Sovereign: Fall of Wormwood
Sovereign: Fall of Wormwood Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
- Your Deck
- Citizens
- Anatomy of a Card
- Game Setup
- Your Turn
- Card Types
- Battle Phase
- Breaching
- Quick Battle Reference
- Move Phase
- Draw Phase
- Advanced Rules
- Faction Iconography
- Glossary
- Strategy Tips
- FAQ
- In what order do I execute effects during upkeep?
- When you restore health, are you required to use the citizen type shown on the card? What about when you add health?
- What do I do if two or more competing effects trigger simultaneously?
- When is the start of a phase?
- What counts as a move?
- Do airborne units move before or after an attack is declared?
- What does it mean if an effect "cannot be used when resolving combat?"
- What happens to an augment if its host unit is scrapped?
- If a reflex allows me to pay a cost for an additional effect, can I keep using it at a later time?
Your Deck
Leader Card
The Leader of your faction has a special ability unique to your ideology. Your Leader is a direct descendant of the first talents to emerge from the Ark, and represents the left-most of two lanes where you'll deploy your units.
Citadel Card
Your Citadel is the heart of your civilization, built around an ancient technology known as the forge. The Citadel acts as the holding place for idle citizens you control and represents the right-most lane to deploy units.
Echoes
The Ark Apsynthos broke apart in orbit, scattering relics across the planet's surface millennia ago. Each faction seeks Echoes for a different reason, but all agree that each discovered Echo changes the world. Once scored, Echoes are completely safe and cannot be taken away. Score 10 to win.
Units
Units are the core of your faction: they represent everything from soldiers and war mechs, to merchants and statesmen. Units must be played into one of two lanes to defend your Echoes, and steal Echoes from opponents.
Augments
Augments upgrade or alter other cards on the field. Attach an augment to a unit or facility of your choice (depending on the card type listed) to provide a permanent ability.
Reflexes
Reflexes are game-changing events, playable during any player's turn. Reflexes are played directly out of your hand and take effect immediately, and their effect may last until your next turn.
Facilities
Facilities are important locations that grant your civilization powerful abilities when worked by your citizens. Together with your faction Leader and Citadel, they form your colony.
Citizens
Citizens are born in the creche and raised within the ideology of your faction. Citizens are split into two castes: talents (intellectuals, elites, or nobility) and drones (working class, servants, or slaves). These serve as your primary resources in the game, necessary for every activity from working facilities to drafting military units.
Tokens on the Citadel are called idle citizens, while the pool of citizens all players can recruit from is called the creche (pronounced Kresh).
Players recruit talents at the start of each turn during the growth phase. When placed on a unit, citizen tokens represent the unit's total health. Citizens cannot be voluntarily flipped to change them into one or the other.
The creche is an unlimited resource. You shouldn't run out, but if you do, use a suitable substitute.
Citizens are workers, not money! In general, when you use them on a card, they're working that card, and you will get them back when they finish. It's another matter if you send them off to war as health for a unit.
Anatomy of a Card
- Attack: The amount of damage this unit will do during combat, as well as the number of cards this unit can look at in an undefended breach.
- Armor: The amount of damage this unit can block from each source before it has to lose health tokens.
- Abilities: Most cards have a unique ability. Keywords will always have an explanation in parentheses.
- Card Type: The card's type determines where it is played and how it is used. Cards may have a subtype as well.
- Flavor Text: Story text in italics doesn't affect the game, but deepens your understanding of the world.
- Faction Symbol: Each card in your deck bears a faction symbol to indicate which faction deck the card comes from.
- Forge Cost: The number of spaces a forge talent needs to advance on the forge track until it can be revealed. This cost looks different on reflexes, since these never enter the forge and are paid for differently.
- Maximum Health: Indicated by the number of citizen icons along the bottom. When a unit is revealed, decide how many tokens of this type you will add, up to the maximum.
Game Setup
- Each player selects a faction deck and sets aside its Leader and Citadel card.
- Each player shuffles their 20 unique Echoes into their deck. The deck is then placed on the table with the Leader card to the left and Citadel card to the right.
- Place all citizen tokens in a shared pile to form the creche. Place all stat change tokens within player reach, if using.
- Choose a first player however you see fit. The first player receives one drone on their Citadel, the second player receives two drones, etc., up to the number of players.
- All players draw 8 cards from their deck. In the event of an unsatisfactory hand, a player may mulligan once by reshuffling their deck and drawing 8 new cards. Players can mulligan additional times if they show a hand with no units, or a hand that is 8 Echoes.
- For more detail on card placement, follow the tableau guide below.
For new players, we suggest you mulligan if you draw no Echoes, over 4 Echoes, or no units.
