The Stars Are Right
The Stars Are Right Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Game Components
Four "Little Book of Evil" Cards
These are all the same. This is the smallest Cursed Book known to students of the Mythos, but the information it contains will be very useful when you are summoning Creatures.
There are multiple cards for each Creature, even if it is unique. For instance, there is really only one Cthulhoo, but he exists in many avatars, so he can be summoned by different Cultists in the same game.
75 Creature Cards
Each Creature card shows the following:
- Name – you can't very well summon something unless you know its name!
- Type – Either Great Old One, Greater Servitor, Lesser Servitor, or Minion.
- Invocation – A symbol or symbols that shows how you may rearrange the stars if you play this Creature from your hand.
- Bonus Star – Only Servitors have a Bonus Star. If you control this Servitor, and you try to summon the Great Old One who rules it, you get its Bonus Star for free.
- Great Old One – Each Great Old One has a colored symbol. Servitors carry the symbol of their Great Old One. Minions have no symbol.
- Victory points – These advance you toward your final goal. Note that some Creatures give no VP.
- Constellation(s) – The pattern(s) of stars that must be visible in order to summon this Creature. If more than one Constellation is shown, they are all required.
- Power – Once you have summoned this Creature, it can serve you by changing invocation symbols as shown here.
If there is text on a Creature card, the text always takes precedence over these basic rules.
25 Star Tiles
These tiles make up the sky, in which the right constellation must be visible to summon Creatures. Each tile has symbols on both the front and back. The corner of each tile shows what symbol is on the other side.
The 25 Star Tiles are distributed as follows:
- 2 Stars / 3 Stars – 7 Tiles
- 1 Star / 4 Stars – 5 Tiles
- Void / 5 Stars – 3 Tiles
- Waning Moon / Waxing Moon – 3 Tiles
- Shooting Star / Meteors – 3 Tiles
- Sun / Solar Eclipse – 2 Tiles
- Moon / Lunar Eclipse – 2 Tiles
Small images will be the large image on the opposite side.
Setup
Mix up the star tiles and place them on the table in a grid of 5 by 5.
Give each player a Little Book of Evil card for reference during play.
Shuffle the Creature Cards and deal five to each player. The remaining cards are placed face down as the draw deck. When cards are discarded, they will go into a face-up discard pile next to the draw deck. If the draw deck is used up, reshuffle the discards.
The player whose sign of the zodiac will next rule the sky – that is, whose birthday will come next – takes the first turn. The game then proceeds clockwise.
Turn Sequence
On your turn, you may take the following actions. All are optional except the last one, but the actions you decide to take MUST be taken in this order.
- You may invoke one Creature (discard its card) to gain symbols which you will use to rearrange the sky.
- You may use the powers of any Creature(s) you have already summoned in order to modify the symbols you gained in Step 1.
- If you now have any symbols, you must now use all those you possess to rearrange the sky.
- If the stars are now right, you may summon one Creature from your hand.
- You may discard one card from your hand, or two if you control a Ghoul.
- You must draw to fill your hand: five cards, or six if you control a Ghast.
There are three kinds of Minions whose power is invoked by discarding the Minion card. These powers may be used at any time during your turn.
1) Invocation (optional)
With an invocation, you can rearrange the stars in the sky. To do so, discard one card from your hand. You will use the symbols in the top left corner to change the way the star tiles are arranged (but note that in Phase 2 you might change the symbols before you use them!)
You must use all the symbols. You may apply them to the same star tiles or to different ones.
Keep the discarded card in front of you for reference until you have finished moving the stars; then put it in the discard pile.
There are three kinds of movement:
Push
Push a whole horizontal or vertical row of star tiles by one space. All tiles keep the same side up. The tile moved out of the sky is placed in the free space on the other side.
Swap
Exchange the position of two adjacent star tiles. Both tiles keep the same side up. Tiles in the same row on opposite edges of the sky are not considered adjacent.
Flip
Turn over a single star tile. Its position in the sky does not change.
2) Using Powers (optional)
You can use the powers of the Creatures you have already summoned to change any or all of the symbols of the card you played during the Invocation.
The symbols at the bottom of the Creature card indicate how it can change the symbols you have.
Example: Harvey Walters invokes a Miri Nigri. Discarding this card gives him two "Swap" symbols, so he can make two swaps.
However, Harvey has already summoned some Deep Ones. By using their power, Harvey can change one "Swap" into a "Flip." Now he may swap once and flip once.
You may combine the powers of multiple Creatures in any order you wish. Each Creature's power can be used only once each turn. Turn a Creature card sideways to show that its power has been used.
Example: Harvey Walters invokes a Byakhee that allows him to push a row. He has a Miri Nigri and Formless. By using the Miri Nigri's power, he can change the single Push into two Pushes.
He then uses the power of the Formless. One of the two Pushes is changed into a Swap. Now Harvey may push one row and swap one pair of cards, in any order he chooses.
You may use the special powers of a Gug or Tindaloo to exchange a Creature. On the turn you exchange a Creature, you may not use the powers of the creature you give away. However, you may use the powers of the Creature that you get.
