Seasons

Set up the Seasons board game by placing the season wheel and crystal track centrally, and organizing the elemental energy dice based on the player count (2 to 4 players). Each player receives an individual player board, corresponding colored tokens placed at the start of the crystal track, bonus track, and invocation gauge, plus library tokens 2 and 3. Deal nine power cards to each player for drafting: keep one, pass the rest in a specified direction, and repeat until nine cards are selected. Divide these nine cards into three piles of three for the three game years (Year I, Year II, and Year III), placing Year I cards in hand and storing Year II and III cards with their respective library tokens.

The objective of Seasons is to prove yourself as a powerful archmage competing in a multi-year tournament in the Kingdom of Xidit. Over three in-game years, players must master elemental energies, crystallize them, invoke magical power cards, and accumulate the highest total of prestige points to win the title of archmage.

Each round begins with the first player rolling season dice corresponding to the current season. Players take turns drafting one die each until one die remains, which determines the season marker's movement. During your turn, you perform actions dictated by your chosen die: gaining elemental energies (up to a maximum of seven), crystallizing energies into crystals based on current conversion rates, increasing your invocation gauge to play more cards, drawing power cards, invoking power cards by paying their energy costs, activating active card abilities, or using player board bonuses.

At the end of the final year, final scoring takes place. Players add their crystal track score and the prestige value of all their played power cards. From this total, they subtract 5 points for each card remaining in their hand and any negative points accumulated from using player board bonuses. The player with the highest overall score wins.

The game spans three years, with each year consisting of twelve phases or box movements on the season wheel. The game officially ends when the season marker passes box 12 at the conclusion of the third year. Once this threshold is crossed, the game immediately stops and proceeds to the final scoring phase.