We're saving villagers and tricking allies!
That's right, it's Guardians Call from Skybound Games!
(upbeat music)
This gift or grift deduction game pits two to five guardians
against one another in a strategic competition for
war supplies and victory points.
(woosh)
Setup begins with the separation of the Guardian cards
by type: Artifact, Curse, Shields,
Spell, Villagers, and Weapons.
Shuffle and select a number of cards of each type
depending on the number of players.
We're setting up for a four player game,
so we'll take 15 of each type
and remove the rest from the game.
Now, shuffle all these selected cards together,
and deal three to each player face down.
Then, five in the center face up.
The cards given to players form their starting hand.
And the cards on the table represent the market.
Next, set up the Guardian deck by splitting
the remaining cards into four piles of roughly equal size.
Take the unique Council and War cards,
and shuffle them in to two separate piles.
Then, take the pile with the War card
and place it down first, and then the pile
with the Council card, and then the other two piles.
Each player now receives a Guardian player board,
and one offer token for each other
Guardian player in the game.
Any extra tokens can be returned to the box.
Place The Castle track in the center of the table,
and put the Guardian figures for each player
on the first space.
Place a victory point per player on the five, 10,
and 15 spaces of The Castle track
in descending order of point value.
Shuffle the Quest cards and deal three face up
next to The Castle track.
These are the communal quests of the game.
Finally, shuffle and place the Treasure cards nearby
to form the Treasure deck.
The youngest player goes first.
Gameplay occurs in turns, preceding in clockwise order,
during which players will gather
and offer provisions to one another.
On a player's turn, they follow
three steps: Replenish, Preparation, and Offer.
In the Replenish step, the active player refills
the market back up to five cards from the Guardian deck.
Super simple.
In the Preparation step, the active player make take
a number of optional actions in any order.
Draw, where they may draw cards from the market
or from the top of the Guardian deck,
up to a hand limit of six.
Buy, where they may spend three coins to add a card
from the market or the top of the Guardian deck
directly to their player board, not their hand.
Remove A Curse, by spending five coins
and discarding a curse card from the market.
This noble action awards the player five victory points.
(woosh)
Next, in the Offer step, the active player will choose
an opponent and flip the offer token
matching their Guardian.
If they have no face up offer tokens remaining,
they flip them all face up before making an offer.
This ensures the active player makes an offer
to each player once before repeating anyone.
The active player then takes a number of cards,
face down, from their hand and offers them to the recipient,
declaring the card type and number.
For instance, here's three Artifacts.
Offers follow a couple of rules.
An offer must consist of only one type of card.
The active player can never declare their offer in curses.
They may lie about the one type of card in their offer,
but not about the number of cards.
(woosh)
Next, the recipient decides if the active player
is truly offering those items,
or if they are lying about the card type.
They verbally declare whether they believe
the offer is true or false.
If they guess correctly, they add the cards
to their player board, and the offering player takes a coin.
If they guess incorrectly, they take a coin
and the offering player adds the cards
to their player board.
(woosh)
To understand offers, let's look at the Guardian card types.
Weapons are worth bonus victory points
at the end of the game.
The player with the most Weapons earns 20 points,
and second player receives 10 points.
In the case of a tie, both players earn 15 points.
Shields are simply worth victory points,
depending on the threshold achieved.
Villagers advance the player's Guardian marker
forward on The Castle track
each time they're added to a player board.
When advancing on The Castle track,
players hop opponents minis.
As the pass the VP points on the track,
they take the topmost reward, and add it to their board.
Villagers are also worth bonus points
when the Council card and War card are drawn.
More on that in a sec.
Artifacts may be used at any time
on the active player's turn.
By discarding three Artifact cards,
they may draw two Treasure cards from the Treasure deck,
adding one to their Player board, earning the reward listed
and discarding the other.
Spells act as wild cards, either to be
immediately added to an existing stack,
increasing their count, or saved into a stack of spells
to be assigned a card type later in the game.
Curses may never be verbally offered.
They can only be bluffed to another player.
If a player receives Curses, they receive one coin
as a consolation prize, and then take a penalty
depending on the number of Curses they received.
For one Curse, they discard any one Guardian card
of their choice from their Player board.
For two Curses, the opposing player chooses
which card to remove, and for three Curses,
the opposing player steals a card of their choice,
adding it to their Player board.
Throughout the game, players may also complete
the available Quests by fulfilling their conditions
by the time the Council or War cards are drawn,
depending on the Quest.
As the Guardian deck replenishes the market,
the Council card will eventually be drawn or revealed.
When that happens, the player in 1st and 2nd place
on The Castle track each score 10
and 5 points respectively.
And any Quests which reward points
in the Council are completed.
When the War card is revealed,
the active player finishes the current turn,
and then players score their final points.
In the endgame, players earn victory points for:
Quest Rewards, Treasure cards,
Weapon and Shield cards, VP Tokens earned
from removing Curses or advancing on The Castle track.
Additionally, every three coins are worth one point,
and The Castle track again scores
ten and 5 points respectively,
for the 1st and 2nd place Guardians.
The player with the highest score wins.
(woosh)
And that's Guardians Call, I'm Becca Scott,
and I'd like to offer you three Shields.
Here you go.
Do you trust me?
You should, see?
It's three Shields!
No it's Curses, now you don't know what to believe!
You can watch me and my friends play this game
and other awesome games on Game the Game,
right here on Geek and Sundry.
We'll see you there.
(upbeat music)
(sci-fi music)