Vantage

Here is a general overview of how to play Vantage:

Setup

1. Place the game box near the designated player who will find and return cards using placeholder cards (1709–1714), and tilt open the three big stacks of large cards.
2. Put the board (the center) in the middle of the table with the time, morale, and health trackers nearby.
3. Place all skill tokens, coins, boost tokens (cubes), skill dice, and storybooks into a general supply near the board.
4. Seed the challenge dice pool with 8 challenge dice plus 2 per player, returning any remaining dice to the box.
5. Give each player a location card holder and randomly select a first player.
6. Place the Book of Vantages with the back cover facing up to show location 000, and follow its instructions using skill dice to independently gain your character and starting stats.

How a Turn Works

On your turn, you perform one action by following a sequence of steps, after which play passes clockwise to the next player. You will always succeed when performing an action, but the challenge is to avoid losing time, morale, and health.

• Choose one action: Pick from location actions, card actions, or depart actions without knowing the exact cost or result in advance.
• Read the cost and action: Another player finds the relevant entry in the storybook and reads only the cost and the bolded action text.
• Reduce the cost: Optionally pay matching skill tokens (1 per token) by any player to reduce the action cost.
• Roll challenge dice: Roll dice from the challenge pool equal to the remaining cost.
• Place rolled dice: Place the rolled challenge dice onto open slots in your card grid or impact slots on other players' cards.
• Suffer penalties: Any rolled-but-unplaced challenge dice inflict penalties, causing you to lose time, morale, and/or health, or go to the penalty section.
• Read the action result: Another player reads the unbolded result text from the storybook, granting benefits and describing consequences.
• End your turn: If the result instructs you to continue, you must perform another action; if it says you may continue, it is your choice, otherwise your turn ends.

How the Game Ends

The game can end in several different ways based on the storybooks, including completing a mission, completing a destiny, or if any player's time, morale, or health is reduced to 0.

Completing a mission gives you a choice between ending the game and continuing to pursue a destiny.