Tableau Guide
The tableau diagram is labelled as follows:
- Your Opponents (two labels, at the top left and top right).
- Stat Tokens (Shared) and Creche (Shared).
- Scored Echoes.
- Lane Defending Hand and Lane Defending Forge, the two unit lanes.
- Facilities, Leader, Deck, Citadel, and Forge.
- Reflexes, Scrap, and Hand.
A card is scrapped when it is killed or removed from play. A card is discarded if it is tossed from a player's hand without ever entering play. Either way, these cards are put into your scrap pile. This is a face-up pile that can be referenced by you or other players at any time.
Your Turn
Play begins with the first player and proceeds clockwise. Each player's turn consists of six phases: (1) Growth, (2) Upkeep, (3) Forge, (4) Battle, (5) Move, and (6) Draw.
Growth Phase
At the start of your turn, draw two citizen tokens from the creche, and place them on your Citadel as gold talents.
No actions, other than those written as growth phase actions, may be taken during this phase.
Upkeep Phase
This phase is when you take citizens back to your Citadel after they have completed their tasks. The first turn you will have nothing to upkeep.
First, perform any actions written on cards that say they trigger during upkeep. These may trigger in an order of your choice.
Then, scrap any active reflexes you control, and return their citizens to your Citadel.
You may remove one citizen from each facility and from your Leader card, placing them back on your Citadel. Unless specified by a card, citizens returned to the Citadel during upkeep do not flip.
Then, advance all talents on cards in your forge by one space. If you reach the forge cost to complete any of these cards, you may reveal them during your forge phase. No actions, other than those written as upkeep phase actions, may be taken during this phase.
Forge Phase
The forge serves as a construction zone for cards, hidden from other players, which have yet to meet their forge costs. Cards are played face-down from your hand into the forge and are "built" by citizens from your Citadel.
To play a card in the forge and start construction, you must place an available talent from your Citadel onto the first space of the forge track on the back of the card. Players track progress of a card in the forge by advancing the talent token clockwise along the track until it reaches the space equal to its forge cost.
Cards in the forge may NOT be rearranged for the purposes of obscuring information. New cards should always be placed to the right of or above current cards.
Accelerating Cards in the Forge
You may accelerate construction, exhausting any number of talents in your Citadel by flipping them to their drone sides, to advance a forge talent one space for each talent flipped during your forge phase.
While Echoes are placed into the forge like every other card, Echoes may NOT be completed in a single turn. Even if paid for fully (usually as a bluff), an Echo may not be revealed until your next turn.
Revealing Cards in the Forge
Once a card meets its forge cost, you may reveal it, placing it face-up in the appropriate area of your colony. If it is not an Echo, exhaust its talent by returning it as a drone to the Citadel. If it is an Echo, the talent returns to your Citadel unflipped and the Echo is immediately scored.
You are not required to reveal completed cards. Cards may remain in the forge for as long as you wish, but you may ONLY reveal them during your forge phase. If a card reaches its forge cost at any other time, you must wait until your next forge phase to reveal it.
A card's forge talent may move past its forge cost. If this happens, you may either move the forge talent up in the usual manner (to bluff an Echo, for example), or move the talent to the card's center, to indicate the card is complete. You may place the forge talent in the middle space if a card is complete but you are not ready to reveal it.
Forging Example
Turn 1: Ali plays Grav Skimmers (forge cost 5) and an Echo (forge cost 2) to the forge during her forge phase. She places an available talent from her Citadel on the back of each.
Ali has an extra talent remaining on her Citadel, so she decides to exhaust it in order to accelerate one of the cards in her forge. She flips the talent to exhaust it (and thus advance a forge talent).
Ali could advance her Echo, but she would still need to wait until her next forge phase to reveal it, and the only reason to do so would be to bluff that the card was not an Echo. She instead advances the talent on her Skimmers.
Turn 2: On Ali's next upkeep phase, both of the talents in the forge advance one level. The Echo is now paid for, and can be scored. Ali reveals the completed Echo during the forge phase and returns its talent to the Citadel.
Ali also wants to finish her Grav Skimmers, so she flips two talents to accelerate the card and complete it. The forge talent flips to the drone side and returns to her Citadel. These drones may now be used as health for her unit.
Order of Operations in the Forge Phase
In general, the order of operations during the forge phase are up to the active player, which means that the following actions are allowed:
- Forging a unit and not putting health onto it until the very end of the forge phase. If you are short on citizens, you can accelerate cards in the forge to make more drones on your Citadel, which can then be used as health on your newly forged unit.
