perform a Flatline Check.
To perform the Flatline Check, take the Tac Scanner and the 4 Flatline cards. Shuffle the cards, draw one and insert it into the scanner to see what happens. There are 2 'You Live' cards and 2 'You Died' cards, so odds of surviving are 50-50.
Furthermore, one You Live reading may result in a Bonus Attack (see Bonus Attacks on p. 41), while one You Died card will result in an Awakening Roll (see Awakening on p. 41). If you survived the Flatline Check, your Vitals still became 0 and every next damage causes another Flatline Check.
Note: Resolved Flatline cards are always shuffled back into the Flatline deck.
Place of Death
You might have noticed there are 5 Dead Spacer tokens included in the game. In the Demo, they serve little purpose. However, in the Full Game, you will use them to mark your Spacer's place of death. The 'place of death' will interact with several planned mechanics, such as resuscitation, evacuating and salvaging. Some Intruders may even take a special interest in your friends' corpses…
Attacks of Opportunity
Unlike Blips, Intruders are hyperaggressive. If you would ever move from a space adjacent to an unsuppressed Intruder, that Intruder immediately activates before the move is performed, targeting the moving Spacer. After the activation is resolved, you may continue your movement (if you are able to).
Surprised Intruders
It's very hard to surprise an Intruder, but it does happen. When it does, place a Surprise Status token near their bases to reflect that. When a surprised Intruder activates, the only thing they will do is to discard the Surprise Status token, and any Suppression tokens, it has. A surprised Intruder does not perform attacks of opportunity.
C. Resolving Additional Actions
Intruders are unknowable beings and have many tricks up their sleeves. Some may perform additional Attacks, while others will trigger Trait effects and other effects.
Any additional Attacks are resolved using the normal rules explained above. Every Trait that triggers an additional effect will introduce its own rules.
2. Blip Patrols
Generally, Blips move each time someone makes a Noise (see Blips, and Blip Movement, on p. 16). However, even if Spacers remain perfectly silent, Blips will still go about their business, prowling the deserted decks of the Shepherd in search of prey. This is called patrolling.
The player with the Priority Target/Last to Noise token takes the Tac Scanner and draws a card from the Scanner Deck of the current Countdown level. Then, they align the scanner with any board line (vertical or horizontal) and insert the Scanner card into the scanner.
The Cardboard Tac Scanner and Scanner Cards
A Scanner card seemingly shows only interference, however, when inserted into the scanner, it will reveal a scanner reading divided into four quadrants. These quadrants are relative to the position of the Priority Target/Last to Noise Spacer (i.e. that Spacer is considered to be in the middle of the reading).
The reading also shows Intruder symbols. The number of symbols in a quadrant indicates the speed of Blips patrolling that quadrant (i.e., if the quadrant north-western of the Spacer shows 3, all Blips in that quadrant will move 3 intersections each).
Patrolling Blip movement follows a few simple rules:
- Start with the Blip closest to the Priority Target/Last to Noise Spacer and continue in this manner.
- Unless otherwise stated, patrolling Blips move in a straight line, in the direction of their patrol arrows (notably, this changes when the Countdown level hits black).
- Each Blip moves a number of intersections equal to the number of Intruder symbols in their quadrant of the scanner screen.
- If a Blip moves onto a board edge, they turn 180 degrees and move 1 additional time.
- Otherwise, patrolling Blips follow the same movement rules as Blips reacting to Noise (see Blip Movement on p. 16 for details).
Full Alert
If Extraction has been initiated (see Extraction on p. 24), at the beginning of every Intruder Phase every Blip turns to face the Extraction space, and always moves towards that space, utilizing zigzag movement (see Intruder Movement on p. 28).
As soon as a Blip on Full Alert moves adjacent to the Extraction space (as a result of patrolling or a Noise Roll), it is revealed.
3. End of Intruder Phase
Sometimes the Intruders will have some effect that triggers at the end of the Intruder Phase. In such a case, it's resolved after all Intruder activations and all other actions. If the Intruders have more than one End of Round effect, the players may resolve these effects in any order they choose.
After the end of the Intruder Phase, a new game Round begins, starting with the Countdown Phase.
Zero Hour
When the Countdown goes to the '0' space – called the zero hour – things are going to heat up quickly. Remember, it's not the end of the game, the Countdown Track is not a timer, but it may very well be the end of you!
The Adversary arrives.
Adversary
The Adversary is one of the Boss Intruders you may face during Incursions. During an Extraction Run, you won't be using their normal game components, though, just their Adversary card: an overpowered, unstoppable monstrosity.
When the Countdown marker reaches space 0, immediately spawn the Adversary from the track. If there is no Adversary on the track, draw one from the Adversary Deck. Take their Adversary card and place it near the board.
The Adversary card specifies exactly where to spawn them, if not, spawn them adjacent to Last to Noise Spacer. During the Intruder Phase, an Adversary behaves like any other Intruder, with the following exceptions:
- It always activates first.
- It can end its movement on another Intruder; if it does, displace that other Intruder to the closest empty space.
- Unlike the Boss counterpart, an Adversary has a Speed value.
- Though the Adversary has AT, its Wound value is infinite; this means that although you can hurt it – and slow it down – you can never kill an Adversary. Or can you?
Demo note: You won't find Mothman's Adversary card in the demo… but we have printed it in the Mythos book, on p. 7! If you want, you can play with him – just note it's going to ramp up the endgame difficulty!
Flash Attacks
Sometimes the enemy comes out of nowhere. Flash Attacks are a special type of Intruder Attack, usually performed by an Intruder that is not on the board. That's right – it's the ultimate surprise attack!
A Flash Attack will refer to one of the Intruders – usually a Boss Intruder – by name. When this happens, take that Intruder's miniature and, unless stated otherwise, place it on the board, adjacent to the Flash Attack's target. Then, draw a single AI card from the indicated AI Deck. The Intruder performs that card against the target (ignoring original targeting instructions and restrictions).
After you resolve the Flash Attack, remove the Intruder's miniature from the board. It vanishes into the void it came from. Note, sometimes the Flash Attack will direct you to place the Intruder's miniature on the Zero Hour '!' space of the Countdown Track. In that case, the Intruder becomes your current Adversary (see above).
Incursions
Incursions are climatic battles with especially powerful Intruders, called Boss Intruders. They take place in specially designed locations, called lairs, and introduce special AI and BP decks, and the Escalation mechanic.
Generally, Extraction Runs and Incursions follow the same rules, with only a few notable exceptions. These exceptions will be presented below.
Incursion Setup and Loadouts
Setting up an Incursion proceeds quite differently to an Extraction Run:
- Open the Location and Intruder Books: Based on your Course card, open the appropriate Location Book(s) to the indicated page(s). Open the Intruder Book to the appropriate Boss Intruder's page. Open the Mythos Book to the page indicated in the Location Book.
- Spacer tokens and Power dice: Place the Spacer Pool board near the Location book. Place the Spacer tokens and Power dice within reach of all players.
- Spacers: Each player sets up their Loadout according to general Choosing Loadout rules, found on p. 11.
