No Honor Among Thieves Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
  • Icons
• The Game at a Glance
  • Characters
  • Schemes
  • Objectives
  • Defenses
  • Treasure
  • Hidden Agendas
• Setup
  • Motivation
  • Objectives
  • Draft
  • Gearing Up
  • Setup Summary
• Gameplay
  • Turn Breakdown and Actions
  • Heists
    • Negotiate and Plan
    • Send in the Team
    • Complications
    • Success or Failure
    • The Moment of Truth
    • Resolution
    • Consequences
    • Cleanup
  • Special Objectives
  • Scheme Card Types
• Endgame
  • Hidden Agenda Bonuses
  • Ties
  • Martial Law
• Glossary

Components

• 35 Character cards
• 96 Scheme cards
• 33 Defense cards
• 18 Hidden Agenda cards
• 12 Treasure cards
• 5 Reference cards
• 14 Objective mats
• 1 Jail/Graveyard mat
• 30 Copper Coins
• 20 Silver Coins
• 15 Gold Coins
• 2 Dagger Dice

Icons

City Watch, Lies, Muscle, Stealth, Tinker (skills); Active Ability, Broken Code, Dice Roll, Reaction.

The Game at a Glance

No Honor Among Thieves is a competitive/cooperative game for three to six players, in which each player assembles a crew of thieves and sets out to see who can steal the most lucre from the rich and powerful of a fantasy city. Working alone is difficult, but working together leaves you open to treachery by your so-called allies, or gives you the chance to betray them, and take it all for yourself. An unspoken code of honor exists among the thieves of this city, but that won't last past the first betrayal, and once that uneasy trust is gone you'll never get it back.

Your goal is to end the game with the most Coins.

The game ends when any of the Stage 3 Objectives have been successfully heisted, even if there are other Objectives still on the table.

Characters

Your most important assets as the head of a gang of thieves are the Characters you've got working for you. These are your eyes, ears and hands in the dirty business of theft. You can only have four Characters in your crew at a time.

Character cards have the following attributes:

• Skills: Almost every Character in the game has one (or more) skill(s), represented by a series of icons underneath their portrait. The Second-Story Man, for example, has 1 Stealth, while the Shyster has 2 Lies. You don't need to know what the individual icons mean, as anywhere that it matters they will be presented in icon form.
• Abilities: These are special actions that the Character can take, or ways that this particular Character breaks the rules of the game. See "Character Abilities" on page 21 for more details.
• Recruitment Cost: This is how much you have to pay to recruit this Character.

Schemes

Scheme cards are the equipment, contacts, and improvised plans that back up any good heist team. Each player may have up to seven Scheme cards in their hand, which they keep hidden from the other players.

Scheme cards have the following attributes:

• Type: The type of Scheme card determines when it can be played. See page 19 for further details.
• Text: The text written on the card describes what it does.
• Skills or Coins: Some cards will have additional icons in different locations for quick reference of information. For example, Schemes that grant permanent skill bonuses will have skill icons in the top left of the card, so you can easily see them if you slot the card behind the Character it is modifying.

Objectives

These are your targets, the places where you will find the jealously guarded wealth of the rich and powerful. Each has a Coin value that represents the (minimum) haul you can take in from heisting the Objective, a number of slots that will be filled with Defense cards when the Objective arrives on the table, an icon indicating if the reward includes a Treasure card, and a table to be rolled on if players on a heist fail to overcome any of the Defense cards.

Defenses

Every Objective is guarded by Defense cards, which represent the obstacles that must be overcome in order to liberate wealth from its rightful owners. Defenses are always played face-up into the Defense slots on Objective cards.

Defenses have the following attributes:

• Challenges: Every connected section of skill icons on a Defense card is a different challenge, or way of overcoming that Defense. For example, Ceremonial Guards has three challenges on its card, indicating that it can be overcome using Characters that have 2 Lies, 2 Stealth, or 2 Muscle. Some of these methods of bypassing a Defense might require more than one type of skill; for example, the Thief-Taker, one of the more difficult Defenses, requires 1 each of Lies, Muscle and Stealth.
• Reward: This value is added to the reward for the heist Objective. If it is not included, the Defense does not give an additional reward.