- Rearranging newly forged units. Any units that were forged on this turn can be arranged in your lanes however you wish, as long as they are coming in behind units that have been forged on a previous turn.
- Forging an augment and leaving it unattached until you have a unit to attach it to (by the end of the phase).
- Using a facility's effect immediately after you place it to influence the rest of your forge phase.
When Can I Play Reflexes and Abilities Out of Turn?
Reflexes and card abilities may be played during your own forge phase, but only at the start and end of an opponent's forge phase. This is to prevent players from being interrupted unnecessarily, such as when adding health to newly forged units or performing upkeep by flipping tokens.
This also means that the active player may be able to trigger an ability when opponents cannot (for example, the active player can forge a facility and immediately use its ability, while other players need to wait until the forge phase is finished if they want to use an ability of their own).
As with all other timing rules, we strongly encourage interpretations of these rules that make the game more social – don't get bogged down with the exact timing of abilities unless you absolutely have to. It's much more fun to let players make clever moves, even if they may have just missed a timing window.
See more in the Reflexes section, page 19, or the Timing and Priority section, page 29.
Card Types
Units
Players forge units and deploy them into one of two lanes to defend either their forge or their hand. New units must be deployed to the back of a lane when first forged (their position may be changed during the movement phase).
Units have both a subtype (mechs, humans, etc.) and three attributes: attack, armor, and health. Attack and armor are indicated on the left side of the card, and determine its strength in battle (see Anatomy of a Card on page 7).
A unit's maximum health is pictured at the card bottom as a number of talents or drones. Health (tokens) can be added from your Citadel to a unit before the end of the forge phase in which it was revealed (up to its listed maximum).
On future turns, you won't be able to freely add health to your units, though many card effects will allow you to do so. A unit's first health must always come from the Citadel, even if you have a card ability that pulls health from the creche.
A unit's health tokens are scrapped to the creche when the unit takes damage. If a unit ever has 0 health, send it to its owner's scrap pile.
Only three units may occupy any one lane at a time. A unit's position in its lane will affect its abilities and the order in which it attacks and defends (for example, you may position a stronger unit in the front of a lane to protect a weaker one near the back).
Example: After several turns in the forge, Jon's unit is now fully paid for. He reveals it, placing it in front of his Leader, the lane protecting his hand. The forging talent is returned to his Citadel as a drone. This unit has a health maximum of 5. Jon only has three drones, so he places them onto the Telepaths as health.
Facilities and Your Leader Card
Facilities are forged to the left of your Leader card. Both facilities and Leaders have abilities that you may activate by working the card with idle citizens. This can be done at any time you would be able to play a reflex (reference the chart on page 19).
Facilities specify a number of talents or drones required to activate the ability. You may place more than the required amount of citizens on the facility to use the ability multiple simultaneous times.
You are not required to take a citizen off of these facilities during upkeep (usually, you will want to).
You cannot add one citizen to a facility to see what happens before adding more. Add all the citizens you will use before you use the ability.
Triggered Abilities
If the ability shows a number of talent or drone icons followed by a ":", the ability triggers once the player moves enough tokens of the required type from the Citadel onto the empty facility.
To use an ability again, you must first completely empty the facility of its citizens. Since you may only return one citizen from each facility to your Citadel per upkeep phase, it will often take multiple cool-down turns to reset your facility.
Perpetual Abilities
If the ability has the ➤ symbol, the ability remains active as long as at least the requisite number of citizens remain on the facility. You may leave citizens on these facilities for as long as you wish, and remove one per upkeep phase if desired.
Just like with facilities with triggered abilities, the abilities on these facilities stack if you use more citizens, and like with the triggered facilities you cannot freely add more citizens to a perpetual facility card.
Normal facility rules apply to perpetual abilities. To increase the number of citizens on a facility, empty it first, then place the new citizens.
Faction Leader abilities may be used the same way as any other facility (though your Leader is not a facility, and thus can't be targeted as one).
Facility Examples
- A facility with a triggered ability (forge cost 4): the ability reads, with one talent icon followed by a colon, "Units attacking you get -1 armor until end of phase."
- A facility with a perpetual ability (forge cost 4): the ability reads, with one talent icon followed by the ➤ symbol, "Add two drones to your Citadel during your growth phase."
- A Faction Leader ability (Windwalker Clans): the ability reads, with one drone icon followed by a colon, "Move target unit you control. This cannot be used when resolving combat."
Example: After an attack is declared against him, Jon places three idle drones from his Citadel onto Titan Cannon. In this way he is able to deal 3 damage to a target unit and all adjacent units. Armor on units is still taken into account when using abilities to deal damage (so if the unit in question had an armor of 2, it would only take 1 damage from this ability).
