THE GRIZZLED

Get ready for a thrilling ride through the chaos of World War II in this cooperative card game. Join forces with your friends as you navigate increasingly difficult rounds. Remember, if even one person falls, it’s game over for everyone. Can you work together, protect your friendships, and lead your troops to safety?

GAME SETUP

Let’s start by preparing the game. Each player will choose a Grizzled card and keep it face up, as a symbol of good luck. You’ll also receive three support tiles to aid you in your mission.

Next, take the remaining thirty-four cards from the Monument card and stack them face down to create the Reserve of Morale. On top of that, place twenty-five cards face down from the Peace card to form the Trials deck.

When we play the game, each player receives a speech token. The number of tokens we get depends on how many players there are. If we have two or three players, we each get five tokens. With four players, we get four tokens, and with five players, we get three tokens. One player will also be chosen as the Mission Leader.

Let’s Play!

Now, let’s talk about how the game is played. There are four steps in a Mission. The first step is for the Mission Leader to decide how intense they want the Mission to be. This will determine how many cards each player will receive during the Mission. The cards are handed out one by one, starting with the Mission Leader. The cards come from the Trial deck, and the minimum intensity is 1.

The next step is what I call The Mission. This is when we try to get rid of our Trial cards without causing trouble for everyone else. We’ll have Threats in the middle that we need to take care of. These Threats could be things like Night, Rain, Shell, Whistle, Mask, or Snow. But we can’t have three of the same Threats at once, or else the mission will have to stop.

Now let’s talk about the Actions. These are things that we can do while The Mission is happening. It starts with the Mission Leader, and then goes around the group in a circle. Each player picks one action to do.

The first action is to play a Trials Card from your hand. When you play a Threat card, you put it in the middle with the other Threats. Be careful though! If there are three matching Threats at any time, you’re out of the game. And if you play a Hard Knock card, you have to deal with it yourself.

The second action is to use a Good Luck Charm.

If you have a Good Luck Charm that matches a Threat, you can get rid of that Threat. The Grizzled card is turned over, and you need to retrieve it before you can use it again.

When you use a Speech token, you can announce a Threat. This gives all active players a chance to discard a card from their hand that matches that Threat.

Take a break and play a Support Tile:

When you take a break, you stop participating in The Mission. You can choose to support another player if you still have Support tiles. At the end of the Mission, all the Support tiles used during the Mission will be given to the correct players.

The end of the Mission

The Mission can end in two different ways. We all might have left, meaning the Mission was successful, and the game keeps going. Or if there are three identical Threats present, then the Mission has failed. In that case, the game starts over.

When the Mission is over, we show each other the Support tiles we picked and give them to the player we chose. If one player gets more support than everyone else, they can get rid of two Hard Knocks or get back their lost Good Luck Charm.

If the Mission fails, we only count the tiles from the players who left. If one player gets more support than anyone else, they can only get rid of one Hard Knock. After that, if a player has four or more Hard Knocks, we all fail and the game is over. But if we can see the Peace card and we don’t have any more cards in our hands, then we win!

But wait, there’s more! If we still have cards in our hands, the game isn’t over just yet. The number of cards we have left determines how many cards we need to transfer from the Morale Reserve onto the Trials deck. Keep an eye out for the Monument card though – if it shows up, we’ve lost the game.

Once we’ve dealt with that, we pass the Mission Leader token to the next player and start another round. The battle rages on!

The End of the Game

How do we know when the game is over? Well, there are a few ways it can happen. If we see the Peace card and we have no cards left, that’s a clear victory for us! But if we spot the Monument card or if any player gets four or more Hard Knocks, it’s game over for the group. Let’s hope we can avoid that fate and come out on top!