And then the Sky turned Dark
Introduction
by Martin B. Enghoff
List of Components 3 Manuals: Introduction, Hero Game, and Village Game 34 Workers - 4 sets of 3 big (adult) and 5 small (young) Workers in different colours and 1 set of Day Laborers (1 adult and 1 young Worker) 8 Horses 9 Cows 40 Round team counters in 4 sets of 10 in different colours 2 Pawns (Turn counter and First player marker in the Hero game) 60 Yellow food cubes 20 Grey metal cubes 30 Brown wood cubes 60 Red round Wound/Hunger tokens 20 Black House cubes 144 Foe Cards (48 Easy and 96 Hard) 8 Starting Weapon cards 27 Basic Weapon cards 27 Advanced Weapon cards 3 Row cards 4 Hero boards 1 Score board 4 Homesteads 12 Calamities (8 Shared and 4 Family) 18 Village tiles (double sided) 1 Four-sided die
Introduction And then the Sky turned Dark is a team game for teams of two players. Actually it is two games, where one member of each team plays one of the games and the other team member plays the other game. And of course the two games affect each other. Each team is a family struggling to survive in a world where the sun has gone out and things generally are taking a turn for the worse. In one of the games - The Hero Game - each player plays the most heroic member of each family who has gone out into the woods to keep away all the desperate animals and humans descending on the village to prey on their ressources. If the Heroes cannot defeat the Foes in the forest they affect the second game. The Hero Game is a tactical action card game. In the second game - The Village Game - each player plays the rest of
each family, who attempts to gather food and produce weapons for the heroes in the Hero game. This is a worker placement game where you have to balance the gathering of ressources with supplying the Hero player, while the Village is deteoriating around you. This is an introduction manual, that serves to give an overview of “And then the Sky turned Dark�. In the following section you will find a brief overall description of the game. All players should become familiar with that. When you have made your teams you can find detailed instructions and explanations of the Hero and Village games in the individual manuals for each game.
Overview of Play
Win Condition The objective of the game is to be the familiy that best keeps up Hope (victory points) to the end of the game. There are 3 ways for the game to end: A family gets overrun by Foes, runs out of Hope, or time runs out. In either case the winner is the remaining team with the most Hope. Component Description Scoreboard (see Figure 1) At the top of the Scoreboard you will find the Hope tracker. Each team will have a token here to keep track of their Hope. This track is also used to track what turn you are in - the turn-marker starts on 1. Spaces 2-6 are coloured red or yellow to remind you to draw new Calamities (red for Shared, yellow for Family - this is explained in the manual for the Village game). In the middle is a brief overview of the turn-sequence for the Village game. At the bottom is a Foe tracker. This is used to keep track of how many Foes each family has been attacked by, so each team has a token here, starting at 0. The rest of the components are descriped in the individual manuals for each game.
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Draw new Family Calamity
Draw new Shared Calamity
Split Sequence 1. Prepare board, 2. Slaughter Livestock, 3. Place Workers, 4. Resolve Workers Shared sequence 1) Resolve Foes, 2) Collect Weapons, 3) Hunger, 4) End game? 5) New Turn
Foes 0
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Fig. 1. Scoreboard Setup 1. Make the teams There must be two players on each team. Each team chooses a colour to play. 2. Setup Scoreboard The Scoreboard should be put where the Village Game will be played. Put a round coloured token of each teams colour on “20” on the Hope track and on “0” on the Foe track. Put the turn marker (a large pawn) on “1” on the Hope tracker. 3. Determine who from each team plays each game 4. Setup each game A brief overview follows. Please refer to the individual manuals for the details on how to setup the games. a) Hero Game Each player gets some Weapons to fight Foes with and two columns of three Foes are prepared for each player - these are the Foes that will be fought the first turn.
b) Village game Each player gets a Homestead, a family, and some livestock - these are the starting ressources. The Village tiles are then arranged and Calamities that threaten to ruin some part of the Village are drawn. 4. First Player Determine who is first player by whatever method you desire, but the team who is first player in the Hero game is also first player in the Village Game.