Treasure

Sometimes, the reward from a good heist is more than just gold. Treasure cards are what you get from those jobs where you pick up a little something special along the way.

Treasure cards are marked on Objectives as a rectangular icon next to the Coins icon. This represents a draw from the Treasure deck, and can be negotiated over just like the Coins can. Bear in mind that you will not know what Treasure you're getting before you have completed the heist and drawn the card. These cards are placed face-up in front of whoever controls them, and grant the ability or bonus described on the card to that player.

Hidden Agendas

Everyone has different reasons for staging a heist. Hidden Agendas represent the underlying motivations driving each player's criminal endeavours, giving them additional Coins at the end of the game for playing to their secret goals.

Some Hidden Agendas have a (five/six-player) icon after the reward for achieving their goals, with a different value of coins listed after it. When you are playing with five or six players, use the value listed after that icon instead of the one written further up the card.

Example: The Ace gives you 6 Coins if one of your Characters has the most skill icons of all characters in all crews. Since this becomes more difficult to achieve when you are playing with more people, when there are five or six players The Ace gives you 8 Coins for achieving its agenda.

Setup

The game space should be set up with Objectives laid out in the middle of the table and each player having space in front of them for their crew and their stolen wealth. Sort the different card types into their respective decks if you have not yet done so already.

Motivation

Shuffle the Hidden Agenda deck. Every player draws three Hidden Agenda cards and chooses two to keep, discarding the third face-down. Put your Hidden Agendas face-down in front of you without showing any other player. These are revealed and provide bonuses at the end of the game.

If this is your first time playing, you may want to simply deal each player two Hidden Agendas at random instead of giving them a choice, as it may be difficult to tell which ones will work well together without fully knowing how the game plays.

Objectives

If you have not yet done so, sort out the Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3 Objectives from each other. Stage 1 is green with a I on the back, Stage 2 is yellow with a II on the back, and Stage 3 is purple with a III on the back. Shuffle each stage separately from the others, face-down. Discard Stage 1 and Stage 2 Objectives from their respective stack until you are left with three Objectives in each stage to form the main Objective stack for this game. Place the Objective stacks face down on top of each other, with Stage 3 on the bottom and Stage 1 on the top. Finally, draw two Stage 1 Objectives and place them in the center of the table.

For each of the drawn Objectives, draw Defense cards and place them face-up in the card slots on the Objective. Every Objective also has a reward value: take Coins from the bank equal to this value and put them on the mat.

Some Defenses add additional Coins to an Objective's reward. If a Defense card has a Coin symbol in the upper-right corner, take Coins from the bank equal to the number on the symbol and put them on the Objective mat as well.

Put the mat that contains the Jail and the Graveyard on one side of the two Objectives in the center of the table, with the side that doesn't have the "No Honor" logo face up. The Jail and the Graveyard are where Character cards will be placed when Characters are arrested or killed. For more details on the Jail and the Graveyard, see "Exhaust, Arrest, Kill" on page 20.

Draft

Every player starts with 5 Coins. Shuffle the Character deck and lay out two Character cards per player face-up. This is the initial hiring pool.

Whichever player grabs the dice first is the starting player. Going clockwise around the table, starting with the first player, each player picks a Character card for their crew, paying its recruitment cost to the bank. Once the last player has picked a Character, the order reverses, and each player picks another Character going around the table counter-clockwise, starting with the player who was last in the clockwise rotation. Players do not have to pay the recruitment cost for Characters recruited on the second pass of the draft.

At the end of the draft each player should have two Characters. Arrange your Characters in front of you face-up. This is the start of your crew of thieves. Any Coins left over from recruitment may be kept, forming the start of each player's stash.

Take five characters from the top of the deck and lay them out face-up to form a new hiring pool for the start of the game. After the hiring pool has been filled, put three Characters from the top of the deck in Jail by stacking them face-up on the Jail section of the Jail/Graveyard mat.

Gearing Up

Once everyone has their Characters, deal each player a hand of 5 Scheme cards to start the game with. These cards remain hidden in your hand until you play them.

You cannot show your hand of Scheme cards to other players unless instructed to by a card or Character ability.