During his upkeep Jon will be able to take one drone back and place it on his Citadel, so it will takes three turns for the facility to cool down and be usable again.
Example: On her turn, Ali places two idle talents from her Citadel onto Apsynthos Memorial. Anytime she scores an Echo, she may flip two drones on a Citadel (her own or an opponent's).
As this is a Perpetual Ability, this will be true until she decides to take her talents back, which she can do in the same manner as with triggered ability facilities, once per upkeep.
Augments
After successfully forging an augment, you may attach it to a unit or facility (specified on the augment) to give it a permanent ability. You may attach an augment to any player's card, not just cards you control. Unless otherwise specified, an augment attached to another player's card is now controlled by that player.
A card may have any number of augments attached to it. If that card is removed from play, any attached augments are scrapped.
If you ever forge an augment and have nowhere to put it you may leave it in the forge with the talent on the back until you are ready to use it.
Example: During his next turn Jon is able to place the augment Aegis Shell into his forge, then accelerate it twice to put it out immediately. The Aegis Shell augment can be attached to units, so he attaches it to his Chimera Telepaths by placing it next to the unit card (or tucking it under so the text is still visible).
Echoes
Score 10 Echoes to win the game (12 Echoes recommended for a 2 player game). Echoes may be forged yourself, or stolen from other players. Echoes can never be scored in the same turn as they were put into the forge – but they can be accelerated if you wish to bluff and make them a less appealing target to others.
When you forge an Echo, the forging talent returns to your Citadel unflipped.
An Echo may never be put into a scrap pile by any means.
Once scored, Echoes are safe and cannot be stolen or destroyed.
Reflexes
Players may play reflexes from their hand at any time during their forge, battle, and move phase, between player turns, and at specific times on other players' turns (see chart).
Reflexes take effect immediately as soon as you move a number of citizens (either talents, drones, or a combination of both) from your Citadel onto the reflex equal to the card's cost.
If a reflex card affects a single card, place it next to that card. If it affects the whole game, place it to the left of your facilities.
Reflexes last until the beginning of your next upkeep phase, when you must scrap the reflex and return its citizens to your Citadel. (Reflexes remain in play until your next upkeep even if the effect is over).
Note that reflexes are the only cards that do not enter the forge.
Playing a Reflex or Using a Card Ability
The chart shows when a reflex can be played, or a card ability used, in each game phase, on your turn and on an opponent's turn:
| Game Phase | My Turn | Opponent Turn |
|---|---|---|
| Growth | No | No |
| Upkeep | No | No |
| Forge | Yes | Beginning & End |
| Battle | Yes | Yes |
| Move | Yes | Beginning & End |
| Draw | No | No |
Between player turns: Yes (the chart shows a single check mark for this row, under the Opponent Turn column).
Out of Turn Play
You may only play reflexes or use card abilities outside of your turn during the battle phase and at the beginning and end of an opponent's forge and move phases. This is to avoid sneaky moves that interrupt player actions unfairly or unnecessarily. You may also play reflexes between player turns.
Special Card Abilities
Many cards have special abilities that can be triggered at will. If the ability does not specify a phase in which it triggers, it can be triggered by the player at any time they could play a reflex.
Stat Change Tokens
Stat change tokens are an optional way to keep track of how unit stats are being modified by reflexes, augments, keywords, and special abilities.
Battle Phase
The lanes in front of your Citadel and Leader card defend the Echoes in your forge and hand respectively. These lanes may also serve you during your battle phase, to attack an opponent in hopes of scoring Echoes they may be hiding. You can only attack the players to your left and right, so in a four player game you will be unable to directly attack the faction across from you.
Choosing Your Attackers
To attack an opponent during your Battle Phase, choose the lane you wish to attack from. You may only attack with one lane per turn, regardless of the number of players. Choose any number of units (from front to back of the lane) to attack with (as few as one and as many as the entire lane), then choose an opponent's lane to attack: either their Citadel to attack their forge, or their Leader to attack their hand.
The lane you are choosing to attack from does not determine the lane you can attack. You may attack a Leader lane with your Citadel lane and vice-versa.
When a lane of units attacks, the front unit in the lane MUST be part of the attack, but other units are optional. You cannot rearrange units for an attack, therefore if you wish to take the back unit in a three unit lane into combat, you MUST bring the middle unit as well. You must declare which units you are attacking with before you begin resolving damage and cannot change your mind during the Battle Phase.
Defending units cannot choose not to defend.
Attackers form a new temporary lane in combat. Units not attacking are not considered in this lane, and do not contribute their ability text to combat.
Example: To attack with this lane, Jon could:
- A. Attack with Recon Guerillas.