3) Change the Sky (optional)
Move the star tiles around, using the symbols gained by your Invocation and any later use of Powers. You must use all the symbols you have gained. You may choose the order in which you use the symbols, but you must use them all.
If you didn't invoke a Creature in Step 1, you have no symbols to use, and you can't change the sky.
Minions have powers as well. They don't move the stars around; their powers are special, and are described on the cards. You must summon a Minion before you use its powers – you cannot just play one from your hand. There are three kinds of Minion which must be discarded to use their power, and those may be used at any time during your turn.
4) Summoning (optional)
You may summon one Creature from your hand. Each Creature requires that the sky show one or more constellations . . . specific arrangements of stars. These are shown on the Creature card. The horizontal or vertical alignment of the constellations does not matter – just the relative positions of the star symbols.
If two or more sets of star symbols are separated on the Creature Card, they are separate constellations. To summon the Creature, all its constellations are required, but the location of the separate constellations, relative to each other, does not matter.
The simplest Creatures to summon are those with four single-star constellations. As long as the right four tiles are visible anywhere in the sky, the Creature can be summoned.
A slightly more difficult summoning might include two two-star constellations.
Example: To summon Deep Ones, you might need "a Shooting Star next to a 1" and "a 1 next to a 3."
The relative position of the pairs does not matter.
A single star tile may not be part of more than one constellation. If (for instance) two constellations include a Solar Eclipse, you need to find two Solar Eclipse tiles in the sky.
If a constellation includes dark spaces, these are "wild" and can be ignored. Any tile will do for those spaces. Only the symbols actually shown on the card are important. (Don't confuse the dark spaces with the lighter empty "Void" symbol, which indicates an actual empty tile.)
Show the other cultists that the stars match your Creature card, and place the summoned Creature in front of you. You get the number of victory points shown on the card. This Creature's power is now yours to command!
You may not have more than six Creature cards. If you get a seventh, you must immediately discard one before counting victory points.
Summoning Great Old Ones (Bonus Stars)
The Great Old Ones have large, complex constellations, and are usually very hard to summon, but the job can be made easier . . .
Each Servitor gives its controller a Bonus Star. That star may be ignored when summoning its ruling Great Old One. The Bonus Star does not affect any other summoning.
Example: Harvey Walters has already summoned a Miri Nigri. This Creature belongs to Chaugnar. Its Bonus Star is Meteors.
Now Harvey wants to summon Chaugnar. When he creates the necessary constellation, he may now ignore the meteors on Chaugnar's card, treating that as a wild space, because the Miri Nigri has already given him that symbol.
You may ignore up to three star symbols when summoning a Great Old One with the help of Servitors.
Any Lesser Servitor used this way is discarded immediately. The more powerful Greater Servitors, however, remain under your control.
Summoning Multiple Avatars
Each player may summon each Great Old One only once. So, for instance, you may never have two Cthulhoo cards in front of you. However, you may have more than one Cthulhoo in your hand, even if you have already summoned Cthulhoo.
It becomes harder to summon a Great Old One when its other avatar(s) are already on Earth. Every Great Old One already summoned reduces by 1 the maximum number of Bonus Stars that may be used when another player tries to summon the same Great Old One.
Example: Harvey Walters has three Creatures belonging to the Great Old One Cthulhoo. Now he wants to summon Cthulhoo itself.
Since one of his opponents has already summoned Cthulhoo, Harvey may ignore no more than two star symbols. He decides to use one of his two Deep Ones cards. It allows him to ignore the symbol of four stars. As shown in the illustration, the Bonus Star may even appear outside the normal 5 x 5 grid of star tiles.
Dagoon, a Greater Servitor, lets him ignore another symbol, that of the lunar eclipse. As shown in the illustration, even though the actual tile in that position is different, Harvey may count it as the lunar eclipse he needs. This reduces the constellation needed to summon Cthulhoo to only three star symbols.
Because the Deep Ones that he used are only Lesser Servitors, Harvey must discard them before placing the summoned Cthulhoo in front of him. He does not have to discard Dagoon, because Dagoon is a Greater Servitor.
5) Discard a Card (optional)
You may discard any one card from your hand.
6) Draw Card(s) (mandatory)
At the end of your turn, you must draw cards until you have five in your hand (or six, if you control a Ghast). If there are no cards remaining in the draw deck, shuffle the discards to create a new draw deck.
Ending the Game
The game ends when a player has at least 10 victory points worth of summoned Creatures. The Great Old Ones will rule again!
Credits
Game Design by Klaus Westerhoff. Illustrated by Goomi. Translated to English by Klaus Westerhoff. Edited by Jan Christoph Steines and Steve Jackson.
The Stars Are Right, Die Sterne Stehen Richtig, and the horse logo are trademarks of Pegasus Spiele GmbH, used under license by Steve Jackson Games Incorporated. The English edition is copyright © 2009 by Pegasus Spiele GmbH. Rules version 1.0 (July 2009).