The first player from the draft is also the first player to take a turn in the game.

Setup Summary

Each player should now have 2 Characters in their crew, 2 Hidden Agendas secreted away, 5 Scheme cards in their hand and however many Coins are left over from the initial recruitment draft. There should be two Stage 1 Objectives (the green ones) in the middle of the table, each guarded by Defense cards. There should be a hiring pool of 5 Characters on one side of the table for players to choose from during Recruitment actions, and three in Jail on the other side of the table. If your game table matches this description, begin the game now.

Gameplay

Turn Breakdown and Actions

If you have more than seven Scheme cards in your hand at the beginning of your turn, discard down to seven.

After your discard phase, you may take three actions, picking from the following:

• Heist Action: Launch a heist against either a main Objective or the Jail. You can only do one Heist action per turn. See "Heists," page 11.
• Recruit Action: Take a Character from the recruitment pool, paying its recruitment cost to the bank. Draw a new Character from the deck to replace the Character you recruited in the pool. You cannot recruit Characters if doing so would put you over your crew limit (four Characters); you have to fire someone first (see page 11).
• Legwork Action: You may choose to discard any number of cards, and then draw Scheme cards until you have reached your hand limit (seven cards).
• Logistics Action: Play any number of Logistics Scheme cards. See "Scheme Card Types" on page 19.
• Rest Action: All of your exhausted Characters become unexhausted; turn them back to their usual orientation in front of you. You may also choose to draw two Scheme cards if you wish.
• Headhunting Action: Send all of the Characters in the recruitment pool to the bottom of the Character deck. Refill the pool with five cards from the top of the deck.
• Exchange Action: Trade cards with one or more other players. The other player(s) involved must agree to the exchange, and the end result of the exchange cannot result in one player having more Characters than their crew limit. Characters, Schemes and Treasures can all be traded in this way. Hidden Agenda cards cannot be traded.

On your turn you may also fire Characters, play Active Scheme cards and use Active Character abilities, none of which costs an action for you. Fired Characters are put on the bottom of the Character deck. For more on Active abilities, see "Character Abilities" on page 21 and "Scheme Card Types" on page 19.

Trading Coins may be done between any players on any player's turn, and does not cost an action.

Your turn ends when you have taken three actions. Play passes to the left.

Heists

Heist actions have either five or six stages depending on how many players are involved.

Negotiate and Plan

Recruit other players and negotiate shares. If you don't think you can run it alone, this is where you try to convince other players to assist you with their Characters, in exchange for a share of the loot. Players involved in the heist should agree on how the haul is being split before committing Characters to the heist.

Send in the Team

Every Character card has certain skills, and every Defense has certain skill challenges. Each skill challenge is a different way of getting past the Defense; for example, Alert Guards can be bypassed by 2 Lies, 4 Muscle or 3 Stealth. Players involved in the heist may play up to two Characters total to each Defense card, targeting one skill challenge on each card. If the skill values on the Characters are equal to or greater than those on the selected challenge, then the Defense is bypassed. A heist succeeds only if all Defenses are bypassed: anything less is failure.

The player or players attempting the heist must assign at least one Character to each Defense. If they cannot do this, then they cannot attempt the heist.

When you send a Character on a heist, pick up its card and put it next to the Defense you are committing it to. This makes it easier for everyone to see what's going on at a glance. Once a heist is completed, the Character returns to its place in front of you, unless it has been killed or arrested during the heist.

Complications

Once Characters are committed to the Defense challenges they are going to try to overcome, the Complications phase begins. Characters cannot be moved from or added to Defense challenges once this phase begins. Starting with the active player on the heist, each player in turn order is given a chance to take an action to try and affect the outcome of the heist. On their turn in the Complications phase players can use one Active Scheme, Complication Scheme, or Character ability (see "Scheme Card Types", page 19, and "Character Abilities", page 21). If they do not want to do any of these actions, they may pass the turn without doing anything. These cards and abilities must target Characters and players on the heist; you can't take the opportunity to use the Veteran's active ability to kill a Character controlled by an unrelated player, for example. If a player passes on their turn, they can still play cards when the turn order comes back around to them; the Complications phase only ends when every player passes in a row.