- B. Attack with Recon Guerillas and Undercity Anarchs.
- C. Attack with Recon Guerillas, Undercity Anarchs, and Rail Sniper.
However, the Recon Guerillas and Rail Sniper could NOT attack without the Undercity Anarchs.
Resolving Damage
Players resolve the damage for each pair of attacking and defending cards in combat rounds.
Armor blocks damage from every hit before attack power can impact a unit's health. Each attacking unit must overcome the armor on its own. For every point of damage a unit takes over its armor value, scrap a health token from the wounded unit to the creche.
Damage done by faction powers, facilities, and reflexes also must overwhelm armor individually before health is scrapped.
In cases when a unit has more than one type of health token (both talents and drones), the unit's controller gets to choose which health is scrapped.
All unit-to-unit damage is simultaneous. If a unit is ever reduced to 0 health, it is immediately scrapped at the end of the current combat round. A unit at 0 health cannot be saved by restoring or adding health with other effects.
Line up the attack and armor values to resolve damage. Cloudbreakers are hit for 2 damage and blocks 1 with their armor, and takes 1 damage. Ali returns one health token to the creche.
Example: Jetleap Seraphim is hit for 3 damage and blocks 1 with its armor, taking 2 damage. Jon removes two health tokens and returns them to the creche.
Multi-Unit Lanes and Combat Rounds
A new combat round will begin each time the attacking units move further down the defending lane.
In lanes of more than one unit each, multiple cards may be facing off against each other in a single combat round.
While resolving damage make sure you pay special attention to card effects on all the units involved in combat.
Each attacking unit deals combat damage only once, to the first unit it encounters in the lane. Defending units, on the other hand, deal full damage to each attacker.
Keep doing combat rounds for each attacker in lane order, until all attackers have reached the end of the lane or have been destroyed.
Example: Herdmasters attack the defending lane and deals its damage to the first unit it encounters. During the next combat round, when the Herdmasters slide down to encounter the Jetleap Seraphim, it no longer deals damage, but will receive damage from the Jetleap Seraphim.
Playing Reflexes and Using Facilities in Combat
During each combat round, any player may play reflexes from their hand, work a facility, or use a card ability before resolving damage.
If multiple players' cards have conflicting but simultaneous abilities, the player whose turn it is activates their ability first, followed by player order (and then around again, if there are even more abilities). See the Timing and Priority section on page 29 for more details.
Combat Example
Ali attacks Jon's hand (the lane in front of his Leader), which is defended by a Hunter-Seeker and Nautilus. The Hunter-Seeker and Sentinels deal damage to each other simultaneously in the first combat round.
- The Hunter-Seeker has an attack of 2, which isn't enough to breach the Sentinels' armor of 2.
The Sentinels have an attack of 3. It will hit the Hunter-Seeker, who has 1 armor. However, the Nautilus' ability lends the Hunter-Seeker +1 armor, creating a total armor value of 2.
-
Ali wants to get rid of the Nautilus (and the +1 Armor it lends to Jon's units) so before combat resolves, she plays a reflex. Desperate Sacrifice allows her to scrap one of her units not in combat to scrap a health off of a unit. That leaves the Nautilus with zero health, scrapping it. Its ability no longer affects combat. Damage is resolved. This is the end of the first combat round.
-
The Sentinels move forward, and with no remaining defenders to face, they will successfully breach Jon's hand when combat is over.
-
Simultaneously the Webweave Spies move forward to face the Hunter-Seeker. Its attack of 2 overwhelms the Hunter-Seeker's 1 armor. The Hunter-Seeker takes its final health damage and is scrapped—but not before it deals its damage to the Webweave Spies, who scrap 1 health token.
Combat ends, and Ali has successfully breached Jon's hand with two units and no living defenders.
Breaching
If you have surviving attackers at the end of combat, each attacker will have successfully breached the defender's forge or hand (depending on the lane you attacked).
If no living defending units remain at the end of combat, the breach value of each attacking unit is equal to its attack value. Your overall breach value is the total of these values plus any breach bonus that may apply (from card abilities).
If there are living defenders present, the base breach value of each attacker is reduced to 1. Any effects on cards that grant bonus breach value will trigger AFTER the breach is reduced to 1 by the defenders.
Breaching the Hand
Secretly look at a number of cards equal to your breach value. If you find any Echoes, score all of them immediately. If you do not find any Echoes, you must discard one of the cards revealed to you (this goes to its owner's scrap). Return the rest of the cards to their owner.
Breaching the Forge
Secretly look at a number of cards equal to your breach value. If you find any Echoes, score all of them immediately and return their forge talents to their owner's Citadel. If you do not find any Echoes, return the cards to their original positions in the forge.
