NAKATHA

Rulebook, version 1.1

A game of territory, treachery and divinity for 2 to 6 players, set on the plane of Arbetreyas.

Six powers circle the Dais. None of them knows what the others truly are. Only one can be standing when the dust settles.

1. Winning

The game ends the instant any player meets one of the three victory conditions.

1. Dominion. You are the only player with pieces still under your own control. This is counted by player, not by faction: if you hold three factions, you are only out when the last piece across all three is gone, and a piece that has been turned or controlled by someone else does not count as yours while they hold it.

2. The Board. At the end of your turn, one of your factions holds claim on 30 or more of the 90 segment tiles. Factions do not pool their tiles, even when one player holds several.

3. The Sword. Your piece carries the Sword onto a Divine tile, and is still on the board and still holding the Sword at the start of your next turn.

There is no time limit. Nakatha is meant to be played long, like chess. If a game does stall completely, use the optional rule in section 13.

2. Components

29 pieces, 127 tiles.

3. The board

The Dais sits at the centre. Six Divine tiles ring it. From each Divine tile a barrier spoke of five beige tiles runs outward to the board edge, laid in number order with 1 nearest the centre.

The spokes cut the grey tiles into six segments of fifteen, lettered clockwise from the top left: A (between spokes NW and N), B (N to NE), C (NE to SE), D (SE to S), E (S to SW), F (SW to NW).

Adjacency is standard hex: six neighbours, including barrier and Divine tiles.

The Dais may never be entered by any piece, for any reason.

Divine tiles may only be entered by a piece carrying the Sword.

Barrier tiles may be crossed, but a piece that enters a barrier tile must end its movement there. Barrier tiles can never be claimed. Dragons ignore this (they fly over), and teleport effects ignore it entirely.

4. Set up

1. Build the board: Dais, then the six Divine tiles, then the six barrier spokes in number order. 2. Shuffle all 90 grey tiles in a bag, Sword tile included, and fill the six segments at random without looking at any underside. 3. Deal the factions. All six factions are always in play. Split them as evenly as the table allows: 3 and 3 for two players, 2 each for three, 2/2/1/1 for four, 2/1/1/1/1 for five, one each for six. Either deal at random or draft them in snake order. 4. Deployment. In turn, each player claims one unoccupied segment per faction they hold and places that faction in it, as far from the Divine board as their faction rules allow. In practice that means the outermost ring of the segment. 5. The segment occupied by the Outerlands is the Outerlands for the rest of the game. Dragons may never enter it. 6. Put a claim marker of your faction's colour on every tile it occupies, and set the models back on top.

Fae exception. The Fae Courts deploy in a diamond rather than a line: place the four fae in their segment so that no two are adjacent, as far out as that formation allows.

5. The turn

Turns belong to players, not factions. Play proceeds clockwise around the table. On your turn:

a. Upkeep. Resolve upkeep for every faction you hold (the Outerlands roll for turned pieces, frozen pieces thaw, the Maiden's control expires).

b. Activate one piece. Exactly one, from any faction in your hand. Holding three factions does not give you three activations. Choosing which faction to feed is the game.

c. That piece may Move, and then take one Action. In that order. It may do one, both or neither.

• Move: up to 1 tile (Dragons 3, in a straight line).
• Action: Remove, a Faction Action, or a Divine Guess.

d. Claim. Put your faction's marker on every tile the activated piece began on, passed through or ended on, replacing any other marker.

The Divine Guess is the exception to the above: it replaces both the move and the action.

A round is one turn for each player at the table.

6. Claiming territory

Any tile a piece starts on, moves through or stops on belongs to that piece's faction until another faction claims it. Claims are permanent until overwritten, and survive the death of the piece that made them.

Barrier tiles, Divine tiles and the Dais are never claimed and never count toward the 30.

A Dragon claims only the tile it lands on. Not the tiles it crosses on the way: it is flying over those, not holding them.

7. Removing pieces

As its Action, an activated piece may remove one piece adjacent to it. Removed pieces are out of the game permanently.