If a Character committed to a challenge is exhausted in the middle of a heist, they can still complete the heist while exhausted.

If a Character is killed or arrested in the middle of a heist, they stop adding their skills to the thieves' side of the skill challenge, and are immediately sent to Jail or the Graveyard. If this causes the heist to fail, the removed Character cannot take challenge failure penalties (since they are no longer on the heist).

See "Exhaust, Arrest and Kill" on page 20 for more details.

Complications Example

Player A assigns her Enforcer to fight its way past the Ceremonial Guards Defense card guarding the Wealthy Merchant Objective. The Enforcer has 2 Muscle, and one of the options for getting past the Guards is 2 Muscle. Since the Enforcer matches or exceeds the value required by the Defense, the Defense will be overcome, and so Player A passes on her first Complications turn, since she doesn't have to do anything else to succeed. Player B, however, has other ideas, and plays the Scheme card On Alert on the Ceremonial Guards. On Alert provides a dice bonus to a Defense card's Muscle or Stealth: in this case, Player B chooses Muscle, and rolls a 1, which means the skill challenge difficulty is now 3 instead of 2. Player C passes on her turn, which means that it is once again Player A's turn. Unless Player A has cards in her hand or abilities in her crew to provide a Muscle boost to the Enforcer, she will fail the Defense challenge and thus fail the heist.

If you are failing a heist, you can look outside of the people who have joined you already for assistance. People who are not in the heist cannot commit Characters during the Complications phase, but they can play Scheme cards and use active abilities on their Characters, either to assist or hinder. They are allowed to ask for recompense for doing so, in the form of Coins or favors, which as noted before can be traded freely at any time.

Success or Failure

If an entire round around the table passes without any player taking an action in the complications phase, the heist ends. If the player(s) who sent Characters bypassed all Defense cards, then the heist was successful. If they did not, then it failed.

If the heist was successful and it was a heist with multiple players sending Characters, the players involved go through a Moment of Truth phase.

The Moment of Truth

The Moment of Truth phase is where we find out if any of the players involved in the heist betrayed the others. This phase only occurs if there is more than one player on a heist.

Each player who sent Characters on the heist takes a Scheme card from their hand and places it on the table face down. These cards are revealed at the same time. Moment of Truth cards are resolved and then discarded; all other card types are returned to their owners' hands.

Moment of Truth Example

Players A and B are working together on a heist, and were able to successfully complete it despite the best efforts of Player C. A and B now each take a Scheme card from their hand and place it face-down in front of them, while watching each other warily. Player A reveals the Logistics card Faked Death, which has no effect and is returned to her hand, while Player B reveals the Moment of Truth card Side Job, which gives him an additional 2 Coins if he was not betrayed during the Moment of Truth. Since no betrayal happened each player takes their agreed-upon share of the haul, with Player B taking 2 additional Coins from the bank and discarding Side Job.

A player with Scheme cards in their hand must play one during the Moment of Truth phase. If a player does not have any Scheme cards, they cannot play a card in Moment of Truth, and are helpless before any potential betrayals.

Resolution

At the end of any heist, all surviving Characters are returned to their respective crews.

Success With No Betrayal

Every player collects their prearranged share of the Coins, and any Treasure cards are drawn by whoever had negotiated for them. Treasure cards are placed face-up in front of the player, and grant the power listed on them.

Success With Betrayal

If a betrayal occurs, first give any non-betraying players 1 Coin each. Then the betraying player(s) take Coins from the remaining haul up to the value on their betrayal card(s), splitting them as evenly as possible if there are multiple betrayals. Any coins remaining in the haul afterwards are split between all players in the heist, including the betrayer(s), as evenly as possible, with any excess going to the bank.

If there are multiple betrayals of different values, and there aren't enough coins to split them so that each player gets the value of their betrayal card (for example, a value 6 betrayal and a value 8 betrayal splitting a 10-Coin haul), then each player takes the difference between their betrayal card and the lowest betrayal card before the remaining coins are split as evenly as possible (so in the case of the previous example, the player with the value 8 card would take 2, then the remaining 8 Coins would be split 4 and 4, leaving one player with 6 and one with 4).

