Welcome to the Abyss, the thrilling game of strategy and power!

It’s your turn to claim the role of ruler and seize victory! In this exciting underwater city, it’s all about winning votes in the council. Take control of key locations and use your cards to gain the upper hand. Will you rise to the top, or will you sink like your opponents?

Setting Up the Game

Let’s get started! Place the game board in the center of the playing area, where everyone can easily reach it. Shuffle all the exploration cards and place them face down on the exploration track. Now, create a deck of lord’s cards by taking the shuffled deck and placing it face down on the lord’s space. To begin, reveal the top six cards from this deck and arrange them face up in the court.

Alright, let’s get started! First, gather all the location tiles and stack them to the side of the board. Now, reveal the top card from the deck and place the monster tokens facedown next to the game board. Each player should take one pearl and place it in their plastic cup. Finally, randomly choose a starting player. The game is set and ready to begin!

GAMEPLAY

Now it’s time to dive into the gameplay! During your turn, you’ll go through three steps: plot at court, take an action, and control locations. Let’s break it down.

First, at the beginning of your turn, you can choose to pay a pearl into the treasury to add a lord to the court. You can do this multiple times as long as there are empty spots available. It’s a powerful move!

Next, you have three options to choose from. You can explore the depths, request council support, or recruit a lord. The choice is yours!

Explore the Depths

Hey there! Let me tell you about the cool exploration deck in this game. It’s got five allied races and six monsters, and it adds a whole lot of excitement to the game.

When we explore, we reveal the top card of the exploration deck and put it on the exploration track. If the card we reveal is an ally, our opponents even get a chance to buy it! So everyone gets a fair shot at it.

Now, here’s the interesting part. The first ally that we buy costs just one pearl. But hang on, it gets more expensive with each turn. So if I buy an ally on my turn, it will cost me one pearl. But if you buy an ally on your turn, it will cost you two pearls! It keeps going up like that until the turn is over.

Just remember, each of us can only buy one ally per turn. So choose wisely!

What happens if nobody wants the ally? Well, in that case, the player can keep it or leave it on the board to check out the next card. Pretty cool, right?

If you encounter a monster card, you have two options: fight it or continue exploring. If you choose to fight, you instantly receive the reward indicated on the threat track. If you decide to keep exploring, the threat token moves forward by one space, and you keep revealing more cards. After that, your turn ends.

Request Help from the Council

If you need assistance, you can request support from the council. This means you collect all the cards from one council deck and add them to your hand.

Recruit a Lord

If you want to recruit a lord, you must play enough Ally cards from your hand to pay for the Lord’s cost, which is stated on the card. All the ally cards you use are then placed in the discard pile. You will gain access to the powers of the recruited lord.

So, here’s the deal. When I gather three keys, I can finally take control of a location. And let me tell you, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Once I take control of a location, I can either pick one of the locations that are revealed or I can draw up to four locations and choose just one to keep. The thing is, though, once I use the keys on my lords, I can’t use them again. That’s it. My turn is over.

But wait, there’s more! After my turn, it’s the next player’s turn. They have to complete the same steps as me. And then it goes on like this, with each player taking their turn, until the game finally comes to an end.

The End of the Game

So, how does the game come to an end? Well, it’s either when someone recruits their 7th lord, which is a pretty big deal, let me tell you, or when there are no more lord cards left to fill the board. Each player will get to complete one final turn. Then, everyone has to place their lowest scoring ally on the board, and all the other ones are just discarded. Finally, we tally up our influence points, and the player with the most points is the big winner!