Friendly territory. A piece standing on a tile claimed by its own faction is dug in: the attacker must roll 3 or more on a d6 to remove it. Fail and the action is spent.

Faction rules override this in both directions: some factions need support to remove at all, some remove at range, the Makabi are warded, the Dae can slip the blow, and Dragons are hard to kill.

Elimination. A player with no pieces left under their own control is out. Their markers stay on the board and count for nobody. Do not lift them.

8. The Sword and the Divine Move

One of the 90 grey tiles has a sword on its underside. Nobody knows where it is.

The Divine Guess. Instead of moving and acting, name the tile one of your pieces is standing on, or any tile adjacent to it, and declare that the Sword lies beneath. Lift the tile and show the underside to every player.

• Correct: the Sword is found. Set the tile back face up (it is now an ordinary tile). If you named your own tile, that piece takes the Sword and immediately moves one tile toward the Divine board. If you named a neighbouring tile, your piece steps onto it and takes the Sword up. If something else was already standing there, that piece takes the Sword instead.
• Wrong: the tile goes back as it was, your turn ends, and every player now knows one tile it is not.

Carrying the Sword. The bearer plays normally in every respect, with two exceptions. It alone may enter Divine tiles. And when it removes an adjacent piece, it does so regardless of that piece's protections and regardless of its own faction's restrictions: no roll for friendly territory, no need for supporting pieces, no Mother's ward, no Makabi ward, no bribe, no Milaze, and Dragons die to it like anything else. Nothing standing next to the Sword is safe.

Taking the Sword. To remove a piece carrying the Sword you must be adjacent and roll a 6, ignoring friendly territory and any other modifier. Success removes the bearer and hands the Sword to your piece.

Dropping the Sword. If the bearer is removed by anything that is not an adjacent attack (Breath, the Sandstone Court, the Maiden), the Sword falls onto that tile face up. The next piece to end its movement on that tile picks it up.

Winning with it. End a turn with the bearer on any of the six Divine tiles. If it is still there and still holding the Sword when your next turn begins, you win.

9. The factions

Humans

11 pieces. The Grand Council. Raven.

• Move 1.
• Mob: a human may only use the Remove action if at least one other human is adjacent to it.
• Action, Call up: place a new human on an empty tile adjacent to this one, provided that tile is already claimed by your faction and at least two other humans stand adjacent to the one calling up. The Council may never field more than eleven humans at once, so this replaces losses rather than building an army. In practice it needs a small block of councillors with a gap in it, which means it is unavailable at the start and becomes possible once the Council has taken losses and closed ranks.

The Council is slow, crude and everywhere. It cannot strike alone, but it paints more of the board than anyone and it can afford to lose people.

Dae

6 pieces. One per province. Golden wings.

• Move 1. Remove: normal.
• Action, Milaze: roll a d6. On 5 or more, place this dae on any unoccupied segment tile anywhere on the board. On 4 or less, nothing happens and the action is spent. A dae that takes the Milaze claims only the tile it arrives on.
• Milaze in defence: when a dae would be removed, roll a d6. On 5 or more it is not removed. Instead it takes the Milaze and steps away to any unoccupied segment tile on the board, never one beside the Mother, and the attacker's action is spent. The dae's own controller chooses the tile, not the attacker, and chooses it immediately, before play continues. The Milaze works against every kind of removal, at any range, including Breath, the Sandstone Court and the Maiden. It does not work against a piece carrying the Sword.

The Dae are the only faction that can contest all six segments at once, and the only one you cannot reliably pin down.

Fae Courts

4 pieces. White (Winter), green (Spring), amber (Autumn), sandstone (Summer).