Betrayal Example

Players A, B and C are all on a heist together, and during Moment of Truth Player A plays a value 6 Betrayal! card, while Player B plays a value 8 Traitor! card. The heist has 14 coins on it. Player C takes 1 Coin, just to make sure that they get something out of it, leaving the haul with 13. Player B then takes 2 Coins (which is the difference between the value 8 Traitor! and the value 6 Betrayal!), leaving 11, which are split between Players A and B, 5 and 5. The remaining 1 Coin cannot be split evenly between three players, and is therefore lost to the bank. The end result of this turn is that Player A got 5 Coins for her value 6 Betrayal! card, while Player B got 7 Coins for his value 8 Traitor! card. Player C is left with 1 Coin despite all his hard work on the heist, and begins plotting revenge.

If there is only one player betraying the heist team, they also get any Treasure cards involved. If there are multiple betrayals on the heist, no one gets the Treasure cards.

If this was the first betrayal of the game, slide the Jail and Graveyard mat out from under any cards that may be on top of it, flip it over and put it back down on the table with the side labeled "No Honor" facing up. Put any cards that were in Jail or the Graveyard back on top of the mat. The thieves' code of honor is now broken, and new rules apply (see "Betrayal and No Honor," page 22).

Failure

If the heist fails, the player(s) involved may take 2 Coins from the bank for each Defense that they managed to successfully bypass, with the money going to whichever player had characters assigned to the successful Defense challenges (if there were two players on one Defense, the money is split 1 and 1). Discard all Defense cards that were successfully bypassed by the players, and replace them with new ones from the deck. If a Defense that is providing bonus Coins is discarded from the heist and replaced, the Coins that it added stay in the Objective's haul. Any Coins that the new Defense might provide are also added to it.

Consequences

When a heist fails, any Defense card that was not overcome deals out some sort of penalty. Roll a die for each Defense failed and consult the challenge failure table on the Objective mat, resolving the penalty listed there for each failed Defense.

Certain Defense cards are marked with the shield icon of the City Watch. These are known as Watch Defenses. If the failed Defense was a Watch Defense, use the failure table from the Jail mat instead of the one on the Objective being heisted.

Note: When heist consequences refer to All Characters, it means every Character assigned to the failed challenge, not every Character in the heist. Similarly, when it simply says Character, as in Character exhausted, they are referring to one Character on the failed Defense, chosen by the player. If multiple players are involved in one failed challenge and need to determine which Character to hit with the consequence, players roll off: whoever gets more daggers on the die wins, and the consequence is applied to the other player's Character, with the X counting as -1 dagger.

Cleanup

After a heist attempt is resolved, whether or not it succeeded, add 1 Coin to the reward of the other Objective on the table.

If the heist failed, it stays on the table, possibly with different Defenses (see above).

If the heist succeeded and the Objective was a Stage 1 or Stage 2 Objective, discard the Objective mat and all Defense cards that were defending it. Then lay out a new Objective from the top of the Objective stack, and draw Defense cards to fill its card slots. If it was a Stage 3 Objective, then the game ends.

Special Objectives

Some Objectives have special rules associated with them. Here are more detailed explanations for these special rules:

• River Yacht: Any Character that is exhausted while committed to this heist is immediately killed.
• Ancient Temple: At the end of a successful heist on the Temple, all Characters who were committed to overcoming its Defenses are exhausted. Note that this means any Character that is exhausted at the end of the heist will be arrested or killed (depending on if honor has been broken).
• Wizard's Tower: Do not place Defense cards in front of the Tower until a player has declared that they are going to attempt to heist it. Once the Tower's Defenses are placed, that player may negotiate with other players for assistance, and the heist proceeds as normal from there. After declaring a heist, the player must attempt the heist by committing at least one Character to each Defense card, and accepting the rewards or penalties from the heist's resolution. If the player fails the heist, discard all Defense cards in front of Wizard's Tower and draw new ones only when another player declares they are attempting to heist it.
• King's Palace: The Palace has one Defense slot that is always occupied by the Palace Guard.
• Duelist's Guild: One Defense slot on the Duelist's Guild is always occupied by the Duel. The player or players attempting to stage a heist of the Guild may only assign one Character to the Duel.