After combat is resolved, surviving attacking units are returned to their original lane, in their original order.
A unit must have an attack value of at least 1 in order to look at a card.
Calculating Breach Value
- Without defenders: look at 5 cards (the total attack value is unchanged).
- With defenders: look at 2 cards (the defender reduces each attack to 1).
Remember: When breaching a hand, discard a card ONLY if you do not find a single Echo. Discarding is not optional.
You cannot discard a card from the Forge if you don't find an Echo.
Quick Battle Reference
- Declare Your Attack: Choose your attacking units and which lane you are attacking. If the lane is undefended, go to 4A. Otherwise, continue.
- First Combat Round: Line up the first unit in the attacking and defending lanes. Reflexes and card abilities may be played by any player. Resolve damage. If all units in combat have dealt their damage, go to 4. Otherwise, continue.
- Additional Combat Rounds: Attacking units slide down the lane to face the next defender. Attackers who have already dealt damage once do not deal damage again (but they do take damage from defenders.) Reflexes and card abilities may be played by any player. Resolve damage.
4A. Breaching with No Living Defenders: Look at a number of cards equal to the attack value of all your living attackers combined. Score all Echoes found. 4B. Breaching with Living Defenders: Look at a number of cards equal to the number of living attackers with an attack value of at least 1. Score all Echoes found.
End of battle phase.
Move Phase
During this phase, you may move one unit you control up or down by one space in its lane, or move it to the back of your other lane. You cannot go back and move a unit once you've entered your draw phase.
As more units are added to your war machine, you will want to arrange them effectively for either offense or defense. Large units forged later in the game will take time to move to the front lines.
Example: During Jon's move phase he moves Lilin Matron to his Citadel lane, where it arrives in the back of the lane. As a result, Sporemask Poachers are pushed forwards, remaining at the front of the lane.
Draw Phase
At the end of each turn you will research new possibilities by always drawing cards up to your hand limit of 8. If you have more than 8 cards at the end of your turn, you will not draw any cards. Gameplay advances to the next player's turn.
It should be impossible to draw through your entire deck during a game. However if this does happen, continue playing with the cards you have in your hand, skipping your draw phase.
Advanced Rules
Timing and Priority
As you become more adept at Sovereign, you may end up attempting to play a reflex or ability at the same time as another player. When this happens, we look to a player's priority for the answer. The active player always has priority, followed by the other players in turn order. At the beginning of battle, move, and draw on anyone's turn, each player has an opportunity to use an ability, or play a reflex, in the initiative order.
Normally this doesn't matter, since only the active player is taking actions. But if four players attempted to use reflexes or abilities at the same time, then the active player would do a single action first, followed by each other player in turn order, whereupon the active player could now respond with an additional action, and so on. Each action must be completed before the next action is started, and once all players have finished all response actions, the active player would continue their turn as normal.
When we say 'the same time', we mean it. If a player says they are playing a reflex out of turn, and no other action was taking place, they still have initiative because there is only one event occurring (the reflex). Use your best judgment when to use an initiative call, because a lot of the fun and exciting moments in Sovereign happen when someone loudly declares a reflex or ability when you least expected it.
Priority order is also used for triggered abilities that can occasionally conflict with one another. If two players each have cards with the same functional triggered ability, then the card owned by the player with earlier priority activates that card first. In regards to your own cards, if you come into a timing conflict where one card's ability interferes with another, then these may trigger in an order of your choice.
For more information, refer to the Reflex and Special Card Ability timing chart on page 19.
Revising the Win Condition
12 Echoes is the recommended win state for two player games.
For a 3-4 player game, a 12 Echo victory provides a longer, more strategic game focused on civ-building. Expect the extra Echoes to add 30-60 minutes play time.
Customizing Your Deck
As you get more familiar with the intricacies of each faction, you may want to try a game where players customize their own decks to get more intense (and maybe unbalanced) matches.
You can try customizing from a single starter box, or for maximum variety, each player can use their own box of cards.
Each deck in Sovereign comes pre-built for a specific faction, but these cards can be mixed and matched in thousands of ways to create unique ideas. Use these guidelines to craft your own customized deck:
- Choose a Leader (no two players may play the same leader).
- Choose 15 cards from that Leader's faction to include.
- Choose 15 additional cards to add to the deck, with no limitations beyond the fact you can only have one of each card.
- Your deck must have 30 unique cards and 20 echoes, for a total of exactly 50 cards.
- Which types of cards you include in your deck is up to you, but we recommend approximately 12 unit cards and 6 of each other card type (augment, facility, and reflex).
The Golden Rule
If a card ever contradicts something in the rulebook, the card text overrides anything written here.
