Shadow of the Sun takes place over eight or fewer Days (or Rounds). During each Day, a Day Card is revealed, each player receives a turn, and there is a Struggle of the revealed Day card. Each player's Markers represent his House's level of influence across the four Districts of Hemloch. Through the use of Minion Cards, players are able to add and remove Markers. The game ends at the end of any Day when there are no Day card remaining in the Day Deck, or one or more players have no Makers left to place.
There are six different card types: Valkyrie, Cogdrives, Actions, Assaults, Locations, and Emblems. Each of the first four card types are included in the main deck. Each card has a Clan Emblem (this is the clan it belongs to), a Recruit Cost (this is in the gray), a Strength Value (this is in red), and a special ability which can be used during either the player’s Recruit Turn, or during his Conflict Turn.
At the beginning of each game, each player selects an Emblem. Every card recruited by the player is worth 1 point. However, cards of the clan of the player's selected Emblem are worth an additional 1 point. Emblem also grant the player a special once per Conflict ability and a chance to score bonus Conflict cards during the Recruit Turn. Each Engagement, the player who started the War chooses which location the Conflict will take place in. Each Location has an overall effect for the Conflict.
• Another repeat Kickstarterer is designer/publisher Ta-Te Wu and Sunrise Tornado Game Studio, and Wu's Glory of the Three Kingdoms: Guandu Core Set was available at Spiel 2012 for an advance peek from those at the show. (KS link) I participated in a brief filmed game demonstration at his stand during the con and will post that on the game page once it's been processed. For now, here's an overview of the game play:
As in most deck-building games, player acquire additional cards to add to their decks. In GOTK, player may acquire cards depicting heroes, military, strategy, items, etc., and some cards provide victory points for endgame scoring. Unlike other games of this type, GOTK has a battle phase during which each player secretly deploys military cards (foot soldiers, pikemen, calvary and archers) and battles for Glory. The victor takes a glory token from the defeated player and a free card in the neutral zone. The victor may also capture and recruit the defeated general – or have him beheaded.
When two out of four card decks are depleted, the game ends and the player with the most victory points wins. However, if one allegiance acquired six or more Tiger Tally or all of opponent's glory tokens, the game ends immediately and the allegiance wins.
The first battle theme of GOTK is Guandu, the first major battle in the Three Kingdoms period. The Guandu Core Set, a two-player game, comes with Cao Cao and Yuan Shao allegiances. Lv Bu and Liu Bei allegiances will be available in a future three- and four-player expansion.
The game lasts either eight or nine turns, depending on the number of players, although it may end before then if a player manages to get down all twenty of their damage cubes.
At the start of each turn a random number of actions are made available. Three of these actions relate to the monsters and allow you to create, attack, and move them. These actions are represented by orange, white, and purple tokens. There are three human action boxes, one that allows you to place a hero, the other two allow you to place military counters.
To create a monster you have to place a certain number of orange tokens in the monster box. Once the monster has been created you place it in one of the twelve cities on the board. When you do so, you place the monster on its hidden side. The monster is alive but as yet the world does not know of its presence. While hidden a monster is safe from attack and can build up its strength so that when it does attack it will cause carnage. Another player may attempt to reveal your monster by placing a hero counter in the same city.
Military units will try to destroy monsters. When you place a military unit or a hero, you can then attack with all military counters in that city. When a monster attacks a city, armor units will attack it first, then after that attack has been completed, any surviving infantry units will attack. All combat involves rolling dice and in all cases a roll of four or more is successful.
Each monster type has its own special abilities. Only three monsters are powerful enough to destroy entire cities; these are the Bloob, Mechoor, and Moogre. When you attack a city, you mark the damage you do with your colored cubes. At the end of the game, players score victory points depending on how many damage cubes they have in each city. Players also score points for the cities that were randomly assigned to them at the beginning of the game, depending on how much damage they have suffered. Points can also be scored for having vampires on the board and for killing other monsters with your Moogre monster.
This expansion integrates with the base game and increases the possibilities and the strategies with new equipment, vehicles and rules that can also be used in the base game. The characters' characteristics are strengthened and renewed with new cards, including five special cards which make Lupin more elusive, Jigen more infallible, Goemon more inflexible, Zenigata more stubborn, and Fujiko more unreliable and undressed than ever.
A milestone of the new imperfect cooperative game style, Lupin the 3rd shows in these new missions a variable and unpredictable structure for a profound and unique game experience!