Scheme Card Types

There are five different types of Scheme cards. All Scheme cards go to the discard pile after use unless they say otherwise.

• Logistics cards may be played during Logistics actions. See "Turn Breakdown and Actions" on page 10.
• Complication cards may be played during the Complications phase of a heist. Complications do not cost an action to play. See "Complications" on page 13 for more details.
• Active cards may be played when you are the active player, which means either when it's your turn to take actions or when it's your turn during a Complications phase. Actives do not cost an action to play. In this way they act exactly as Active Character abilities (see Character Abilities, page 21).
• Reaction cards may be played in response to another action in the game. They must be played immediately, before any other action has occurred. For example, if a Character is killed, a player may immediately interrupt the normal course of play to use the Play Dead card, which means that the Character is exhausted instead. If, however, a Character is killed and the player that controlled that Character takes a Legwork action, or the next player in a Complications phase takes their turn, or any other thing happens to move the game forward, the opportunity to react to the previous action is lost.
• Moment of Truth cards are played during the Moment of Truth phase. See page 15 for further details.

Scheme Card Icons and Clarifications

• Broken Code: Some cards have secondary effects marked with the Broken Code icon. These effects can only be used after the code of honor has been broken (see "Betrayal and No Honor, page 22). When you play a card with a Broken Code ability, you must choose which effect to use; you can't use both the Broken Code and normal effects. Unless the text of the card says otherwise, Broken Code abilities are of the same card type as the Scheme card they are on.
• Dice: Some cards will have a dice icon where you might expect to see a number. This icon represents a roll of both dice, with the player rolling choosing which result they want to use (don't add the dice together, pick one or the other). The result of the roll is the number of daggers on the die chosen, with any side that isn't a dagger being worth 0. If a card says "roll a die" instead of having this icon, only roll one of the dice.
• Occasionally, a Scheme card might add a Character to your crew. If doing this would put you over your crew limit, you cannot play that card without first firing a Character from your crew.
• If at any point a Scheme card requires you to pay Coins or trade cards that you do not have, you cannot play that Scheme card.

Exhaust, Arrest, and Kill

While in a player's crew, a Character may find themselves exhausted, arrested or killed.

Exhausting occurs when a Character uses an ability and has to rest up afterwards, or gets beaten up on a heist, or any number of other things. When a Character is exhausted, turn their card sideways. You cannot use abilities of exhausted Characters, and cannot send them on heists, though if they are actively on a heist when they become exhausted they can still finish it. If an exhausted Character would be exhausted again, that Character is either arrested or killed. If the thieves' code of honor is still intact, they are arrested; if it has been broken, they are killed. See "Betrayal and No Honor," page 22, for more details.

Arrested Characters are moved to the Jail. Characters in the Jail are not considered to be part of any player's crew, and will remain in Jail unless a player breaks them out. Breaking a Character out of jail counts as a heist action, and requires you to overcome the Jail's standard Defense, the Jailor. If you successfully bypass the Jailor, you may choose one Character card from Jail and put it in your crew without paying the Character's recruitment cost. You cannot stage a jailbreak if your crew is already at maximum capacity. If multiple players cooperate on a Jailbreak, the player whose turn it is gets the Character that is broken out. Characters in the Jail may not be targeted by cards or abilities that are meant to affect Characters in play, such as the Veteran's kill ability.

Killed Characters are moved to the Graveyard. Characters in the Graveyard are not considered to be part of any player's crew and, barring exceptional circumstances, are out of the game for good.

Character Abilities

Character abilities are either active abilities, which must be activated by the player that controls the Character; passive abilities, which means they take effect whether or not the controller activates them; or reaction abilities, which means that they may be triggered in reaction to something happening in the game, such as another player playing a card.

Active abilities are marked with the Active icon. When an active ability is used, exhaust the Character that used it. Active abilities can only be used on your turn, or when you are given the chance to play during the Complications phase of a heist, and do not cost you an action. You can only use an Active ability once per turn, even if the Character with it becomes unexhausted during the current turn. If you want to use it again, you must wait for the next player's turn to begin.

