Veritas
Veritas Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
The Basics
Players: 3-6
Playing Time: 60 Minutes
This Game Comes With
Eight board sections, which assemble into a lovely 17" x 22" game board; 96 hexagonal "burn tiles" including one tile for each monastery on the board (2-B, 8-D, etc), and 18 "Safe" tiles. The sheet also contains some blanks in case you need a replacement tile.
You Will Also Need
About 40 colored chips or tokens for each player, representing books. These tokens should be stackable at least 10 high. Each player will also use one token as a marker on the scoring track.
About The Board
The game board represents France, in roughly the 10th century. It's not all that accurate, so please don't try to use it for navigation or history tests.
The small numbered spaces all over the board are monasteries, and the large named spaces are cities.
The straight lines are roads connecting the spaces.
Your tokens represent books. Each one contains one player's truth. Books will stack up in cities and monasteries all over the board.
Stacks can contain books of many colors. If your book is on top of a stack, you control that stack.
Shrinking the Board
For a three- or four-player game, you will play on only a portion of the board. You do this by ignoring certain territories and discarding any burn tiles from those territories.
All roads that lead into deactivated areas should be ignored. When you draw a tile from a deactivated area, set that tile aside and draw again.
For three players, you will use only nine of the twelve regions. You may use either the southern map, deactivating Brittany, Normandy and Champagne, or the northern map, deactivating Gascony, Languedoc, and Guienne.
For a four-player game, deactivate two territories on the map: either Brittany and Normandy for the southern map, or Languedoc and Valentinois for the northern map.
For a five- or six-player game, use the entire map.
Setting Up
Give each player all of the books of a single color. Each player uses one book for the scoring track, and the rest will be used on the board. Put all the burn tiles in the box, and mix them well.
Starting with a random player, and proceeding counterclockwise, players place a starting stack of two books on any single monastery on the board.
You cannot start within one road segment of another player's starting point, and it's usually wise to begin farther away than that.
After setup, the player who placed last will take the first turn, and then play will proceed clockwise.
Starting Your Turn
At the beginning of each turn, you will draw a burn tile from the box.
If this tile represents a monastery, that monastery burns down.
If this monastery has any books, you get a free move with those books, followed by a scoring round, described below.
If the tile is a "Safe" tile, nothing burns down. Return Safe tiles to the box.
Note: Blank tiles are for backup only. They don't belong in the mix.
Burning Monasteries
When a monastery tile is drawn, that monastery burns down. Place the tile on the board on its corresponding space. If there were any books in that monastery, this will trigger a free move and then a scoring round:
Free Move: The books in the burned monastery "run away," which means that the monks from the monastery flee, and spread the books through the countryside. The active player (not necessarily the controller of the stack) gets to move the stack as described under "move."
Scoring Round: When a burned monastery contains at least one book, this triggers a scoring round. Scoring happens after that monastery burns, and after the free move, but before the main part of the active player's turn.
Players score points as follows: Each region is marked with a number between 1 and 12, which is the number of monasteries in that region, and also the point value of that region.
To score a region, you must control more than half of the remaining monasteries in the region. To "control" means to have the top chip on the stack.
For example, Languedoc is 11, which means it starts with eleven monasteries. If three of them have burned, you must control more than half of the remaining eight (five monasteries or more) to score Languedoc. If you do, you get 11 points.
Everyone scores on a scoring round, not just the active player. To track your score, move your piece along the scoring track. The first player to reach 100 points wins.
Turn Actions
After drawing a tile and dealing with the results, you have your choice of three actions. Two of these actions (copy and move) take only half a turn. The last action (grow) takes your whole turn.
Half-Turn Actions: Copy and Move
Copy: On any monastery where you have at least one book in the stack (not necessarily on top), you may place one new book on top of the stack.
Owning the topmost book on a stack gives you control of that stack. (Note that you cannot ever copy in a city.)
Move: Pick up any stack of books that you control (you own the top book), and distribute them along any path as follows:
You may drop the first (bottom) book either on the space where you start, or on a neighboring space. From then on, you must drop one book on every space you visit, in the same order that they are in the pile (from bottom to top). These books go on top of any stacks that are already there.
Restrictions: You cannot use the same road segment twice in the same move, and you cannot drop two books in the same space on the same move. If you did not leave a book in your starting space, you may drop a book there later on in your move. See the example on the last page.
Burned monasteries become open road. You don't drop books there, you just keep moving. This means that as the game goes on, it becomes easier to go farther.
Moving the stack from a burned monastery (the "free move" described above) does not count as one of your actions for the turn.
Copy and Move are half-turn actions, so your turn can be copy-copy, copy-move, move-copy, or move-move.
Full-Turn Action: Grow
Grow: If you control all the cities in a region, you may "grow." This takes your whole turn.
When you grow, add a new book to the top of every monastery in the region that you control. This can be a good way to make lots of books!
Growing does not happen in cities, or in stacks that you do not control, even if you have a book farther down in the stack.
Note: In regions 1 through 4, which have no cities, you can always grow. However, growing 2 stacks is no better than copying twice, so this is really only relevant in regions 3 and 4.
Winning
To win, be the first to score 100 points. If two players reach 100 or more on the same turn, the player with the highest score wins. If this is also tied, the victory goes to the player among them who controls the single most valuable region.
Strategy
Early in the game, it's important to make more books. Take over a region by owning its cities, plus enough monasteries that a "grow" brings several books into the game. After building some strength, you can spread out and try to improve your score. But beware: if you spread yourself too thin, you may find it difficult to defend your territory.
You will find yourself in conflict with other players fairly early. Be aware that players on your immediate left have an advantage over you, because of the order of turns. When all else is equal, attack the player on your right.
If someone makes a stack that you're afraid of, you can move or copy on top of it, and take control. This way, you can even use an enemy's tall stack to attack another player!
A Sample Turn
It's White's turn. He wants to take control of Blois, which Black just took away from him. The board is shown below, with the stack at 6-B expanded. (This stack is on 6-B.)
Copy: First, White does a copy to add a new chip and take control of the stack on 6-B. He then takes a move with that stack, as described above.
Move: To begin, white leaves nothing on 6-B. (He has the option of leaving a chip behind, or leaving nothing.)
He goes north and then east, dropping Black's chip (#2) in Champagne.
He passes through 6-C, which is burned, and returns to 6-B where he drops chip #3. This is allowed because he left nothing there at the beginning.
He then heads south to the city and to 6-E and 6-F, dropping a chip on each. The resulting board is shown below.
White now controls Blois, because he controls 3 of the 5 unburned monasteries.