Medievalia
Medievalia Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Game Components
- 56 Summon Creatures cards, as follows:
- 51 numbered cards
- 5 special cards (including the card "First card of the city's Invokers" and the card "Initial Player")
- 10 Magic Course cards (called "Magic Field cards" in the preparation and tower sections)
- 10 Magic Instructors cards
- 1 Board tower
- 1 card Initial Player
- 1 Rulebook
Game Preparation
- Place the Board tower on the side of the playing area. Put the card of the city's Invokers with the "Clockwise" face-up on the top board space.
- Shuffle the Magic Field cards face down, reveal the top card and place it in the second space of the board.
- Shuffle the Magic Instructors cards face down, reveal the top card and place it on the third space of the board.
- Keep the remaining cards stacked beside the Board tower, for a new card of Witchcraft and Magic Instructors Course will be drawn at the beginning of each round, replacing the previous one.
- Shuffle the Summon Creatures cards and distribute 6 cards to each player.
- Stack the rest of the cards face down on the table, forming the Summon Creatures deck.
The player who most recently invoked a magical creature starts the game (or else should be chosen randomly). Give him the card Initial Player with the "clockwise" facing up.
Sample preparation for a 4-player game: Decks of Magic and Magic Course Instructors; Board tower; Summoning playing Creatures; area to play cards during the game; player home; 6 cards to each player.
Game Round
In the first round, each player will make his move and pass the turn to the next player clockwise, repeating this process until one of the players cannot or will not make his move.
In turn, a player will have to play one or more cards open on the table, announcing the sum of the cards played to the other players. If you decide to play more than one card, all must have the same value.
The total value of the cards played must always be greater than the value of the cards played by the previous player.
At the end of his turn, the player draws cards from the Summon Creatures deck until his hand contains six cards (the card limit in hand). If there are no more cards in the deck, the game proceeds normally, ignoring this drawing step; players must make their moves only with the cards left in hand.
When a player cannot or does not want to play cards with a total value greater than the previous player, he must take all the cards that are open on the table and put them face down in front of him, forming his stack of creatures. Then the player who took the cards will make his move and the round usually follows.
Special Cards
Some cards have icons instead of numbers, having special effects when played. They are:
- Wildcard: You have any value of the player's choice, between 1 and 13. It is allowed to play several Ice Giant cards at once.
- Skip to Time (Skip the Time): jumps the player using it. He does not need to play any more cards; however, you need to reset your hand if there are still cards in the Summon Creatures deck.
- Time skip and reverse the direction: jumps the player using it and reverses the direction of the turn order, making the player [garbled in source: "old is the next to play"] the next to play. It follows so until the round ends or the direction is reversed again.
Note: for everyone to remember the direction in which the game is running, the card "Direction of Invokers" must be turned in the Board tower.
Example Game
Felipe starts by playing a card of value 3 on the table, the game running clockwise. The second player, Mark, plays two cards of value 4, announcing the value as 8. The third player, Patricia, must now play one or more cards whose sum is above 8. She plays a card of value 11. Then Lucas plays a value of 12.
It returns to Felipe's turn, and he plays two cards of value 5 together with the special card "Joker", announcing a total of 15.
Marcos plays a special card "Skip the Time and reverse the direction." He checks the card "Direction of Invokers" on the Board tower, so that everyone remembers that the game is now running counterclockwise, and so it is Felipe's turn to play again.
Unfortunately, Felipe has no cards that will add more than 15 in his hand and is bound to take all the cards played on the center of the table, placing them in his stack of creatures face down in front of him.
After that, he starts the round again and, as the table is empty, plays a card of value 1.
End of the Round
After the cards in the Summon Creatures deck run out, the round ends as soon as one of the players hits, i.e. once he has played all the cards in his hand. Then each player places the remaining cards from his hand on the stack of creatures caught during the round. If a player did not catch any, he forms a new stack of creatures with the remaining cards in hand.
The open cards that remain on the table are ignored; they do not count for score.
Scoring
At the end of each round, a scoring step is performed. Each card in the stack of creatures a player has is worth exactly one negative point! The player with the highest total score at the end of the game is the winner.
Note: the Magic Instructors cards alter this rule; see the cards in play before checking the scores!
Record the score of each player, adding the current round's score to the points of the previous rounds.