• Move 1. Remove: normal.
• Apart: no two fae may ever be adjacent to one another, by any means, including forced movement.
• Abroad: a fae may leave its own segment and go anywhere on the board, but while it stands outside that segment it has no court action at all. Power belongs to the Courts, not to the piece.
• Ambush: once per round, immediately after an enemy piece finishes an activation inside the fae segment, one fae standing in that segment may relocate to any unoccupied tile adjacent to that piece. This is free and does not use your turn. Because it happens after that piece has already acted, the fae arrives with the first blow to come.
• Fae bargains: whenever a fae power moves, freezes or removes a piece, the Fae Courts claim the tile that piece was standing on. Nothing is done for free, and nothing is done without leaving a mark.

Court Actions (each is a Faction Action, usable only while that fae stands in its own segment):

The Courts do not march. They rearrange the board from behind their own border and let the bargains do the walking. Leaving that border is always a choice to trade power for reach.

Dragons

3 pieces. Dragons. Red.

• Flight: a Dragon moves up to 3 tiles in a single straight line, in one of the six directions. It cannot turn, and it stops at whatever is in the way. It ignores the barrier stopping rule.
• Claims only the tile it ends its flight on, never the ones it passes over.
• Action, Breath: remove any one piece within 2 tiles, in any direction. Nothing shields a target: fire spreads round corners. Ignores friendly territory.
• Emberfall: each Dragon may use Breath only once per round, a round being one turn for each player at the table. The fire has to build before it can be spent. Holding all three dragons still gives you a kill most turns; a single dragon cannot chain them.
• Tsiorak's domain: a Dragon may never enter the Outerlands segment.
• Killing a Dragon: at least three pieces hostile to the Dragon must be adjacent to it, including the attacking piece. They do not need to belong to the same faction or the same player. Any pieces that count the Dragon as an enemy will do, so rivals can bring one down together without ever agreeing to anything. Removal effects that do not require adjacency (Sandstone, the Maiden) bypass this entirely.

Three pieces that hold almost no ground and take it slowly, but a Dragon that flies three tiles lands somewhere new every turn. Dominion is still their natural route.

The Makabi

3 pieces. Maiden, Mother, Seer.

• Move 1. Remove: normal.
• Wards: removing any Makabi piece requires a roll of 5 or more, in addition to every other restriction. Three witches with no way to replace them are worth guarding.
• Seer: once per round, when the Seer's activation ends you may immediately activate one other Makabi piece. That second activation is a full one, and it is the only way any player gets two activations in a turn.
• Mother: no piece except a Makabi piece may ever come to rest beside the Mother, by any means at all. Not by moving, not by the Milaze, not by a Green or Amber push, not by a fae Ambush, not by being called up. A piece bought by the Outerlands is still whichever faction it was born into, so a turned witch may stand beside her and a turned dae may not.
• Maiden, Faction Action: choose one, either remove every piece adjacent to her, or take control of one adjacent piece until the end of your next turn. A controlled piece may be activated by you (it still costs your activation), uses its own rules, and claims tiles for whoever is holding the Maiden. If the Maiden is removed, everything she was holding returns to its own people at once.

Three pieces, but the Makabi act more often than anyone, the Mother is untouchable at close range, and all three are hard to put down.

Outerlands

2 pieces. Ansidora and Tsiorak. Pale ice.

• Move 1. Remove: normal.
• Action, Bargain: name any piece on the board except a Dragon. Roll a d6. The first time you target a given faction you need a 6. Every subsequent attempt against that same faction, successful or not, needs one less: 5 or more on the second, 4 or more on the third, and so on, down to a floor of 2.
• The price resets. The moment a bargain against a faction succeeds, that faction's price returns to 6+. Pressure has to be built again from scratch, on that faction or another.
• On a success the piece is turned: you control it. If it was frozen, it thaws.
• Upkeep: at the start of each of your turns, roll a d6 for every turned piece you do not yet own outright. On a 1 it reverts to its original owner where it stands. Otherwise it stays yours for now.
• Nothing is ever yours for good. Every turned piece is rolled for every turn, however long you have held it.
• The bargain dies with the Outerlands, not with one outlander. If one outlander is removed, the other takes up its contracts and everything stays bought. Only when both Ansidora and Tsiorak are gone does every turned piece return to its own people at once, along with anything those pieces were themselves holding.
• Turned pieces use their own printed rules, claim tiles for the Outerlands, and can be activated in place of an outlander (still one activation per turn). This holds for everything they do: a turned Maiden takes pieces for the Outerlands, and a turned fae bargains ground for the Outerlands, never for their own faction.
• Divine Providence: removing an outlander requires a roll of 5 or more, in addition to every other restriction. Two irreplaceable pieces carrying the wealth of the Outerlands do not die to ordinary bad luck.
• Bribe: once per game per outlander, cancel a removal targeting that outlander. The attacker's action is spent. This comes after the Divine Providence roll, so an outlander has to be very unlucky twice over.
• The Outerlands segment is the one place on the board the Dragons cannot reach.