- Boss Intruder: Place the oversized Intruder Sheet above the board. Take all of the Intruder's AI cards and divide them into three decks numbered I, II and III (you'll find the roman numeral on the back of the cards). Do the same for the BP cards.
Then place the AI and BP decks numbered "I" on the designated spaces of the Intruder Sheet. Place the decks numbered "II" and "III" to the side of the Sheet. These are Escalation decks. Find the Trait cards for any Traits that are not described on the Intruder Sheet and place them nearby as a reference.
- Location and Spacer Placement: Find all the Location cards and Terrain tiles used in the Battle. Place the Location cards near the board and the Terrain tiles on the board, according to the Incursion Diagram. Place the Spacers on the Spacer starting positions as indicated by the diagram. Then proceed to Intruder positioning.
- Other components: Depending on the Boss Intruder, you may be instructed to prepare other game components, specifically: Unique Specimen, the Blip Pool and Blips, the Engram Pool and Engrams, the Countdown Track, Scanner Decks, additional Intruders, the Loot Deck and Loot Caches, Closed Doors, Discoveries and other components.
Boss Intruders
Each Boss Intruder is represented by an oversized Intruder Sheet that includes all the basic information about a given being. You will find a general description of an Intruder Sheet on p. 26 in the Intruder Phase section – here we'll focus on new and unique Boss components, like the AI and BP decks, Traits, Signature Moves and Routines.
AI and BP Decks
Boss Intruders are singularly powerful entities that exert great influence on the world of Enormity. Baselines usually have a single wound and a few predictable protocols. Boss Intruders have complex AI and BP decks that govern their actions and well-being.
The AI cards are like more sophisticated protocols. Notice the roman numeral in the center of the card back. This number indicates the level of the AI card. So, although the AI cards are facedown, you get some sense of how dangerous the next Boss Intruder Attack will be.
Intruders are alien beings from beyond the rim of Antinomy. Their xenobiology is strange and unfathomable, and that is represented by the BP cards.
An AI card's elements include an Intruder illustration, card level, Targeting, Action instructions, Attack effect (including the dice you roll), After Attack effects and the Attack type.
A BP card's elements include an Intruder illustration, card level, AT value, Responses, and Critical.
Bosses, Terrain and Crash
Boss Intruders are impossibly strong. During movement, a Boss Intruder ignores Terrain tiles, unless they have the Destructible keyword, in which case they are destroyed and removed from the board. Consequently, an Intruder can freely move through and onto spaces with most Terrain tiles (including Obstacles). A Boss Intruder cannot move through walls (black lines)… unless stated otherwise.
Most Boss Intruders have the Crash keyword. Spacers do not impede their movements in any way, but a Spacer on a space the Boss Intruder moved through or onto suffers Crash: a Spacer subjected to Crash loses -1 Vitals and suffers Knockdown.
If the Boss Intruder ends its movement on a space occupied by a Spacer, that Spacer suffers Crash and Unavoidable Knockback X. Unavoidable Knockback happens in a straight line away from the Intruder and is subject to all normal Knockback rules (see Knockback on p. 38) with the following exception: it cannot be lowered or ignored in any way other than effects that cause you to stop (such as colliding with an Obstacle). If there are two equally possible Unavoidable Knockback directions, the player chooses one.
Signature and Routine
The Boss Intruder Sheet has two additional, baked-in quasi-protocols: the Signature and the Routine. These represent the Intruder's typical behaviors. The Signature is the "signature attack," while the Routine is what it does when there is no one around to attack.
The Signature is the creature's iconic default Attack. It behaves like an AI card, but is not an AI card. If another card, Trait or any other effect instructs you to perform Signature, this is the Attack you should resolve.
The Routine is a special action the creature performs when there is no eligible Target for any of the targeting lines on its current Attack. Usually, Routines are devastating effects that should be avoided at all costs!
All Signatures and some Routines are Attacks, but they are not AI cards for the purpose of any other effects.
Trait and Status Cards
All Intruders have some traits that differentiate them from others, but Boss Intruders are even more distinct. Consequently, they may have additional Trait and Status cards used during play.
Noises During Incursions
Not every Incursion utilizes the Noise Roll mechanics to move Blips. However, even if it doesn't, Noise is still used to determine the Priority Target.
Boss Intruder Phase
In some ways, resolving a Boss Intruder Phase is simpler than dealing with baseline Intruders:
- If your Incursion does not use the Countdown Track, you skip the Countdown Phase.
- If it does not use Blips, you skip Blip Movement and patrols.
- And so on.
Boss Intruder Activation
Instead of AI Protocols, Boss Intruders have a whole deck of AI cards. When a Boss Intruder activates, you simply draw the top AI card from the deck and resolve it. Note that some Boss Intruders, like the Mothman, may have additional actions to resolve, before or after the main AI card action. However, the main part of a Boss Intruder's activation will always be an AI card draw.
To resolve the Boss Intruder's activation, follow these steps in order:
- Draw AI: Draw the top card from the AI deck.
- Targeting: Decide who or what becomes the Target of the Attack.
- Movement Commands: Resolve Intruder Movement commands.
- Attack/Action: Resolve Intruder Attack/Action commands.
- 4.1. Attack Roll: Perform an Attack Roll.
- 4.2. Attack Consequences: Resolve all Attack/Action effects.
- After Attack/Action: Resolve all After Attack/Action effects.
1. Draw AI
To determine the Intruder's behavior, draw an AI card from the top of the AI deck. Notice the roman numeral in the center of the card back. This number indicates the level of the AI card. So, although the AI cards are facedown, you get some sense of how dangerous the next Intruder Attack will be.
2. Targeting
After you reveal the AI card, check the targeting to see who or what is being attacked. Targeting is a series of increasingly general separate instructions called lines. Each line consists of the word "Target:" followed by targeting instructions. Note that a single targeting line can in fact take up more space than a text line.
To check who is the Target of the Intruder Attack, read the lines in the "targeting" area of the AI card, one by one from top to bottom until you find the first one that you can resolve. Do not check further targeting lines.
To become the Target, a Spacer must fulfill all requirements of a single targeting line. If there is no valid Target for any of the targeting instructions, the AI card is discarded and the Intruder performs its Routine instead. Note that some Zone Attacks target spaces, not specific Spacers and they are considered performed even if there are no Spacers in the designated Zone (therefore they do not result in a Routine).
Note: Some targeting instructions will require you to measure distance (e.g. Closest or Furthest). Distance in Enormity is always measured in spaces and orthogonally (in cardinal directions), never diagonally.
Specific Targets. Some game effects will instruct you to resolve an Attack against a specific Target (e.g. "Perform Signature against the Attacker"). When it happens, this instruction overrules any targeting instructions on the card itself. Note that if a Spacer becomes a Target in the Targeting step, it remains the Target until the end of this AI card unless an effect specifically states otherwise.
Typical Targeting Instructions. Closest: The Target is the shortest distance (in spaces) from the Intruder (counted through Obstacles and red lines) among all possible Targets.
Furthest: The Target is the furthest distance (in spaces) from the Intruder (counted through Obstacles and red lines) among all possible Targets.