Example Score
The Magic Instructors card IM02 is in play, setting that the number 2 cards are worth two negatives (instead of only 1) and the player who hits brings +5 points.
- Felipe finished the round with a card in hand and five cards in his stack of creatures. Since there was no card number 2, he marks -6 points.
- Mark finished with two cards in his hand and two in his stack of creatures, one of them a card of number 2. Therefore, Mark marks -5 points.
- Patricia had no card in her stack of creatures, but had three cards in hand. None of them was number 2, and Patricia marks -3 points.
- Lucas hit and had no cards in his stack of creatures, so he does not mark any negative point and still gets the bonus of Magic Instructors, scoring +5 points this round.
Source note: the printed example gives Felipe five cards in his stack and a score of -6, which does not match the one-point-per-card rule (it would be -5). It is transcribed as printed and not corrected here.
New Round
Repeat the steps of the Game Preparation, with the following changes: turn the card of the city's Invokers over to its reverse side compared with the previous round (if the previous round started clockwise, the new round starts counterclockwise). Turn the card Initial Player and give it to the player to the left of the player who started the previous round. He will start the new round.
End of the Game
A game of Medievalia has the following number of rounds:
- 2 players: 4 rounds
- 3 players: 6 rounds
- 4 players: 4 rounds
- 5 players: 5 rounds
- 6 players: 6 rounds
At the end of the last round, the player with the highest score, adding the scores of each round, wins the game!
In case of a tie, the player who has the lowest score in a single round loses the game. If a tie still exists, the players share the victory!
Example: Lucas and Felipe end the game tied at -21 points. As Lucas's lowest round score was -15 and Felipe's was -8, Felipe is the winner of the match.
Tower's Cards
Card of Direction of Invokers: this card indicates whether the game is running clockwise or counterclockwise. Turn it when someone plays a card of "Reverse the direction", thus indicating the new direction of play. At the beginning of each round, turn it over to the reverse side of the previous round.
Magic Field card: at the beginning of each match, a Magic Field card is drawn, which will change some rules of the game. Any rules defined by these cards override the basic rules of the game. Some of these cards give special powers to certain creatures, while others modify the general rules, for example the card limit in hand.
(Card-layout key from the source: card code and card number; the rules defined by the card.)
Magic Instructors cards: at the beginning of each round, a Magic Instructors card is drawn to change the way the score is calculated at the end of the round. Some of them change the score of a particular card, others reward the player who hits, or the player with the lowest score, etc. All the rules of Magic Instructors override the basic rules of the game.
Clarifications
Card codes are printed on each card, with the card number; the rules are defined by the card itself.
- CM01: the rule is effective only if exactly two cards are played, that is, if you play three cards of number 5 it has no effect. It is imperative to give the cards of your stack of creatures to an opponent of your choice. If your stack has only one card, just give that card.
- CM02: the number 1 cards now have the effect "Skip the Time and reverse the direction." They cannot be played as common numerical cards, but you can still play as many number 1 cards as you want at once, although the effect is applied as if you had played just one card.
- CM03: all special (non-numeric) cards have the effect "Skip the Time and reverse the direction." Disregard their original effects.
- CM04: to play an amount equal to that played by the previous player, you must add these values to the next player. For example, if there was a 7 on the table and you played a 7, the next player will have to play a value of 14 or more. If he plays 14, the following player needs to play 28 or more. And so on.
- CM06, CM07, CM08 and CM09: the score considered is the sum of the scores of all rounds played so far. In case of a tie, all tied players receive the benefit or harm. If the bonus is "earning a card," none of the tied players receives the card.
- CM10: the number 12 cards now have the effect "Jump to time" and choose which player will play next. They cannot be played as common numerical cards, but the player can still play as many number 12 cards as he wants at once, although the effect is applied as if he had played only one card.
- IM01: the player who hits scores zero points.
- IM03: in the event of a tie, all tied players lose 5 points.
- IM04: check the number of cards in the hands of the opponent on your left and the opponent on your right. If you have fewer cards in your hand than one of them, that one loses 3 points; if you have fewer cards than both, both lose 6 points.
Source gap: the printed clarifications do not include entries for IM02, IM07 or CM05; the source contains no text for these codes, so none is added here.