Reaction abilities are marked with the Reaction icon. Reaction abilities may be used to interrupt other actions in the game, but must be used immediately after that action occurs. They work in all respects exactly like reaction Scheme cards. A Character using a reaction ability is exhausted similarly to a Character using an active ability. Characters cannot use reaction abilities to respond to cards or effects that are targeting them (for example, if a Scheme card is played that would cause the Ghost to be exhausted, arrested, killed or otherwise affected, you cannot use the Ghost's reaction ability to counter the Scheme card).

Some abilities are marked with the Broken Code icon. These abilities can only be used after the thieves' code of honor has been broken (see "Betrayal and No Honor," below).

Betrayal and No Honor

Certain Characters and Scheme cards in the deck are marked with the Broken Code icon (the broken knife and red splatter). Abilities and effects marked in this way can only be used once honor has been broken by one player betraying another. Once the thieves' code of honor is broken, it remains so for the rest of the game. When honor has not been broken, the Jail and Graveyard mat should be on the "clean" side, and when it is broken the mat should be on the side labeled "No Honor," with the blood splatters.

Broken Honor Example

The Grave Robber has the Broken Code ability "Whenever a Character is killed, gain 1 Coin." On turn one, a player attempts to overcome a Muscle Defense, and fails: their Character is killed, but the Grave Robber does not gain any money for its player, because honor has not yet been broken.

On turn two, two players join forces to take the heist that the first player failed at, and succeed. During the Moment of Truth phase, one of the players involved uses a Traitor! card, and takes the money for themselves. The betrayed player takes vengeance by playing the Scheme card Taking It Personally, killing one of the other player's Characters. Because a player has been betrayed and honor has been broken, the player with the Grave Robber gets 1 Coin, and will do so from now on every time a Character is killed for as long as they have the Grave Robber in their crew.

Endgame

As soon as any of the Stage 3 Objectives are successfully heisted, the game ends. The player with the most Coins in their stash after bonuses added from Hidden Agenda cards wins.

Hidden Agenda Bonuses

Every player has had two Hidden Agenda cards face-down in front of them since the beginning of the game. These are now revealed, and their bonuses calculated and added to the Coin value of each player's loot stash to determine who won. You do not lose Coins for failing to achieve your Agendas. Skills provided by Logistics Schemes attached to your Characters (such as Housebreaker Kit or Weapons Cache) count for Agendas that require you to have Characters with certain skills or certain numbers of skill icons, and Characters that have variable skills (Crooked Watchman, Courtier) are not considered to have their conditional skills for the purposes of Agendas (so Crooked Watchman counts as having 1 Muscle and not 1 Muscle and 2 Lies).

Ties

Ties are broken by comparing the number of Treasure cards collected by the tied players, with victory going to the thief with more of them. If there is still a tie, then the game ties, and the shadowy underworld of the city is split between two or more equally-matched criminal masterminds.

Martial Law

If there are fewer than 6 Characters outside of the Jail and Graveyard at any time, including Characters in all players' crews, the recruitment pool and the Character deck, then the game ends. All players lose, and the City Watch wins the game.

Glossary

• Ability: An effect that a Character can create on their own, without a player spending an action. See page 21.
• Action: You get three of these on your turn. See pages 10-11.
• Active Scheme: A Scheme card that can be used on your turn or during your turn of the Complications phase without spending an action. See page 19.
• Betrayal: When a player plays a betrayal card during the Moment of Truth. After the first betrayal in a game, Broken Code abilities may be used. See pages 15 and 22.
• Broken Code Ability: An ability that cannot be used until honor has been broken. See page 22.
• Characters: The members of your crew, who do the dirty work on the heists you plan. See page 4.
• Code of Honor: The thieves' code of honor prevents a lot of underhanded dealing among the rogues of the city. Once it's broken trust can't be rebuilt, and a lot of ugly Character abilities and Scheme cards can suddenly be played. See page 22.
• Coins: The stolen money used to recruit Characters and win the game.
• Complication: A Scheme card that can only be played during the Complications phase of a heist. See pages 13 and 19.
• Complications Phase: The part of a heist where players take turns trying to interfere with or bolster the efforts of the heist team. See page 13.
• Defenses: The obstacles between you and the wealth you deserve. See page 5.