Faction Iconography
Each card's faction symbol (see Anatomy of a Card) identifies its faction deck. The faction icons are labelled:
- Windwalker Clans
- Myrmidon Dominion
- Undercity Brotherhood
- Utopian Remnant
- Neogenesis Church
- Machina Sapiens
Exiles of Eden Expansion:
- The Dronestate
- Cult of Apsynthos
- Coriolan Exiles
- Red Hegemony
Glossary
Accelerate: Flip an idle talent to its drone side to advance a talent in the forge by one space.
Add Health: A unit may add health beyond its original maximum. Health added does not need to match the citizen type shown on the card. A unit may not add health after it is destroyed.
Advance: Move a talent in the forge up one space along the forge track.
Adjacent: In a lane, a unit in front of or behind this unit.
Apsynthos: 'Wormwood' in Greek. The great Ark that brought humanity to Apsyntion.
Attack Value: The amount of damage a unit will do in combat. This is also the default breach value during a successful breach.
Beginning of Phase: The point in which the previous phase has been declared complete, but no actions have been taken in the current phase.
Breach: Surviving attackers at the end of combat can breach the defending lane, revealing cards to the attacking player.
Breach Value: The number of cards that an attacking player may look at at the end of combat. Cards that increase "breach value" do so after breach value is reduced by living defenders.
Chimera: A person with genes altered so extensively they cannot be classified as human. A unit subtype.
Citadel: The Citadel acts as the holding place for idle citizens you control, and represents the right-most of two lanes where you may deploy units.
Citizen: A token representing a talent or drone.
Combat Damage: Damage dealt by a unit's attack during the battle phase. Abilities that add "combat damage" do not add to the breach value.
Combat Round: Each individual unit-to-unit battle during the battle phase.
Colony: The Citadel card, Leader card, and facilities form a faction's colony.
Controlled: Any cards in a player's tableau (including their colony and unit lanes) are in their control.
Creche: The pool of citizen tokens shared by players.
Damage: Damage is first absorbed by a unit's armor. For every point of damage beyond their armor value, the unit must scrap one health token. Armor must be broken each time damage from a new source is applied.
Discard: When a card is sent directly from a hand or deck to the scrap pile, that card has been discarded. It does not count as being "scrapped."
Faction: A player, and all the cards in their play area.
Forge: All of the face-down cards to the right of your Citadel. When you forge a card, flip it face up and move it to an appropriate area.
Health: The citizen tokens on a unit.
Idle Citizen: A citizen token on your Citadel. If a card does not specify where a citizen comes from, assume it is an idle citizen.
Idle Facility: A facility not currently being worked by citizens.
Keyword: Keywords are always defined on the card that they belong to. Keywords may never be stacked.
Lane: The three spaces for units in front of the Leader or Citadel card.
Leader: This card represents the Leader of your faction, and has a special ability unique to your ideology. It also represents the left-most of two lanes where you will deploy your units.
Lethal Damage: Damage that results in a unit being scrapped.
Owned: You are the owner of any card that started in your deck (see "controlled").
Peek: Look at a card secretly, then return that card to where it came from.
Restore Health: A unit may restore health up to its original maximum (listed on the card). Health restored must match the citizen type shown on the card. A unit cannot restore health once destroyed.
Reveal: Privately show a card as a result of a breach. Publicly show a card at any other time.
Scrap: When a card has left play because it has 0 health or is otherwise destroyed, that card is "scrapped" and gets placed in the scrap pile. When you scrap a citizen, it goes to the creche.
Synthetic: Artificial lifeforms. A unit subtype.
Target: A card or faction of your choice, as specified by the ability.
Work: Citizens used to activate a facility or a Leader card are "working." This can include moving a citizen from a Citadel to activate a facility, or citizens left on facilities with perpetual abilities.
Xeno: Native life to Apsyntion. A unit subtype.
Card Iconography
- Accelerate icon (the number 1 in a circle): Accelerate a talent one step on the forge track.
- Talent icon followed by a colon: Place 1 or more talents here for an immediate effect.
- Drone icon followed by a colon: Place 1 or more drones here for an immediate effect.
- Talent icon followed by the ➤ symbol: As long as 1 or more talents are on this card, the effect remains active.
- Drone icon followed by the ➤ symbol: As long as 1 or more drones are on this card, the effect remains active.
Strategy Tips
Remember that talents and drones are people, not currency. If you don't put them in harm's way by sending them to war, your colony will grow more rapidly as they work facilities and act on reflexes. Don't forget that these citizens return to your Citadel!