In front: The Target is on any space in front (see Facing p. 27) and within Line of Sight (see p. 21) of the Intruder.
In sight: The Target is within Line of Sight (see p. 21) of the Intruder.
Highest/Lowest X: Least/most value/amount of a specified statistic/resource. For example, Lowest Stress.
No Target: Always resolve this instruction if no other targeting instruction is applicable.
Last to Noise/Priority Target: The Target with the Priority Target/Last to Noise token.
Zone X: All spaces in an indicated area. Zones are measured in spaces from the source, orthogonally and diagonally. This means a Zone always creates a 'box' around the source. This targeting line triggers even if there are no Spacers within the indicated area, unless the targeting specifically states 'Spacers in Zone X'.
3. Movement Commands
Perform Boss Intruder Movement commands, like 'Move' and 'Shift' (see Action Commands below for specifics). Boss Intruders move according to baseline Intruder movement rules (see p. 28), with a few exceptions (see box Bosses, Terrain and Crash on p. 33).
Action Commands
If the command uses an ampersand '&', it is considered a composite command made of two or more other commands. Below, you will find a list of Attack commands found in the Demo:
Attack (Melee): An Attack without a specific command (i.e. 'Shoot:') is considered Melee and requires adjacency.
Blast: Performed against all Spacers in a designated zone. Each Spacer performs a separate Attack Roll, but they are considered to happen simultaneously. The following rules apply:
- A Chain Break during one of these Attacks does not invalidate unresolved Attacks against other Spacers.
- If a Spacer moves outside of the Attack Zone after you have already begun to resolve this Attack against other Spacers in the Zone (i.e. performed an Evasion Roll and applied Attack effects), it does not invalidate an Attack against them.
- Blast attacks all Spacers within X spaces horizontally, vertically and diagonally from the source of Zone X.
- The Intruder is not considered to be inside the Zone originating from it and neither are Spacers in Other Places (see Other Places, p. 42).
Move: Perform a movement using standard Intruder rules for Movement. Move is usually part of a composite command, i.e. 'Move&Attack:'.
Shift: Perform movement in a straight line (either horizontal or vertical), along the shortest possible path, to a space from which the following action (usually 'Shoot', 'Ranged' or 'Blast') can be performed against the Target. If an Attack is preceded by Shift, check valid Targets and measure Range using these rules too. Note: Shift can be compared to that of a Rook from Chess.
Shoot: Shoot can be performed against a Spacer within X spaces of the Intruder, in a straight line, where X is the Intruder's Range. Most Boss Intruders have Unlimited Range. Note that if Shoot is part of a composite command, i.e. 'Shift&Shoot', the Intruder will stop the movement as soon as moves within range of the Attack.
Terrorize: These are mental assaults that force the Target to gain Stress instead of losing Vitals. Terrorize usually has unlimited range. Terrorize cannot be mitigated with armor, be re-rolled using armor re-rolls or avoided with the Dodge X keyword, unless stated otherwise. Terrorize can target a specific Spacer, or a designated Zone.
4. Attack/Action Commands
Perform Boss Intruder Attack commands, like 'Attack' or 'Shoot', or other non-Attack, non-Movement Action commands (see Action Commands above for specifics).
4.1 Attack Roll. Boss Intruder's attack rolls are resolved according to baseline Intruder rules (see p. 26).
4.2. Attack Consequences. Boss Intruder's attacks are resolved according to baseline Intruder rules (see p. 26).
5. After Attack/Action
Boss Intruders After Attack/Action effects are resolved according to baseline Intruder rules (see p. 26), with the following addition.
When an Intruder Attack/Action targets more than one Spacer, it is important to know if the After Attack/Action effect applies to every targeted Spacer or just the last one. To avoid confusion, in the latter case, the game uses the term After Final:. This indicates that the effect resolves only after the last Attack/Action from the AI card.
Wounding Boss Intruders, and Wounds
When a Spacer successfully wounds a baseline Intruder, it's usually it for them. Boss Intruders are not so easily defeated. They have multiple Wounds, usually 10 or more, and a deck of BP cards that represents their body parts.
When a Spacer attacks a Boss Intruder, they draw the top BP card and try to match or beat its AT. After the Attack Roll, they resolve the appropriate responses, like Wound: or Fail:.
Successfully wounded BP cards become Wounds and end up on the Wound Stack. A Boss Intruder is killed only when there is the appropriate number of Wounds in the Wound Stack.
However, not all Wounds are equal! Some attacks are so devastating that they inflict multiple Wounds instead! The most common source of these Double Wounds are the BP III cards. Some game effects, especially Critical Wounds, can also cause you to deal Additional Single Wounds. The general rules are as follows:
- If you wound a BP I or BP II card, place it faceup on top of the Wound Stack. This is a single Wound.
- If you wound a BP III card, place 2 Double Wound tokens on top of the Wound Stack and set the wounded BP III card aside. It will return to the bottom of the deck after Escalation (see Escalation p. 35).
- If you critically wound a BP III card, you place it on top of the Wound Stack instead. Each BP III card on the Wound Stack counts as two Wounds (just like a Double Wound would).
- If an effect instructs you to deal an additional Single Wound, place a Single Wound token on top of the Wound Stack, in addition to any other Wounds you've dealt.
Escalation
Intruders get progressively harder as the Incursion goes on because power begets power. Such is the effect of Escalation, a central Enormity mechanic. Escalation will make the Intruder tougher by adding higher level cards to the BP deck, and more deadly by swapping AI cards in the AI deck.
Note: If the Total Power of your Attack is lower than the AT value of the targeted BP card, you failed to wound the Intruder. Place the BP card you targeted on top of the BP discard pile and do not perform Escalation. Skip this step and continue to resolve the Attack. If the Total Power of your Attack is equal to or higher than the AT value of the targeted BP card, you wound the Intruder and perform Escalation.
Performing Escalation
If Escalation happens during a Spacer Attack, it is resolved after the Intruder Responses step, but before the Leave Spacer tokens and Suppression step.
Escalation is the process of adding more powerful cards to the BP and AI decks. It works slightly differently for each deck and in some special circumstances, but the general principle is the same. If you are instructed to search a deck and discard pile for a card, always prioritize cards from the deck. Only if you find no applicable cards in the deck should you search the discard pile.
For a full breakdown of each case, see the chart on the next page.
Escalating the BP Deck
Your attack has exposed a deeper or more important body part of the Intruder. Maybe you've broken through the outer defenses, maybe you've punctured their spacesuit or smashed an exposed exoskeleton scale. Beneath lies something new, something more vital to the wellbeing of the creature.
In general, when the current BP card leaves the BP deck to become a Wound, you take a random BP card of a higher level from the BP Escalation deck and shuffle it into the BP deck. If the new BP card would end up as the only card in the deck, shuffle in the BP discard pile too.
For special cases, see the full escalation chart on the next page.
Escalating the AI Deck
Just as your attack has exposed a more vital part of the Intruder's body, so has it exposed the creature itself to the notion of death. It does not like this, and will become more aggressive and deadly to assure it does not fall today!
