Harakiri : Blades of Honor - Official How to Play Board Game

In the dark age after the war, embark on an adventure to develop your skill and the connection to the divine spirits in Harakiri: Blades of Honor. And today I will be teaching you how to play Harakiri: Blades of Honor, game designed by Fernando Gamero and Joel Torres, and published by Synergic Games.

And hello everyone, it's Stella. And Tarrant here from Meeple University. All right, let's get to the classroom. Harakiri: Blades of Honor is a massive cooperative campaign skirmish and adventure game. Set in a fantasy version of feudal Japan, players will lead a quartet of characters through a progression of story, facing minor and major enemies, battling through grid-based challenges, and building up the strengths, skills, and equipments of your characters.

The main game comes with two act books, each representing a complete and stand-alone campaign. Regardless of your player count, you will pilot a team of four characters through the act, developing those characters as you go. That means that regardless of your player count, you will need to split those four characters among the players.

The main game comes with eight characters, and each act uses a specific combination of four. Each act is divided into chapters. Most, but not all chapters, are divided into two distinct and differently played phases. First, an adventure phase, in which you'll traverse the wider map, traveling long distances and interacting with cities and markets and the like, followed by an exploration phase, in which you'll face enemies in a localized grid-based skirmish.

Both types of phase have an objective. In the full map adventure phases, whether you pass or fail your objective, you'll still progress. But, how well you do will give you a benefit or penalty in the subsequent exploration phase. On the other hand, in the grid-based exploration phases, you must pass your objective to proceed.

If you fail, you'll need to repeat that exploration phase. In a typical game session, you'll play across a full chapter, but the game can be saved after any single adventure or exploration phase. You'll use the campaign sheet at the very back of the act book to keep track of any choices and progress which carries over from chapter to chapter.

In this video, I'll first be taking you through setup, which includes the initial setup for your first game in act one, followed by rules for the adventure phase, then rules for the exploration phase, and finally tips on how you'll progress and save between sessions. To set up for your first game of act one, you'll want to refer to pages six and seven of the adventure phase rulebook, as this includes both general setup and the particulars for initial setup of the game's characters.

These initial setup particulars are written in italics. For each empty character, take a board and insert the nameplate. Find the matching character booklet and read the introductory pages. This gives you the backstory for your character. You'll stop once you get to any numbered paragraphs. These represent personal missions which will unfold across the course of the act.

You begin as a level one character. Find your five skill tiles, take the level one, and slot it on either side, they're identical, into the level one slot, setting the others aside. The tile will show a skill which is relevant in the exploration phase, and possibly a trait, which is the word before your character's name.

This trait depicts your maximum and starting health. As a level one character here, I start with health of 10, and mark that with a cube. These four tracks are called attributes: power, dexterity, knowledge, and spirit. Each has a range between zero and three, and each character begins with one point in one specific attribute.

Cards with this back are blacksmith cards. This complete deck of cards includes a number of character armor and weapons, and they're all broken up by character class and level. In the initial setup, find the four cards for your character class at level one, and among them choose the specific armor that the rulebook instructs you to take, and choose either one of the two weapons, placing that here.

The cards you don't take are placed face down into your blacksmith pile, ready to potentially be purchased later in the game. Set a cube at your armor's armor level. Each player gets free pick of one card from the kami deck. These represent various spirits who have their own abilities which the players can use.

Flip this card over and place a cube at level one. From the start of the game, only the first skill is available. Finally, give each player their eight personal/clan tokens. These are double-sided tokens. This side is called your personal mission token, and this side is called your clan token. I will refer to them as if they're different tokens, but remember that they do come on opposite sides of the same token.

Now, open the act book and start reading the story for this chapter. Keep going until you reach the red box and read the contents of that box. It's relevant to setup and any rule changes for this phase. Don't read beyond there. Numbered sections represent parts of the story which will unfold as the game goes along.

You'll always be told when to read a specific section by this icon, the book followed by a number. A number less than 200 represents a paragraph in this phase's sections. You'll find it within the next few pages of the act book. A number greater than 200 can be found in one of the characters' booklets.

You'll now set up the adventure board. The board is made up of paths and locations, including cities and shrines, and is broken into four territories, which are differentiated by the type of backdrop you'll see there. Each of the territories thematically belongs to one of the clans of the game which the characters belong to.

Tomorrow, for example, belongs to this clan, which sees over this territory. Place character minis in the depicted start location. Do note that for this video, I'm using base rings matching clan colors for each of the hero minis. You won't usually use the minis for the heroes in the game. These are generally used only for the enemies.

Add other tokens and special location cards as depicted in the rulebook. Here, for example, there are some cut paths around the Tango Forest, which is on its face down dark side, because it's yet to be discovered. In this case, you'd lay them out like so. Look through the mission deck to find this chapter's missions.

Here, you'll see it's act one, chapter one, and there are four missions numbered one, two, three, and four. These scrolls represent mission locations, so place those scrolls in their spots on the board. You'll see that there is no scroll four during setup. You won't discover this mission until later in the scenario.

Keep the available mission cards near the board, ready for discovery. You'll also see several personal mission tokens on the page, as well as personal mission paragraphs, and these are related. You'll read the corresponding personal mission at setup, and this will give you the background of the mission, as well as telling you to place personal mission tokens in those same locations.