A note on Communication When the Heroes are in the forest fighting there is no way for them to communicate with their family in the Village. As such they only time in the game when team-mates can exchange information is in the Shared sequence. Outside the Shared sequence it is not allowed to share game information. So if a Hero knows something bad is going to happen the Shared seqeunce is the time to warn the Village player, and if the Village player knows ressources are tight the Shared sequence is the time to tell the Hero player to be conservative with spending weapons. Social banter is, of course, perfectly fine - you’re supposed to have fun, after all.
Turn structure 1. Split sequence - A turn is played in each game, simultaneously. 2. Shared sequence - the two games interact with each other: Undefeated Foes from the Hero game affect the village, and workers in the Village game produce weapons for the heroes. This is also where you check to see if the game has ended. This section briefly explains a full turn in each game, for full instructions please refer to the individual manuals. a) Hero Game At the start of each turn the Heroes get weapons - most of these are produced in the Village game. Then follows three Fight phases. In each of these phases each Hero gets to play three Weapons to defeat Foes, which are arrayed in columns of three, where each Hero is responsible for two columns. At the end of each Fight phase the Foes
advance one row and those in the bottom row have an effect on the Village, which is resolved in the Shared phase. b) Village game The players take turn to place their Workers on the various tasks in the Village. They must gather enough Food or risk starvation, but also need wood and metal to build weapons. There are also Calamities that must be taken care of or the Village will slowly fall apart.
End of game and how to win - details When the game ends make the following adjustments to Hope before determining the winner: Each team that does not have a token of their color on the Family Calamity gets -1 Hope. Each team gets -1 Hope for each Worker in the Infirmary. Below are the three conditions that can cause the game to end. However, the game does not end immediately if these conditions occur - at the end of each turn you check to see if the game is ending.
1) Too many Foes Get Through to a team If the Foe counter of a team reaches 8 then that team looses and the winner is the remaining team with the most Hope left. 2) A team runs out of Hope If a team falls below the current turn number in Hope they loose and the winner is the team with the most Hope left. 3) Time runs out After six turns of play the game stops no matter what. The winner is the team with the most Hope left. So in order to win you need to both keep your Hope up and not let too many Foes through.
Tie-breakers in order of importance 1) Total number of Foes - advantage to the team who let the fewest Foes through. 2) Hope - advantage to the family with the highest Hope (this is only relevant if the game ended by someone getting too many Foes through).
3) Healthy Family - advantage to the team with the fewest family members in the Infirmary. 4) Ressources - advantage to the team with the most total ressources (food, iron, wood). 5) Weapons - advantage to the team with the most weapons left (Advanced Weapons count as 2).
Thank you! To you, for reading this far and hopefully playing “And then the Sky turned Dark”. My idea for this game was to try and see if two completely different games could be played together, and maybe provide an alternative for game nights where people are in different gaming moods. I hope it works for you. To my wonderful group of playtesters whom I’ve taxed extra much this time: Esben Meulengracth Flachs, Jakob Mikael Hein, Morten Hartelius, Hans Peter Hartsteen og Oliver Hollegaard Hartsteen. To everyone who commented on the rules. To Fastaval for continuing to give us this opportunity to play with game design - specifically to Mads Havshøj and Rasmus Ragnvald Olofsson, who have organized us and to the judges who will have to play all our games.
Turn structure Split sequence A turn is played in each game, simultaneously. Shared sequence - the two games interact with each other: Undefeated Foes from the Hero game affect the village, and Workers in the Village game produce Weapons for the Heroes. This is also where you check to see if the game has ended.
End of Game conditions 1) Too many Foes get through to a team 2) A team runs out of Hope 3) Time runs out Each team that does not have a token of their color on the Family Calamity gets -1 Hope. Each team gets -1 Hope for each Worker in the Infirmary. The winner is the remaining team with most Hope left.