To escalate the AI deck, search the AI deck and discard pile (prioritizing the deck) for a card matching the wounded BP card's level and remove it from the Battle. Then, take a random AI card of one level higher and shuffle it into the AI deck. If there is now only one card in the AI deck or you removed a card from the discard pile, shuffle the discard pile into the deck.
If there are no AI cards that match the level of the BP card, remove a card of one level higher and escalate based on that card. This will lead you straight from a level I card to level III. Note: If there are no more current or higher-level cards to escalate, you will add a permanent stat bonus instead.
For special cases, see the chart on the next page.
Escalations Outside of Wounding
Some effects, like Responses, may instruct you to escalate the Intruder even if there is no Wound, or even outside of a Spacer Attack. If that happens, simply perform the Escalation as normal, with the following exception: as no Wound was dealt, you will have to remove the lowest BP card from the Incursion.
Escalation Chart
Wounded card BP I (place the wounded card on the Wound Stack): BP deck – Shuffle a BP II card from the Escalation deck into the BP deck. AI deck – Search the AI deck and the AI discard pile for an AI I card and remove it from the Incursion. If you removed a card from the discard pile, shuffle the discard pile into the AI deck. Shuffle an AI II card from the Escalation deck into the AI deck.
Wounded card BP II (place the wounded card on the Wound Stack): BP deck – Shuffle a BP III card from the Escalation deck into the BP deck. AI deck – Search the AI deck and the AI discard pile for an AI II card and remove it from the Incursion. If you removed a card from the discard pile, shuffle the discard pile into the AI deck. Shuffle an AI III card from the Escalation deck into the AI deck.
Wounded card BP III (set the wounded card aside and place a Status token on the Wound Stack – it counts as 2 Wounds): BP deck – Search the BP deck and BP discard pile for the lowest level BP card and remove it from the Incursion. If you removed a card from the discard pile, shuffle the discard pile into the deck. Shuffle a BP III card from the Escalation deck into the BP deck. Place the set aside BP III card at the bottom of the BP deck. AI deck – Search the AI deck and the AI discard pile for an AI II card and remove it from the Incursion. If you removed a card from the discard pile, shuffle the discard pile into the AI deck. Shuffle an AI III card from the Escalation deck into the AI deck.
Wounded card BP III – Critical Wound (place the wounded card on the Wound Stack – it counts as 2 Wounds): BP deck – Search the BP deck and BP discard pile for the lowest level BP card and remove it from the Incursion. If you removed a card from the discard pile, shuffle the discard pile into the deck. Shuffle two BP III cards from the Escalation deck into the BP deck. AI deck – Search the AI deck and the AI discard pile for an AI II card and remove it from the Incursion. If you removed a card from the discard pile, shuffle the discard pile into the AI deck. Shuffle an AI III card from the Escalation deck into the AI deck.
Wounded card BP III – when there are no BP III cards in the Escalation decks (set the wounded card aside and place a Status token on the Wound Stack – it counts as 2 Wounds): BP deck – Shuffle the BP discard pile into the BP deck. Place the set aside BP III card at the bottom of the BP deck. AI deck – Search the AI deck and the AI discard pile for the lowest level AI card and remove it from the Incursion. If you removed a card from the discard pile, shuffle the discard into the AI deck. Shuffle an AI III card from the Escalation deck into the AI deck. If there are no level III AI cards in the Escalation decks, instead the Intruder gains 1 bonus per Wound, in the following order: -1 AT per hit, +1 Speed.
Wounded card BP III – Critical Wound, when there are no BP III cards in the Escalation decks (place the wounded card on the Wound Stack – it counts as 2 Wounds): BP deck – Shuffle the BP discard pile into the BP deck. Note: the BP deck will have 1 card less.
Other Rules
Conditions
Various effects (like Discoveries and Intruder actions) will cause Spacers to gain Condition cards that apply additional negative or positive effects. When you gain a Condition card, place it next to your Spacer Board. Some Conditions may also require you to gain Condition tokens. These are always placed on the corresponding Condition card, or, in the case of Radiation, directly on your Spacer Board. All Conditions are discarded after the end of an Extraction Run or Incursion.
Some Conditions may have additional Lingering: effects that trigger if you were unable to get rid of them before the session ended. If you gain a Condition card outside of a Run or Incursion, it remains active until the end of the next Run or Incursion.
Some cards instruct you to gain a certain Condition, while others become Conditions themselves. You cannot gain a Condition if you already have it, but some Conditions may trigger additional effects if you would gain them again.
Stress Breakdowns
Space travel gets to you. The dark, the cold, the isolation. The void. In these conditions even the most stalwart of souls begins to buckle. So, when the Intruders show up, your mind is ready to give up.
The first time your Vitals and Stress indicators meet or pass each other during a Run, you will suffer a Stress Breakdown. Immediately draw a random Stress Breakdown card and resolve its effect.
There is a silver lining here. If you manage to survive your breakdown, you will come out stronger for it. First, you won't have to draw another Stress Breakdown for the entirety of the Run or Incursion.
Secondly, you flip your Stress Breakdown card, to enable its bonus or ability. From now on, until the end of the Run or Incursion, you possess that ability.
Skill Tests
During your Runs, you will be often asked to perform a Skill test. These are generally associated with a specific Skill (like Intelligence or Strength). Note that each Spacer has at least 1 point in every Skill.
To perform a Skill test, simply roll as many dice as your bonus to the appropriate skill and compare the result to the difficulty of the test, expressed as a target number called the Aptitude Threshold – AT for short, and simplicity.
Skill tests can be re-rolled using Confidence and Stress, just like Attacks, and Discipline can be used to turn Potentials into Power.
Some tests require you to achieve or beat a certain AT, while others measure the degree of your success (i.e. the more successes you get, the better). Each Skill test you will be presented with will precisely tell you what is considered a success, and what a failure.
Abilities
Spacer cards, Suit cards, equipped Gear cards, as well as other game elements, give you access to various abilities. Some of them can be used as free actions or as reactions, others will have a specific timing condition or even grant a constant effect.
In general, each effect described within the ability box of a card is an ability. The most common abilities are called keywords, and will be discussed on p. 38. Unless stated otherwise, abilities are not actions.
Passive Abilities
Abilities that do not require you to pay a cost or fulfill any condition are called passives. Passives are constantly interacting with the game as long as they are in play. Most passives continuously seek specific timing conditions and must be resolved anytime the specified condition is met, unless the ability text itself specifically says that "you may" resolve its effect.
As a general rule, you must always resolve keywords that place Spacer tokens in the Spacer Pool (like Discipline X), as well as keywords that hinder you in any way (like Heavy). You generally may use abilities that grant you move-like abilities (like Fallback X). See the Keywords List on p. 38 to learn more about using other keyword abilities.
As long as their conditions are fulfilled, passives can be used multiple times during the same Round.
Triggered Abilities
These abilities require the Spacer to consciously make a decision to use them. As a result, unless stated otherwise, you may only use them once per Round.
If the ability has one or more prerequisites (costs and/or conditions), these are listed before the ability's name or within its text. A player must always meet the prerequisites of a triggered ability in order to trigger that ability.