Two pieces is not a faction, it is a purse, and a purse that is hard to cut. The Outerlands win by making someone else's army theirs, and they can never rest on a door they have already opened.

10. Status effects

A player is not eliminated while their pieces are merely turned or controlled. Only removal is permanent.

11. What changed in 1.1

• Humans can now call up a new councillor onto an empty adjacent tile they already hold, up to a standing limit of eleven and only where two other humans stand beside the one doing the calling. They need only one other human adjacent to remove, rather than two.
• Dae: the Milaze is a 5+ in both directions, as an escape and as an action, and an escaping dae may never land beside the Mother.
• Dragons are now called Dragons, need only two hostile pieces adjacent to be killed rather than three, and their Breath is no longer confined to a straight line: it reaches anything within two tiles.
• Outerlands: nothing is ever bought permanently, turned pieces go home only once both outlanders are dead, and Divine Providence now protects the outlanders themselves on a 5+.
• The Mother's ward now excludes every faction but the Makabi, through every means of moving a piece, not just ordinary movement.
• Held pieces work for their holder. A turned Maiden takes pieces for the Outerlands and a turned fae claims ground for the Outerlands, which previously went to their own faction by mistake.

What changed in 1.0

Emberfall. Each Dragon may breathe only once per round. Three dragons, one activation a turn, and every activation a free kill from outside anyone's reach put them at 23 to 27% against an even share of 16.7%. A per-activation version was tried first and overshot, dropping them to 6.4% across mixed player counts; the per-round version lands them at 13.6%. Note that almost all of that comes from six player games: at two players the Dragons still win nothing, because a dragon in a three faction hand is activated too rarely for any Breath rule to matter. That is the seat economy, not the dragons.

Two other levers were tried and rejected. Cutting Breath to a single tile takes the Dragons to 2% and hands the Outerlands 44%, because nothing is left on the board that can threaten a bought army. Dropping the kill requirement from three hostile pieces to two takes them to 5%: that rule is load-bearing and should not be touched. The cooldown is the only change that scales the faction rather than deleting it.

The Outerlands can buy a piece outright once it has survived two upkeep rolls, one at a time. See section 9. A carve-out protecting small factions from being bought was tested and rejected: it restored the Makabi to 26% but pushed the Outerlands straight back down to 9%, because the Makabi are the Outerlands' best target and protecting one is the same act as defunding the other.

What changed between drafts 0.2 and 1.0

• Turns belong to players. Previously each faction took its own turn. Now you activate one piece from anywhere in your hand, which makes a hand of three factions a matter of triage rather than three times the action.
• Dominion is counted by player, so a player holding several factions is not eliminated until the last of them falls.
• Dragons fly in straight lines, breathe in straight lines up to 2 tiles, stop at the first piece in the way, and claim no ground at all. The last of those is the important one: in testing, straight-line flight accidentally turned them into the best claiming faction in the game, because flying three tiles lands on fresh ground every turn while a one-move faction re-treads its own. Removing their claim entirely dropped them from a 57% win rate to about one in six.
• Fae may leave their segment, losing their court action while away.
• The Outerlands bargain price resets to 6+ on a success.
• The Milaze needs 5 or more, raised from 4, after the Dae reached 25% across player counts.
• The Dae gained the Milaze, because they were the only faction in the game with no defensive trait and were winning 0% of games. The escaping dae is placed by its own controller, which turns a dodge into a repositioning tool: being attacked is how a dae crosses the board for free.
• The Makabi gained wards at 5+, for the same reason.
• Passage is now 3+, and the Divine Guess reaches one tile, both to make routes that were dead into routes that are live.
• The board target dropped from 46 to 30. 46 was unreachable: the best faction in a long game averaged 24.
• The Outerlands can buy a piece outright, once it has survived two upkeep rolls, and one at a time. They were the weakest faction at every player count after the bargain reset, 9 wins from 125 games, and this brings them back to about even.
• The round limit is gone.

