Books of Time

Place the Civilization Board in the center of the play area, creating a supply of paper, pen, file, science, and victory tokens nearby. Each player receives a player board, three colored books (representing Trade, Science, and Industry), a bookmark, and matching colored playing pieces. Set one piece on the bottom space of each of the three tracks on the Civilization Board, and another on the '10' space of the Victory Point track. Players also receive two pen and paper tokens and a double-sided reference card. Each player draws six pages from the common deck, chooses one to 'write' for free into a matching colored book, and adds two more to the leftmost spaces of their player board. The remaining three pages are placed in a shared discard pile. The brown Chronicle book is assembled with its covers and pages, and a brown bookmark is inserted at the third-to-last page, with the Chronicle opened to its first page on the lectern. Objective tiles are sorted by color and stacked, with each player taking one random stack of each color.

The primary objective is to earn the most victory points by the end of the game. This is achieved by strategically adding pages to your three colored books, which provide various abilities and resources. These resources and page symbols are then used to complete personal objective tiles, advance on the Civilization Board, and gain additional victory points. Building efficient combos and managing your resources effectively are key to maximizing your score.

A game round consists of two phases: a Player Turns Phase and an Event Phase. During the Player Turns Phase, starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, each player performs a single action from a choice of six: 'Activate Pages' (resolve benefits on visible pages of a chosen book and turn the page), 'Write Pages' (pay the cost to add a page from your player board to a matching book, gaining its immediate benefit), 'Close a Book' (resolve all instant benefits on pages to the left of the current page in a chosen book, then open it to its first page), 'Draw' (take two pages from the offer or deck, optionally refreshing the offer first, and add them to your player board), 'Advance' (pay the cost to move one of your colored markers up a track on the Civilization Board, gaining the space's benefit or advancing an objective), or 'Turn Pages' (select up to three of your books and turn one page in each, gaining the bottom-right benefit from all three books). Additionally, before or after their main action, a player may choose to resolve one 'Chronicle Event' by activating a page in the Chronicle.

Victory points are scored at the end of the game. Players check their objective stacks: for each stack, if the conditions on the topmost objective tile are met by the pages in their matching colored book, they score the indicated victory points. If the conditions are not met, no points are scored for that stack. Players also score two victory points for each page (excluding covers) in the book matching the color of their marker's current position on the top space of the Civilization Board. Finally, players count their leftover pen, paper, and file tokens; for every five tokens, they earn one victory point.

The game concludes after a predetermined number of rounds, which is tracked by the brown bookmark in the Chronicle. When the bookmark is reached during the Event Phase, and the Chronicle is turned to its back cover, the game ends. Final scoring then takes place. The player with the highest total victory points wins. In case of a tie, the player with the most leftover file tokens wins. If there's still a tie, the tied players share the victory.