Reactions
Reactions are a type of triggered ability denoted by the reaction symbol. Reactions are powerful effects that may be performed during a window of opportunity (see p. 29). As windows of opportunity are generally found on AI cards, Reactions allow Spacers to act out of turn, during the Intruder Phase!
Whenever you encounter the symbol preceding an instruction, you may activate abilities immediately before you resolve that instruction. During a single window of opportunity each Spacer may activate any number of abilities in any order, but no more than one ability with the same name per Spacer.
Ability Costs and Free Abilities
In Enormity, anything can be an ability cost. Common costs include:
- Spacer tokens, like Discipline, Confidence and Expertise
- Actions or Action cards
- Gaining Stress
- Exhausting a game element
- Discarding a game element
- Discarding an Ammo or charge tokens.
Other, more specific costs may be listed in the particular ability.
Paying ability costs for usage is always voluntary (you may pay the cost to resolve the ability). As such, these costs can never be prevented or ignored by the use of other game effects.
Abilities that do not have a cost are called free.
You cannot activate an ability if you cannot pay its full cost (e.g. an ability requires you to raise your Stress and it's already at 9, or an ability requires you to discard a charge and there are none remaining).
Knockdown
Knockdown is a special Condition. When you get knocked down, you put your miniature on its side and take a Knockdown (falling down) card. While you have the Knockdown (falling down) card, you cannot perform any actions, reactions or use abilities, unless stated otherwise. At the end of your next turn, you flip the card to the Knockdown (standing up) side. All Spacers with a Knockdown (standing up) card stand up at the start of their next turn. If for whatever reason this card is discarded, stand up too.
Knockback
Move the affected miniature X spaces directly away from the source of Knockback in a straight line (or in a specified direction in case of directional Knockback; see examples on the next page).
- If Knockback is caused by an Attack, it affects the Target only if it is within the Attack's effective range (adjacent for normal Attacks, in the designated zone for Zone Attacks, within X spaces for Ranged X Attacks, etc.).
- If Knockback is caused by an Intruder Response, it affects the Attacker only if they are within adjacency.
- Knocked back Spacers ignore all Terrain tiles they move through except Obstacles.
- If a Spacer would be forced to move through a Destructible Obstacle Terrain tile, stop its movement, remove the Terrain tile from the board and place the Spacer in its space, then that Spacer suffers Crash.
- If a Spacer would be forced to move through an Indestructible Obstacle, it stops on an adjacent space right before the Obstacle, then suffers Crash.
- Knocked back Intruders can move through any Terrain tiles and miniatures without hindrance. They destroy any Terrain tiles (except Indestructible) they move through and cause Crash and Unavoidable Knockback to Spacers as normal.
- If the affected miniature is knocked back into a Board Edge, it continues to move along the edge, if possible, away from the source of Knockback.
Keywords
A keyword is an ability which conveys specific, common rules. Each keyword has its own rules which can be found on the keyword list below. These are all named abilities and follow all of the rules and restrictions of named abilities.
Some abilities are followed by a number, or X. Unless the ability text says otherwise, every such keyword is stackable. This means you may activate several stackable keyword abilities with the same name at the same time. Their effects then add up and "stack." For example, two separate Discipline 1 abilities would effectively be the same as Discipline 2.
Keywords List
The following list of Enormity keywords is hardly exhaustive, but covers all abilities presented in this demo.
Advance X: When declaring an Attack with this weapon, move up to X space towards the target.
Burst: This weapon can affect more than one target with a single Attack. See p. 22 for details.
Confidence X: During the Leave Spacer tokens and Suppression step of a Spacer Attack, place X Confidence tokens into the Incoming Spacer Pool. A single Confidence token allows you to re-roll any single Spacer Attack, Skill Test, Scouting Check or Noise Roll die once. Note: You may later try to re-roll that die with Stress!
Cover: Terrain keyword. The target gains cover from a ranged attack (like 'Shoot') if it is adjacent to a Cover Terrain tile, and the tile is between it and the Attacker. A tile is considered to be between two figures if it is possible to draw an imaginary line through the middle of a column or a row so that the two figures are on opposite sides of that line. None of the figures can occupy a space in either that column or row. Cover allows you to lower the tier of one of the Power dice of the Attack (from black to red, or red to white).
Crash: This is an Intruder keyword. A Spacer subjected to Crash loses -1 Vitals and suffers Knockdown. A Spacer suffers Crash each time an Intruder with the keyword moves onto or through their space, as well as when any effect forces it to move onto a space with an Obstacle Terrain tile or places an Obstacle Terrain tile on theirs.
Dazed: Take a Dazed Condition Card.
Destructible: When a Spacer or Intruder is involuntarily moved onto this tile, or when a Boss Intruder moves through this tile, or this tile is used for Cover, it is destroyed. Note: If a Spacer or baseline Intruder is knocked back, they ignore non-Obstacle Terrain tiles they move through. Therefore, they will not destroy a Destructible tile unless they end their movement on it.
Discipline X: During the Leave Spacer tokens and Suppression step of a Spacer Attack, place X Discipline tokens into the Incoming Spacer Pool. A single Discipline token allows you to turn 1 Potential into a Success/Power during a Spacer Attacks, Skill Test, Scouting Check or Noise Roll.
Devastating: If you roll a Crit Quadrant on a die, you may roll an additional die of that color.
Discharge: During the Raise Adrenaline and Depleting Weapon Step place a Discharge Status on it. Discard this token at the start of your next turn. Reload and Fast Reload actions will not remove a Discharge Status token.
Displace: Move the displaced target to an empty space adjacent to its current position. If a Spacer is displaced and there is no space it can be legally displaced to, they die instead.
Empty Clip: When depleting Ammo during an Attack, deplete all Ammo to gain +1 Power.
Expertise X: During the Leave Spacer tokens and Suppression step of a Spacer Attack, place X Expertise tokens into the Incoming Spacer Pool. This token allows you to pay the cost of many abilities, actions, environment interactions and Stratagems. Additionally, when you are attacked, you may use Expertise tokens to lower received damage, at a ratio of 1 token per 1 damage, to a minimum of 1.
Fallback X: After resolving a Spacer Attack, but before any Reprisal or Follow-up Attacks, you may move X spaces away from the target of the Attack.
Heavy: This weapon can only be reloaded with a Full Reload action.
Indestructible: Terrain keyword. This Terrain tile cannot be destroyed in any way. It invalidates Terrain placement on top of it.
Knockback X: See Knockback box above.
Knockdown: Gain the Knockdown Condition card, Falling down side up, and place your miniature on its side. Follow the rules of the Condition card. If Knockdown is caused by an Attack, it affects the Target only if it is within the Intruder's effective range (adjacent for Melee Attacks, in the designated zone for Zone Attacks, within X spaces for Ranged X Attacks, etc.). If it's caused by a Response, it affects the Attacker only if they are within adjacency.
Lethal: During intruder attack, treat all Potentials as Power.
Light X/Y/Z: Changes your Light source's die type to X/Y/Z.
