Introduction

Rixus is a turn-based strategic army-building game that pits players against each other in the war against evil. The army possess 3 spoils of war tokens after one full round of play wins the game!

Set Up

Remove all 24 monster cards from the main deck and shuffle the remaining cards. Deal each player 5 cards. The space in front of each player is their army camp; any hero or journey card added to that space becomes part of the player’s army.

Add the 24 monster cards back to the deck and shuffle. Place the shuffled deck in the middle of the table with plenty of space on either side. The left side will be the cemetery pile, holding any slain heroes, monsters, or cards discarded from a player’s hand during the game. The right side will be the area for the monster army camp and the monster strength board. If at any time throughout the game, the main deck runs out of cards, players can shuffle the cemetery deck and turn it face down to begin a new deck.

The player that has the longest journey (oldest) goes first and the play continues clockwise.

A Turn

Player take turns by going clockwise around the table. Players can take up to 2 actions on their turn.

The Actions

Draw a card from the Main deck

Play a card and enact any effects written on the card

Declare War worth 2 actions

Once the player has taken both of their actions the play moves to their left. A player can never have more than 5 cards in their hand at the end of their turn.

Declaring War

On your turn, you can forgo any other actions and declare war. Once a war is declared the monster army is flipped over and the strength score is marked on the strength board. Every hero on the table is also drafted to the war.

The hero with the lowest overall strength score is the first to go against the monster army. When a hero goes up against the monsters, you subtract the hero’s strength score from the overall Monster Army strength score. If the hero’s strength is less than the overall score of the Monster Army, then the hero is slain and added to the cemetery pile. After a hero is slain the Monster Army strength score is reduced by the slain hero’s score. Play continues to the next lowest-strength hero and so on, until the hero that is up against the Monster Army has a higher overall strength score. The hero whose score is greater than the monster army’s score gets the final blow and returns to their army with a Spoils of War token.

IMPORTANT: A player cannot declare war on an army consisting of a single monster. If the Monster Army grows to five monsters, a war is immediately triggered

Special circumstances

If any player does not want to participate in the war and they have the surrender boon card, they must play it before the monster army is flipped to opt out of the war.

If more than one player has the weakest hero, both players add up their army’s overall strength scores and whoever has the weakest army is the first in battle.

If no heroes can overwhelm the monster army, the spoils of war token goes to the monsters and the monster army is moved to the cemetery pile and reset.

Winning The Game

The first player to have 3 spoils of war tokens at the beginning of their turn wins the game.