Version History

• 3.0: Third edition
• 2.999: Return to 4+4 pairs of omen cards
• 2.998: Include only 1 of each omen type in open variant
• 2.997: End game only when one player has less than half the meeples left
• 2.996: Draw cards at start of turn to simplify discarding of redundant cards and tie-break cards
• 2.995: Laid down meeples discarded at start of turn
• 2.994: Temples instead of mountains, mercy/wrath used to protect/target temples, "double cards" used to lock omen cards in open variant
• 2.993: 4x8 meeples instead of 5x6 + white and black
• 2.992: 6+6 pairs of omen cards instead of 4+4, draw 2 cards instead of 3 cards
• 2.991: Hidden card variant used as main variant
• 2.99: Reversed turn order after apocalypses to avoid turn order bias (reversed turn order rejected), secondary colors removed
• 2.98: 5 colors instead of 4 colors+2 nuetral colors (white blessed, black cursed)
• 2.97: 6 wrath cards and 2 blessed cards instead of 4 each
• 2.96: Actions to switch places, sudden death if too many rounds without apocalypse, secondary colors for tiebreak
• 2.95: Open card variant standard, closed card variant advanced
• 2.94: 8 instead of 9 meeples, 32 instead of 36 tiles, 4 impassable mountains added instead, all advanced rules and components removed
• 2.93: 4 mercy and 4 wrath cards added
• 2.92: Omen card pile (similar to second edition)
• 2.91: Open card variant, fixed starting omen cards
• 2.0: Second edition
• 1.92: Simplified movement rules returned, only cursed card face down
• 1.91: New advanced rules with extra omen cards and 3 omens at hand
• 1.9: Bridges and pushing removed
• 1.8: One action instead of three
• 1.7: Four colors instead of six
• 1.6: No tiles flipped first apocalypse
• 1.5: New movement rules; evacuate and rally to tiles
• 1.4: Goal cards added (people variant, Gods variant), new end game trigger (half the meeples discarded), new tie-breaker (resolve more apocalypses as needed)
• 1.3: Advanced tiles added (islands, mountains, castles, temples)
• 1.2: Dead omen cards discarded, bridges placed along edges and may connect
• 1.1: Changed from 3-6 players to 3-4 players
• 1.0: First edition

The complete rules are available in the PDF file to the right. In the following sections, I will describe how they came to be.

Implemented Rules

The omens

An omen should give a hint about what will happen, not exactly what will happen. This is accomplished by three mechanisms.

The first is the coordinate system, where the combination of two or more coordinates determine what will happen. With only one coordinate, the players will know which range of squares or hexes that may be hit but not exactly which squares or hexes in that range. Apokalypsis implements this through areas ("pies" of the island) and cataclysms (inner, middle or outer rings of the island).

The second is the hand of three cards at the time. This allows you not only to choose which omen that best suits your current position but also which omen you would like to delay by returning it to the bottom of the pile and which omen to keep control of for future playing or discarding.

The third is the fact that there are two copies of each omen. Even if you have seen an omen or if you have returned an omen to the bottom of the pile, the odds are that that position is safer now but you cannot be absolutely sure.

All this forces the players to deduce which omens the other players have seen from their moves while at the same time move in a way that doesn't give away to much information to the other players.

Open or closed omens?

The first editions saw only closed omens. The idea was to let the players deduce other players' played omen cards from their meeple movements. However, some testers found that this didn't give them enough control so a variant with open omens was developed. The control of triggering an apocalypse was thus given to the players. This variant turned out to be more popular so it became the standard variant, whereas the closed omens became the advanced variant.

The event phase

In the open omen variant, the event phase has to come first to prevent a player from moving away from the unsafe areas first. In the closed variant on the other hand, the event phase has to come last to prevent a player from knowing the cards before the movement.

The action phase

The action phase has to balance between giving the players enough control of their own meeples' fate and giving the player "take that" opportunities against the other meeples' fate. The ability to move is an obvious action, as is the restriction of two meeples per tile to prevent too many meeples in safe areas. The ability to rescue own meeples gives more control against ("bad draws") and also reward strategic placements of meeples to help each other. The combination of tile restriction and rescuing makes a third ability necessary, namely pushing to make way for rescued meeples. To prevent a pure "take that", whereby a player may find her meeples on completely different tiles when her turn returns, the offensive and defensive support is necessary. A player who concentrates her meeples will find it easier to push other meeples and easier to defend against other players' pushing. However, this comes with a higher risk if the apocalypse strikes that area...

The omen phase

Whether omens are open or closed, the playing of an omen card is rather definite. It's no longer a question if it will happen but when. However, the ability of the mercy and wrath cards adds a second dimension to the card play. Now players can "block" omen cards they don't want to happen with mercy cards or "support" omen cards they do want to happen with wrath cards. Moreover, their presence adds a delay to the apocalypses and give the players more time to manipulate the if and when of them. Again, player control is the key word for the rules.

The end game condition

A survival game implies player elimination, an element that games generally try to avoid. A simple solution is to let the game end when the first player gets eliminated. To avoid too long games, the game also ends when more than half the meeples are gone.

The tie-breaker

With only eight meeples per color, a tie is likely so how should it be broken to be fair? A simple solution is to give each color a secondary color to break ties. Unless all four colors are equal, it should be possible to narrow down the players to one or possibly two winners (and if all four colors are equal, a draw is the most fair solution).

But why should only the best secondary color count in the Gods' Variant? Simply because a player may very well have a secondary goal that contradicts a primary goal (e.g. bless red as primary goal and curse red as secondary goal).

The penalty

If all players play the game perfectly, no penalties are needed. But what happens if a player accidentally reveal omen cards that shouldn't have been revealed or do not reveal omen cards that should have been revealed? In the first case, the player next in turn will have information that lets her decide exactly where the next apocalypse takes place. In the second case, the apocalypse will include more omens than it should and be more devastating but the player next in turn has already moved when this is discovered so it's hard to backtrack.

The simplest solution was to resolve the apocalypse (if any) and penalize the player by reducing his or her score by 1.

Another alternative would have been to use a game master or let an app check the apocalypses, similar to how it is done in Alchemists, but to keep the game as a "pure" boardgame, this was the simplest and most elegant solution.

Rules (Video)

Rules (PDF)

... and Rejected Rules

Turn order tie-break

Bridges

With parts of the island eventually being seperated, it gets harder for the meeples to move. To make it a bit easier, bridges were initially added to keep the movement flexibility through the mid-game as well. However, this removed some of the tactical elements of isolating opponents and playing your cards right so they were eventually removed.

Advanced tiles

Many ideas for advanced tiles have been considered, such as temples that are safe or unsafe depending on played omen cards. However, they didn't add enough strategy to be of value in a short and simple game like Apokalypsis.