Welcome to the World of Umbra Via

In Umbra Via, you have the power to create your own path and make your way through the game. But watch out! Other players might be sneaking ahead to rank higher on the path you’ve worked so hard to build!

Paths can be mysterious, but there are special flowers along the way. Each flower serves a purpose, but the Soul flowers are the ultimate goal! Use flowers to bid for tiles, and let your opponents’ frustration fuel your victory!

Setting Up the Game

Game Setup

First, place the Main board in the center of the group where everyone can reach it. The Altar board goes above it. Shuffle the Path tiles and place them face down in a stack near the Altar board. Keep the four Placement Order counters close by.

Player Setup

Alright, folks, here’s what’s gonna happen. First, you gotta pick a color, any color. Once you’ve done that, grab these goodies: one bidding board, one player screen, one bag, thirty-three Energy flowers, and seventeen Soul flowers – all in your chosen color, of course. Oh, and don’t forget to set aside one Energy flower to use as your tiebreaker marker. Place the flowers in a random order on the Tiebreaker track, on the right side of the Altar board.

Now, get ready to rumble! Put your Soul tile on the table, and stack 11 Soul flowers of your color on it. Make sure the x2 side is facing down. Stand those player screens up in front of each player. And don’t forget, the bidding bags need to be filled with the rest of your Soul flowers and Energy flowers, and placed behind your player screen.

It’s Game Time!

When you play a game, there are three main parts to each round. We start with phase one, then move on to phase two, and finally, end with phase three.

Phase 1: Round Setup

Phase one is all about getting everything ready to play. We take four tiles from the stack and put them on the Altar board, facing up. The tiles need to be in the same position as when we flipped them.

Phase 2: Bidding

In phase two, we have two rounds of secret auctions. We use these auctions to decide who gets to place each of the four Altar tiles on the Main board. To participate in the auction, we each draw three flowers from our bag and keep them hidden behind our player screen.

In secret, I’ll be putting my flowers on my bidding board to compete for the tiles I want to win. Each time we bid, we have to use all three flowers we drew. It’s up to me if I want to use all three on the same tile or spread them out.

Once we’re all finished with our allocations, we reveal our bidding boards and place the flowers we bid on the corresponding tiles on the Altar board. Right after that, the next round of bidding can start, and we follow the same steps as before. When we’re done bidding, it’s time for the Placement Phase.

Now, let’s talk about scoring. During the bidding phase, we draw three random flowers from our bag in each round. If we use Energy flowers in our bidding, they’re worth one point. If we use Soul flowers, they’re worth two points.

And now, Phase 3: Placement. Let’s go!

In Phase three, bidding has come to an end, and now it’s time to figure out who has won the tiles that were up for grabs.

Putting Tiles in Place

Let’s start by taking a look at the Altar board. Any tiles that were not bid on are no longer in play and are discarded into the discard pile. The remaining tiles are each assigned a Placement Order counter. The tile with the fewest flowers gets the 1st counter, the one with the second fewest flowers gets the 2nd counter, and so on. When two tiles have the same number of flowers, the counters are assigned from left to right on the Altar board.

So, here’s what happens: When we start the game, we put down the first tile on the Main Board. Then, each player makes a bid, and whoever bids the highest gets to win that tile. But what if two players bid the same amount? Well, we’ve got a tiebreaker for that. The player whose Tiebreaker Marker is ahead on the Tiebreaker track wins. After they win, their marker goes to the bottom of the track.

Now, here’s the interesting part. We take all the Soul flowers off the tiles and get rid of them. They’re out of the game for good. But the Energy flowers stay on the tiles. They’re here to stay!

Alright, now that we have a winner, they get to place the tile they won on the board. The tile goes in the same way it was on the Altar board. No rotating allowed! And if there’s room in one of the four central spaces, that’s where the tile goes. But wait, what if there are other tiles already there? Then the tile can’t be placed in the center.

If I want to play the game of tiles, I need to remember a few important rules. First, when I place a tile on the board, it has to connect to another tile that is already there. The new tile has to touch at least one edge of the old tile. It can continue the path of the old tiles or close off a path. Once I place my tiles, I should check if any paths have been completed. If a path is completed, something special happens – a Summoning occurs!

Summoning

A Summoning happens when a path is completed. This is exciting because the completed path can be scored and taken off the board. This allows us to make new paths. But before we can do that, we need to figure out who is the best at making paths. To do that, we rank the players based on how many energy flowers they have on the finished path. The player with the most energy flowers is the top-ranked player, and the player with the least energy flowers is the lowest-ranked player.

When I play this game, every step I take on the path earns me a Soul flower. These flowers come from my Soul tile and go into my bag. The player who ranks above me gets twice as many flowers as I do, and the players below me get half as many, rounding down. It’s like a competition where I have to collect as many flowers as I can!

Once we’re done, we clear the path by putting our Energy flowers back in our bags. Then all the tiles from the path go in the discard pile. It’s like cleaning up and getting ready for the next round!

Special Tiles

There are some special tiles we can add to make the game even more interesting, but only if we all feel comfortable with the basic rules.

One of these special tiles is the Four Point Tile. If I place this tile, I can move all my Energy flowers from it to any tile next to it. This tile doesn’t have any openings, and it doesn’t connect to any of the paths. It’s like a secret spot just for my flowers!

When you place a Void Tile, you don’t keep it. Instead, you discard the tile. Any Energy flowers that were on the Void Tile are moved to an empty space on the game board. When another tile is placed on that same space, all the flowers are added to that tile.

Block Tiles take up spaces on the Altar board. This reduces the number of tiles that can be auctioned during the round. Block Tiles cannot be bid on by any player.

THE GAME ENDS

The game ends when a player claims their Soul Tile. The player who claims their Soul Tile is the winner!

To claim your Soul Tile, you must also claim all other Soul flowers from your Soul Tile. Additionally, you must be ranked 1st on the completed path, and the completed path must be at least two tiles long. If multiple players claim their Soul Tile at the same time, they share the victory!