Linear: Some ranged weapons require simple trajectories that limit their flexibility. If a weapon has the Linear keyword, it can only shoot in straight lines.
Lure X: Intruder keyword. Move the target of the keyword X spaces towards the source of the keyword.
Noiseless: This weapon does not generate Noise Rolls when used.
Obscuring: Terrain keyword. This tile blocks Line of Sight.
Obstacle: Terrain keyword. Spacers and baseline Intruders cannot move through Obstacles. Many move-like abilities interact with Obstacles.
Pushback X: Turn the source towards the affected miniature. Then, move X spaces in the direction of the affected miniature, pushing it in a straight line.
Radiate X: If your target has not been killed, during the Leave Spacer tokens and Suppression step of a Spacer Attack, place X Radiation tokens on their Intruder Sheet. During the draw BP card step of a Spacer Attack, if the total number of Radiation tokens on the sheet equals the card's AT, immediately deal it as a Wound, suffering all responses, discard all Radiation tokens, draw another BP card and continue the Attack (if able).
Radiation X: Intruder keyword. The Spacer gains X Radiation tokens. When a Spacer gains their 5th Radiation token, they die.
Reach: The weapon is considered a Reach weapon. If a weapon has the Reach keyword, it means it's actually not a ranged weapon, but a particularly long Melee Weapon. You still count the distance just like you would for range, but are not considered using a ranged weapon for other game purposes. The attack is considered a melee attack.
Reflex: Move up to 1 space.
Warn: Move another Spacer up to 1 space.
Stratagems
Stratagems are powerful team abilities. Some Stratagems are unlocked by Spacer classes, while others will be gained during play. During an Extraction Run or Incursion setup, you will choose 2 Stratagems to use.
Stratagems start play with the requirement side up. Once the requirement is met, the card is immediately flipped and becomes ready to use. Once it has been used the indicated number of times, it is again flipped to the requirement side. A Stratagem card can be flipped in this way several times during a single session!
Usually, for a Stratagem to become active, players will be required to expend Expertise tokens. To expend an Expertise token for a Stratagem, simply move it from the Active Spacer Pool to the Stratagem card. You may do this at any point of your turn.
A Stratagem card has two sides: the Requirement side and the Ability side, plus a number of charges.
Locations
In the Dark Side of the Sun Demo, you will find all the necessary Location information in the Mythos Book (see Mythos Book, p. 4 for the first scenario!). In the full game, Location information, like special rules, effects, loot and engrams, as well as additional setup, will be located on Tarot sized Location cards.
Each Location has a designation, for example SR (for Solar Ring). Whenever you reach a new Location in either Location Book (a Location with a new designation), you will draw the appropriate Location card (or check the page in the Mythos Book, in the case of the demo).
Although, for ease of use, the Location Setup is usually printed upon the Location Book page itself, some Location cards may feature additional setup instructions, or even an alternate setup diagram – some places on the Shepherd will change as you explore it.
Each Location has its distinct alien ecology, a fancy way of saying which Intruders you will be facing in that corner of the ship. Note that sometimes a Course card may override this ecology!
A Location will always indicate the Loot Deck you should use while exploring it (see p. 11), as well as show the Location's Engram selection. That's right, although there are only 4 types of double-sided Engram tokens in the game, they represent different things in different Locations. Each Location will tell you exactly what ability each of those 4 Engram types has, as well as into which resources they will transform when you extract.
Finally, a Location may have special rules. These may be constant Location rules, akin to passive abilities, things that you have to contend with throughout your entire stay in that Location, like Lack of Oxygen, Lack of Gravity, Poisonous Atmosphere and so on.
Then you have Location abilities and reactions. These will tell you how to use them and when. For example, the Solar Ring has an ability called Abrams Flare: "During your turn, if any Intruder is on a Terrain space, pay ONE/TWO/THREE Discipline to Suppress Fire 1."
Finally, a Location may allow you to perform a special Location action. These will also tell you how to use them and when. These are considered actions, and will usually ask you to play (use) an Action card as part of their cost.
Coordinates
Sometimes it's necessary to know exactly where on the board a game element should be placed or moved, or where an effect is taking place. Sometimes the effect will specify its placement contextually, for example 'adjacent to the closest Spacer' or 'on every Extraction Point space'.
Algebraic Notations
Other times, the coordinates will be named as algebraic notations, that are specified by a combination of a letter and a number, for example 'H3' – exactly like in Chess. To find an algebraic notated coordinates:
- Take the double-sided Coordinates Ruler and flip it to the Alphabet side.
- Align it vertically with the orientation quadrant of the appropriate Location Map page, so that the two quadrants form a semicircle, and read the letter part of the coordinates.
- Flip the Coordinates Ruler to the Numerical side.
- Align it horizontally with the orientation quadrant of the appropriate Location Map page, so that the two quadrants form a semicircle, and read the number part of the coordinates.
- Now you have the full coordinates.
Random Coordinates
There may be times when the game asks you to check for random coordinates, for example to place something on a random space of the board. When this happens, take the Tac Scanner and draw the top card from the white Scanner deck.
Check the middle of the reading for an algebraic notation (like 'H1', see above for details). During this reading ignore the Intruder Blip symbols.
Terrain
Some Locations, especially lairs, as well as some other game effects, will instruct you to setup additional Terrain tiles at part of the Extraction Run or Incursion setup.
Terrain Tiles are made of spaces (usually single spaces). Unless stated otherwise, you resolve a tile effect when entering the first space of a tile. A tile does not block LoS to itself (just like a miniature). Note that Doors are not spaces and therefore not considered Terrain tiles.
Terrain tiles can also be placed or destroyed during play, as a result of various game effects. When a Terrain tile is destroyed, simply remove it from the board. When a Terrain tile is placed, put it on the indicated spaces on the board. If the placement effect doesn't specify where to place the tile or asks you to randomize placement, use the Tac Scanner to generate random coordinates (see Coordinates on p. 40 for details).
If all the Terrain tiles of this type are already on the board, remove the tile furthest from the Intruders, then place it on the indicated spaces.
When a Terrain tile is placed on a space occupied by another Terrain tile:
- If the other tile has the Indestructible keyword, you cannot place anything on top of it. Ignore this new tile placement.
- In all other cases the other Terrain tile is destroyed before you place the new tile.
When a Terrain tile is placed on a space occupied by a Spacer:
- If the tile has the Obstacle and Destructible keywords, it is destroyed and the Spacer suffers Crash.
- If the tile has just the Obstacle keyword, the Spacer suffers Crash and is Displaced to an adjacent space in a way that would allow the tile to be placed without overlapping. If there is no such space, the Spacer cannot be legally Displaced and dies.
- In all other cases the Terrain tile is simply placed underneath the Spacer miniature and this Spacer must immediately resolve this tile's effects (if any) as if they had just moved onto it.
If a Terrain tile is placed on a space occupied by the Intruder:
- If the tile has the Indestructible trait, it is placed as normal.
- In all other cases the Terrain tile cannot be placed. Ignore this tile placement.
