Red Rising

Place the game board in the center of the table. Shuffle the 112 character cards and place them face down on the designated spot. Place the die next to the deck. Deal two character cards face up to each of the four locations (Jupiter, Mars, Luna, The Institute), ensuring only the name, color, and victory points are visible. Each player draws five character cards for their starting hand, keeping them secret. Each player randomly selects a House tile, takes their corresponding reference card, influence tokens, and fleet token. Place your fleet token on space 0 of your fleet track. Place the helium tokens in the designated wolf-shaped tray. The Sovereign token is placed next to the game board. If a player chose House Apollo, they receive the First Player token; otherwise, randomly choose a first player.

The objective of Red Rising is to gain the most victory points by strategically deploying character cards, collecting helium tokens, advancing your fleet on the fleet track, and accumulating influence tokens at The Institute. Players represent different Houses vying for power in the Red Rising universe, and the player who best manages their resources and character abilities to maximize their score will be declared the winner.

On your turn, you have two main options: Scout or Lead. When you Scout, you can either draw the top card from the deck or take a card from any location. If you take a card from a location, you must place one of your influence tokens on that location. When you Lead, you select a character card from your hand and deploy it to a location, activating its 'deploy' ability. After deploying, you may gain helium, advance your fleet, or place influence tokens based on the die roll or location bonuses. Cards have various abilities, including end-game scoring conditions, deploy effects, and blocking actions. Exiled cards are removed from the game for the moment, while revealed cards are shown to all players and then returned to your hand unless otherwise specified.

At the end of the game, points are calculated from several sources. First, sum the victory points from the top and bottom sections of your character cards. Next, consider your position on the fleet track, gaining points as indicated. Each helium token you possess is worth 3 points. For influence tokens at The Institute, the player with the most tokens gains 4 points per token, the second most gains 2 points per token, and all other players gain 1 point per token. The Sovereign token is worth 10 points to its holder. Finally, any cards beyond the seventh in your hand at the end of the game will incur a penalty of -10 points each.

The game ends when any player meets three of the following conditions: having 7 or more helium tokens, having 7 or more influence tokens at The Institute, or having their fleet token on or past position 7 on the fleet track. Alternatively, the game also ends if one player meets two of these conditions. Once the end-game is triggered, all players complete their current turn so that everyone has had an equal number of turns, with the exception of the player with House Apollo, who gets one additional turn due to their House ability. After all turns are completed, players proceed to the scoring phase.