Mythicals

To set up the game, first, place the three board pieces in the center of the table. Next, sort the 20 mastery tokens by color and arrange them face-up in ascending order on their corresponding columns on the game board. Place the 16 bonus markers in their dedicated area on the board. Each player receives two creature cards of different colors to start their collection. Shuffle 8 creature cards with the "daybreak" card, then place this shuffled stack face-down under the remaining creature cards to form the main draw pile. Designate separate areas for a card reserve and discarded cards. Finally, randomly choose a starting player to begin the game.

The main objective of Mythicals is to strategically collect creature cards and use them to acquire mastery tokens. These tokens represent your control over the elemental forces and are crucial for earning victory points. Players must decide whether to take risks by drawing more cards or play cautiously to secure points, aiming to have the highest total score by the time the game concludes.

Each turn consists of three phases. First, you must draw cards: either reveal the top three cards from the draw pile and take all cards of a single color, placing the rest in the reserve, or take all cards of a single color from the reserve. Second, you may optionally acquire a mastery token by discarding a specific set of cards (a 'suite' of 2-5 cards of the same color with successive values, or a 'set' of 2-4 cards of the same value but different colors, or a 'suite' of 5 cards plus a joker for the 13-point token). Discard the required cards face-down and place the acquired mastery token and any bonus markers in front of you. Third, you may optionally consolidate or block a mastery token on the board: consolidate a token by adding 1-2 bonus markers to increase its value by 1 point per marker, or block a token by flipping it to its blocked side, preventing it from being consolidated further but still allowing it to be acquired.

Once the game ends, players calculate their final scores. This is done by adding up the points indicated on all mastery tokens they have collected. Additionally, any bonus markers placed on these mastery tokens contribute extra points, with each marker typically adding one point to the token's value. The player who has accumulated the highest total number of points from their mastery tokens and bonus markers is declared the winner of the game.

The game concludes immediately when the "daybreak" card is drawn from the draw pile. When this happens, the "daybreak" card is set aside. The active player, whose turn it is, then takes one or two cards of the same color from the remaining two cards that were revealed alongside the "daybreak" card. If they have the necessary cards, they may also acquire one final mastery token. After this, the game officially ends, and players proceed to calculate their scores.