Full measurements, including everything tried and rejected, are in nakatha-balance.md, nakatha-player-counts.md and nakatha-combinations.md. The last of those is the 1,420 game sweep of which factions work well in the same hand, and which win route each faction leans towards.

The imbalance that remains is deliberate. No faction sits exactly on a sixth, the Dragons win almost exclusively by Dominion, the Dae have never won by the Sword, and the small tables favour the factions that do the most per activation. Those are characteristics, not faults.

12. Dials to turn in playtesting

Each of these is a single number, and the simulator can measure any of them over a few hundred games with --set.

• Friendly territory threshold. 3+ as written.
• Board majority. 30 of 90. This is the number most likely to need moving if your table plays differently from the simulation.
• Breath range. 2 tiles, any direction. Not the lever it looks like: at range 1 the Dragons collapse to 2% and the Outerlands take 44%. Leave it alone and use Emberfall instead.
• Emberfall. One turn. At two turns the Dragons drop further, but the faction starts to feel inert.
• Passage. 3+. At 4+ the Dae become noticeably more cautious.
• Milaze. 5+. At 4+ the Dae climbed to about 25%, the highest in the game, because a chosen landing turns the escape into free movement.
• Makabi wards. 5+. At 4+ the Makabi drop to 12% and the Dragons climb back to 31%, because a durable Makabi is what stops a Dragon running the table.
• Bargain floor. 2+. If the sliding price still runs away over a long game, raise the floor to 3+.
• Outerlands loyalty. Two surviving rolls, one piece held outright. Without the cap of one, buying pieces permanently takes them to between 21% and 28% whatever the threshold: two rolls, three or four barely changed it, because permanence itself is the strong part, not how long it takes. With the cap they sit at about 15%.
• The cost of that fix. The Makabi pay for it, dropping from roughly 25% to 15%, because a three piece faction that loses one permanently cannot replace it. If that reads as too harsh at the table, the obvious next rule is that a piece cannot be bought outright if its faction is down to three pieces or fewer.

13. Optional rules

The Long Silence. If ten full rounds pass with no piece removed and no tile changing hands, the game ends. The faction holding the most tiles wins. If two are level, the game is drawn. Without this, roughly one game in twenty-five stalls completely.

Even hands. A player holding more than one faction may activate one piece per faction each turn, up to a maximum of two. In testing, the player dealt the extra faction in a four or five player game won less often than the players holding one, because activations do not scale with hand size. This rule makes the uneven deal neutral, at the cost of a bloodier game.

14. Quick reference

Turn: upkeep, activate one piece from any of your factions, move, act, claim.

Movement: 1 tile. Dragons up to 3 in a straight line. Barrier tiles end movement. Never the Dais. Divine tiles only with the Sword.

Dragons: fly up to 3 in a line, claim nothing, Breath 2 tiles in any direction, once per round each.

Removal: adjacent, one per turn. 3+ if the target is in friendly territory. 5+ for any Makabi piece, and 5+ for an outlander. 6 if it carries the Sword. Dae may Milaze away on 5+, landing wherever their own controller chooses. The Sword bearer's own removals ignore everything.

Claim: every tile the active piece touched this turn. Dragons claim only where they land.

Win: last player standing, 30 tiles with one faction, or the Sword on a Divine tile for one full round.