Terrain Abilities
In a similar way to Spacers and Intruders, Terrain tiles possess various abilities that may greatly influence the course of play. Some common Terrain keywords and their effects have been explained in the Keywords section. All of these abilities are forced and must be resolved each time they are triggered unless explicitly stated otherwise. If an ability has no trigger, its effect is constant and always active as long as this tile is present on the board.
Bonus Attacks
A Bonus Attack is an effect that allows you to perform an immediate Attack, often outside of your turn. Most Bonus Attacks cause a Chain Break (see exception below). For a Bonus Attack you may declare an exhausted or out of ammo weapon as your active weapon. If you do, unexhaust it or gain exactly 1 Ammo for it, then continue the Attack. During a Bonus Attack you may ignore Reprisal Attacks (see p. 22) to this Attack. When the Attack ends, continue resolving the Phase that was interrupted by the Bonus Attack. All other restrictions and rules of a combat action apply.
Follow-up Attacks
A Bonus Attack during a Spacer Attack is also called a Follow-up Spacer Attack and will be resolved immediately after the current Spacer Attack ends. In other words, it does not cause a Chain Break. All other Bonus Attack rules apply.
Bonus Actions
When an effect grants you a Bonus Action, take one of your Action cards – from your hand or table – and play it to resolve any action from it.
Welding Doors and Breaking Welds
Some game effects will allow you to weld doors.
- Door spaces are designated by door number symbols.
- If the effect does not specify a range, you have to be adjacent to a door space to use it.
- You may weld only open doors.
- When you weld a door, place a welded door standee on the door line.
- Welded doors cannot be opened with consoles or keycards.
- When a Blip moves adjacent to a welded door, it immediately stops its move; Blips starting their turn adjacent to a welded door ignore it.
- When an Intruder moves adjacent to a welded door, it immediately stops; Intruders starting their turn adjacent to a welded door destroy it – removing it from play!
- Unless stated otherwise, whenever a game effect allows you to weld a door, it also allows you to break a weld, and vice versa.
Status Tokens
Enormity is an enormous game. There are various effects, abilities and actions to track; if we wanted to create a special token for each of them... we'd have a lot of different tokens. Like, a lot. And you'd spend a lot of time looking through your game box for that single Engine Pressure marker.
Instead, we cut down on the types of tokens included in the game, and created the status tokens. Whenever there's an effect that doesn't use any of the specific tokens, you will be instructed to use a generic token to track it. You can also use generic tokens to mark exhausted abilities or cards to conserve table space.
Disable Tokens
When you are instructed to disable a game component place a disable token next to it as a reminder. This component cannot be interacted with in any way. Example: If a door becomes disabled it cannot be opened or destroyed in any way.
Awakening
In the outer darkness of boundless space, there is only despair and torment so utter that the bravest of souls shrivels at the mere suggestion and uses every fiber of its being to never think of getting close to it. Yet, some choose to gaze into it. Embrace it.
Some… are rewarded. Most are dead.
Awakening is a rebound, though it is rare. In the demo, there is only one way of obtaining it. When you draw a 'You Died' Flatline card with an Awakening prompt, roll the Enormity die. If you roll a '10', you awaken.
As soon as you awaken, immediately:
- Perform a Chain Break (see Chain Break on p. 29).
- Gain the Priority Target/Last to Noise token. As long as you are awakened, you cannot lose this token.
- Discard any Condition cards and tokens.
- If you were knocked down, you may stand up.
- Gain 2 Antinomy Status tokens.
- You may immediately perform a move 3 action and perform a Bonus Attack. These are not regular actions.
- You gain all other bonuses listed on your Awakening card (In the Demo, there's only one).
- If you are ever knocked down while awakened, during your turn, you may discard one Antinomy token to immediately stand up.
- At the start of your turn, you must discard one Antinomy token. If you cannot discard a token at the start of your turn, return the Awakening card to the supply. You lose all bonuses provided by it and stop being awakened.
Other Places
Some game effects may transport you to a… different place. Alien, eldritch, hostile. In such a case, move your miniature to the instructed space. You will remain in that space until an effect allows you to leave it. Unless otherwise stated, you resolve your turns as normal.
Secrets
Enormity is full of alien secrets: secret Locations, secret scripts, secrets codes and more. Most of this you will have to figure on your own, however there are two common types of secrets: codes and encryption.
Codes
Sometimes, you will find a secret 4-digit number on a game element. If you do, you may immediately find the corresponding paragraph in the Mythos Book and resolve it. Unless stated otherwise, each secret code paragraph can only be resolved once. The paragraph should have a checkmark next to it. If it doesn't, you've made a grave mistake! Immediately gain Stress!
Encryption
Sometimes, you will find a text scrambled up with red interference, just like on the Scanner cards. This text is encrypted. You will use the Tac Scanner to decode these scripts. However, you cannot read it unless specifically instructed to do so!
Most encrypted script will specify how to decode it. If a script does not have decoding rules or requirements, it is considered quantum encrypted. These kinds of encryption can be decoded using quantum decryption abilities. For example, during your mission you may find a Xenoarcheologist Datapad Gear card which reads: "Gain 1 Inner Dark and remove this card from the game to quantum decrypt a single block of quantum encrypted script."
Death and Life Spares
Enormity is an adventure game of wonder and horror in a vast, alien, dark universe. Death is not uncommon. Characters in Enormity are mortal and can easily die if you are uncareful. Thankfully, the technology of the future has progressed to the point people have Spares; soulless clones into which their consciousness backup can be uploaded if worst comes to worst. You are far from home, though, and so have a limited amount of Spares with you (depending on game difficulty, 1-3), after which True Death occurs and you need to create a new character.
Difficulty Modes
Besides allowing you to tackle its challenges in a series of one-shots or as a campaign, Enormity offers two distinct difficulty modes. The Normal Mode is recommended for new players, and people who want a cinematic, more forgiving experience.
Veteran Spacer Mode offers a higher degree of challenge, and a true roguelite experience.
If you're unfamiliar with Into the Unknown games, we recommend you start your first game on Normal Mode.
Normal Mode features:
- You start the game with 8 Life Spares (see Life Spares above).
- You start the game with an unlimited number of Time Crystals (see below); this means you can replay any Extraction Run or Incursion that didn't go your way; note that if you decide to keep the result of a Run or Incursion, you have to live with their consequences!
- You have to defeat your Parsec's Boss before advancing to the next Parsec (see Persistent Worlds and Campaigns); after failing to defeat a Boss, you may go on an extra Extraction Run that does not progress the Course Deck.
Veteran Spacer Mode features:
- You start the game with 4 Life Spares.
- You start the game with 2 Time Crystals.
- You do not have to defeat your Parsec's Boss before advancing to the next Parsec; in other words, the game mercilessly progresses into the next Parsec and towards a campaign's end (if you're playing a campaign).
- In the Full Game, the Veteran Spacer Mode will include additional changes and deeper mechanics.
Time Crystals
Time Crystals are rare paracausal resources that allow you to defy the otherwise inexorable march of time. Right after you finish an Extraction Run or Incursion, you may, as a group, decide to spend one Time Crystal to replay that Run or Incursion, without suffering any of its consequences: do not lose Lives, gain rewards and penalties or resolve End of Run/Incursion effects. Simply restore the game to the state from before the Run/Incursion. You can freely change your character loadouts and prepared Command Abilities before you attempt the Run/Incursion again. You may even decide to tackle a different Run (in a different Location) or Incursion, if available.