Keep your opponents guessing! Don't amass Echoes in one area unless you have the means to defend them. Do your best to misdirect your opponents as to where you hide your riches. Once you've played a few games, try accelerating an Echo to make it look like something else!
Don't worry about losing some Echoes early, as it tends to put a target on the back of whoever attacked you (in a 3+ player game). In the same sense, don't wait too long to forge Echoes, as those early returned talents can give you a necessary edge.
During the battle phase, lining up attackers and defenders makes it easy to visualize damage resolution and keep track of the attacking player's progress. However if you are more advanced players, you may be able to talk through the combat just by pointing at each unit facing off, without physically moving your cards.
Make temporary alliances against seemingly unbeatable players! Don't ignore the fact that you can usually use your abilities and reflexes to assist other players, or grant them positive augments in return for favors later on. In a four player game, the player across from you starts as an 'ally' – later, you may need to help your neighbors massacre this former friend.
FAQ
The publisher's official FAQ, version 1.04, appended after the rulebook text above. Its answers are reproduced as printed.
In what order do I execute effects during upkeep?
Order of operations in upkeep is as follows: resolve card effects that trigger during upkeep, then move citizens back to your citadel, then move talents up in the forge. Further clarification has been added to the latest online version of the rulebook.
When you restore health, are you required to use the citizen type shown on the card? What about when you add health?
When restoring, you can only use tokens of the original printed type, and only restore up to the original health (a unit that shows drones as health must receive drones during a restore action). When adding health, you may use either citizen type, talents or drones, and you can add above the listed maximum.
What do I do if two or more competing effects trigger simultaneously?
Simultaneous effects across players will trigger one at a time, in player order, starting with the active player. If a single player's effects are triggering simultaneously, they may choose which order to resolve them in.
When is the start of a phase?
The start of a phase is before any normal action has been taken, after the previous phase has been declared finished. Normally this should be intuitive, but we recommend all players say the phase they are in out loud to clarify when a phase starts and ends.
What counts as a move?
A "move" is always a single unit moving up or down in a lane, or moving to the back of the opposite lane. Some cards may specifically move a unit in other ways, but that will be specified on that card only.
Do airborne units move before or after an attack is declared?
Airborne units move before an attack is officially declared, but in practice this can be muddy, particularly if an opponent is threatening to attack you without technically declaring the attack. The easiest way to designate the moment of attack is when you push your units out to show the attacking lane, that is the moment of no-return for both the attacker and the choice of whether to move airborne units.
What does it mean if an effect "cannot be used when resolving combat?"
You start resolving combat when you deal combat damage in the first combat round, and you finish resolving combat when you finish resolving damage in the last combat round. The Windwalker Leader ability is the most common effect with this restriction - it can be used after an attack is declared, but once combat damage is resolving units are locked in their lanes.
What happens to an augment if its host unit is scrapped?
The augment is scrapped along with it. Remember that scrapped cards always go to the owner's scrap pile, and not the controller's (so if someone else augmented your unit that is being scrapped, the augment will go to their scrap pile).
If a reflex allows me to pay a cost for an additional effect, can I keep using it at a later time?
Reflexes with passive effects, such as global changes to armor or attack, remain in effect until they are discarded on upkeep. Reflexes with targets (such as Zealotry) that scrap additional cards or tokens as an added cost, only trigger at the moment of play, though in that case there is a second passive ability which remains in effect.
What is the difference between taking damage and losing health?
A unit can take damage from other units or from abilities, and does not need to lose health to have "taken damage". This means abilities that trigger upon taking damage are activating due to a unit being under fire - other abilities that specifically state they trigger upon health loss only trigger if health tokens are scrapped from that unit.
How does a 'Slow' unit check for lethal damage?
When dealing with Slow units, first check to see if they would take enough damage to scrap all of their health, and if so, they deal no combat damage themselves. Slow retroactively cancels the damage the unit would deal after damage resolution but before health is actually scrapped from both units involved.
Does a unit replaced by Mosaic Mutation count as being "forged"?
No, the unit has transformed into a completely new one. It is not forged, so does not trigger forge effects (and you cannot add new health as you would to a unit exiting the forge).
Can I forge Salamander Armor directly from my hand?
You can - as written on the card, it is possible to forge it immediately from your hand if you have enough Talents to do so. Treat this moment as if you were in a temporary forge phase, but you may only forge this one card. Usually, Salamander Armor will be set up in the forge ahead of time, and is simply revealed using its ability.
Can the Hegemony Slavers steal a talent off the Citadel if it was just placed there due to an Echo being stolen from the forge?
No. They may only take citizens who were on the Citadel at the beginning of the breach. A successful breach (the Echo being taken and scored) is a step that happens before the talent is returned.