In a Normal Mode game, Time Crystals are unlimited (see Difficulty modes). However, in Veteran Spacer Mode, Time Crystals are an extremely rare resource and should not be spent lightly.
In the Full Game
You have just got a glimpse of Enormity. The full game offers so much more. Let me tell you what.
Character Progression
Character progression in Enormity is rich and multi-layered, focusing on several distinct spheres - gear, suit, career, experience and your expedition scale – that allow for near-endless build variety.
It wouldn't be an extraction crawler without Gear! Gear is all the equipment and weapons you find during your extraction runs, loot from bosses, craft at a crafting station or gain in another of a variety of more or less esoteric ways. Gear is perishable, but there are ways to safeguard your most precious possessions. Gear is interchangeable between characters.
Suits represent milestone advancements, as they provide a variety of increases for your Rubicon statistics, spacer tokens, skills and, most importantly, your action cards. You can salvage, loot or craft suits, based on recovered technology. Like Gear, suits are interchangeable between characters.
Careers represent your characters particular professions, proficiencies and ship positions. In the Enormity Demo the 5 pre-generated named characters have a fixed career, belonging to one of the 4 major divisions, while the full game will include additional rules and components to chart your career across several positions and specializations. Careers are tied to characters, so when a character dies, so does this character progression!
You gain experience points per successful Extraction Run or Incursion. The back of your Class cards shows the sprawling tree of progress that career offers. Careers offer new abilities to unlock, new Skill bonuses, Action bonus synergies, new Slots, new Auto-tokens, new Career paths and more.
Finally, there is expedition scale, sometimes called a Nano-Kardashev scale, a kind-of world-wide or campaign-wide experience players accumulate while playing in a persistent world. This progression involves knowledge of secrets, shortcuts, lore and alien technology, and provides benefits to any character within the current campaign.
Safe Havens
Mentioned briefly in the main part of the Rulebook, are the safe havens, Locations and Location Maps where you perform 'downtime' actions, like character development, crafting, researching technology. During your campaigns, you will expand your Safe Havens, adding new features, base-building.
Resources, Crafting, Technology
In Enormity, there's hundreds of items to discover, loot, craft and research, from Gear, to Stratagem to Suits, to [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED]. The looting gameplay and crafting gameplay will complement each other in various ways, creating a sandbox of creativity, allowing you to make your perfect character and loadout.
Enormity Powers
The universe is infinitely vast and unfathomable. There are things you will see, hear or experience that neither you, nor anyone else, will be able to explain or comprehend. Things so unknowable that you might as well call them magic. Some of you may learn to tap into these phenomena, steer their inexplicable flow.
Know this: the more you delve into these phenomena, the closer you are to the Inner Dark.
Metroidvania-Style Map
Enormity is a dungeon crawler that unfolds over dozens of interconnected locations, like a true metroidvania, with hundreds of passages, rooms, secrets and shortcuts, hundreds of gear and weapons to salvage or craft, with alien ecologies that evolve in real time based on your actions.
And we mean hundreds. The two books will consist of dozens of pages each, to create the biggest dungeon sprawl imaginable. Enormity's board is one giant dungeon crawling map made of dozens upon dozens of sections. Of course, there are rules that will make sure the gameplay space does not overwhelm you or your table - and that only a few of the locations remain in play at a given time. Those left behind will hide in a fog-of-war-type Veil, but can always be revisited (well, unless you chose to blow a whole section up to halt the alien onslaught, that is. In that case you will have to look for a detour…).
Story and Storylines
Enormity has been designed as a sandbox experience, one which you can simply pick up and play, and one you can replay endlessly, one you can seamlessly expand with Locations, Biomes, Intruders, Gear and Discoveries. An rpg substitute: a game that can last you a lifetime.
However, we, at ITU, love strong narrative stories. And Enormity won't be any different. The full game will include 3 full-length narrative campaigns, with their own beats, twists and endings. These will serve as a great introduction to the world of Enormity.
Campaigns
The base game features three named campaigns (including the Dark Side of The Sun Introductory Campaign), running upwards of 100 hours of gameplay. But that is only the beginning. Even going through all those campaigns, you will have barely seen the sprawling enormity of the Shepherd. Once you find your footing, you will create your own modular sandbox campaigns, trying to delve even deeper into the ship's secrets.
What all campaigns have in common is the Course Deck. The Course Deck represents the course, and final destination, of the Shepherd, for your campaign. There are 3 types of Course cards: Extraction Run cards, which allow you to go on an Extraction Run, unlock new Locations on the Shepherd, introduce new rules, lasting game effects and optional objectives, and Incursion cards, which force you to battle a fearsome Intruder Boss for your right to stay on the Shepherd. The third type of Course cards gets added to the deck from various sources (special campaign setups, story passages, various events, even Critical Wounds!): the Enormity Mythos cards. Mythos cards move the metanarrative forward, revealing setting secrets and challenging your characters in a myriad of ways. Many Mythos cards seed Mythos Cycles, which are sequences of interconnected Mythos cards.
In terms of difficulty, Run and Incursion Course cards are divided into difficulty tiers, called Parsecs, with a given Incursion card – introducing a new Boss – serving as a gate-keeper (Normal Mode) or proficiency check (Veteran Spacer) into the next, harder Parsec.
The size of the Course Deck will be up to you. You may play a short campaign, a long campaign, or an endless campaign. Narrative campaigns will have their set lengths – because every story needs a strong conclusion to give it meaning.
More Intruders, More Levels, and Evolution
The Dark Side of the Sun Demo is but a glimpse of Intruder variety. The full game will offer dozens of baseline Intruders, Unique Specimens and Boss Intruders, and each will have several levels that drastically change the monsters' behavior and battles (just check out Aeon Trespass: Odyssey for how this works!). Intruders will also evolve over time…
More Objectives, Combat Runs, Stealth Runs and More
The full game will feature dozens upon dozens unique objectives, making for unique missions, as well as completely new types of runs, like the all-guns-blazing Combat Runs and the even more tense Full Stealth Runs. And this is just the tip of the iceberg…
More of Everything
Nuff Said: we're known for cramming insane amounts of content into our games, and Enormity is no exception. Expect many more Spacers, Intruders, Boss Intruders, Locations, Gear, Abilities, Discoveries and much more of everything else too!
Join Us!
Enormity, like all our previous games, is a crowdfunding endeavor. Games like this – bold, brave, big, rich in content and innovation, delivering hundreds of hours of engrossing gameplay, gripping high quality narratives, ground-breaking concepts and exquisitely detailed miniatures, would never see the light of day without people like You. If Enormity looks like something you think you'd like, consider supporting us on Kickstarter for the best price, exclusive content and an opportunity to be a part of something bigger than yourself. Something Enormous. Thank you!
Note: Action Cards should be stacked back-to-back so that both of their abilities are visible.