Set out the influence board. Place the round marker off to the side, and place influence at the starting influence as depicted in setup. You'll also look to what is the first trigger. This is a timed event for this phase, in this case it's round four, and you'll take this token and place it on the corresponding slot as a reminder.

Find this chapter's shogun influence cards. Again, here it's act one, chapter one, and then shuffle them up into a deck. Just be aware of special rules. In chapter one, for example, one of those cards, the blood oath card, is set aside and will come into play on a specific trigger. Find all the market cards, those have these backs, and you'll split them up into five decks.

All of the purple-colored special items, and then the ones requiring three knowledge, two knowledge, one knowledge, and nothing. Determine the range of all characters' knowledge attributes. So, in your first game, there'll be one character with one knowledge and the rest with zero. Shuffle up a market deck comprising all of the non-special items which correspond to that knowledge range, and put all other market cards aside.

Build a deck of travel events, double-sided cards which look like this. In this case, you'll be using all cards labeled A, and the cards numbered one through seven, and you'll shuffle them all together into a deck. Finally, make supplies of the various tokens you can collect, including coins, karma, heads, and blessed tokens.

Be aware that most of these are double-sided. They're worth more on one side than the other, so you'll have to keep them in the right orientation. You'll also keep the action point tokens nearby ready for use. Unless otherwise stated, you'll need no other components for the adventure phase. You're now ready to play.

The adventure phase is played in rounds. Each round begins with your enemy, the Shogun, taking a turn, and then each of the four characters can take one turn in the order of your choice. You may change this order from round to round. To begin the Shogun turn, advance the round marker one step. If this advances it to a trigger, then resolve this round's trigger.

Here it would be reading section eight. Then reset your trigger token to the next trigger. If it's an end phase trigger, you'll set it to the number after the total number of rounds for this phase. So, in this case, to number seven. If it's an end phase trigger, flip it over to the red side. Reaching an end phase trigger will end this phase.

Next, increase influence according to the act book. That means moving this marker up the appropriate number of spaces. This is one of many things which will cause this marker to go up or down across the course of the phase. If influence ever reaches 12, then you fail the adventure phase and read the corresponding section.

The third step is to flip the next Shogun influence card. Refer to red, yellow, or green based on the position of the influence marker, and resolve the effect. This could be something which resolves immediately, or it could be a passive effect which will be in play throughout this round. As influence shifts up or down during the round, the passive effects applicable to the round will also change.

Then to finish the Shogun's turn, if there are any enemies on the map, those enemies will activate. In the first round of the first chapter, there won't be any enemies on the board, so I'm going to skip this for now and come back to it later. Next, you'll proceed to the character turns. When it is character's turn, that character has three action points to spend.

You may use any or all of these on the character's turn, but cannot carry unspent points over to your next turn. If any effect ever tells you that you are delayed, then you lose any remaining action points for this turn. The actions you can take which cost action points are: travel, interact with a mission, interact with the map, work or camp, and attack.

Each may be done multiple times per turn, except for travel, which may be done only once. You may also take any number of free actions, which are: to use items, swap weapons, or share items, resources, or information with other characters. The first action is travel, and this is how you move around the board.

Traveling costs one action point, and this grants you three movement points, plus one movement point for each of your dexterity, plus any other bonus movement points that you might have on skills, items, or effects. In this case, I have no dexterity, so this movement would give me three movement points.

But in this case, with two dexterity and the nine-tailed fox bonus, I'd have six movement points. Then, within your one allowable travel action per turn, you may also exert, spending any number of additional action points to gain an extra movement point for each. Here now, I've spent two action points for a total of seven movement points.

The simplest travel is by land, following either Imperial roads or dangerous paths. Each path costs you one movement point, so here, with three movement points, I could go 1 2 3 as an example. You may not move through a cut path. After finishing your movement, if you move two or more spaces, then you must resolve a travel event.

If you use only Imperial roads, then you'll use the less dangerous green side of the events. If you travel any dangerous paths, then you'll use the more dangerous red side. To resolve a travel event, draw the bottom card from the travel event deck, and read only the top half. This is because often you'll be making a decision on how to react.

After choosing, resolve the outcome, and then discard it to the top of the deck unless otherwise stated. One more flexible option for travel is group travel. Suppose it's currently green's activation. Any character who begins green's activation in the same location and has not already activated this round, may choose to move in a group with green.

So, in this case, if purple had already taken its activation for the round, then only green and red could move as a group. Green spends one action point for the travel, and red also effectively spends one action point because red will gain one fewer action point when its activation begins. The movement points gained is equal to three plus the lowest among all group traveling characters' dexterities.

In this case, it's zero, so movement points is three. No other bonuses are applied, and the characters cannot exert. Now, move the group characters as usual. There are two main benefits to doing this. Firstly, you have strength in numbers on the roads, so whether it's Imperial or dangerous roads, you do not draw a travel event.

Secondly, although the inactive character has effectively spent an action point on this group movement, it does not count as those characters' travel actions for this round. Therefore, here red could spend another travel action on its turn, and this gives you much more range to move quickly across the board.

Characters who travel in a group must be activated consecutively. So, here it was green activating, but traveling with red. So, once green's turn is complete, red would have to be the next character to activate before orange. Your other option as part of a travel action is to travel by sea, and you can do this either as a group or individually.

This costs three movement points and requires the active player to spend 10 coins, and allows the individual or group to travel from a city which has the port icon to any other city on the same sea that also has the port icon. For one action point, you may interact with a mission in your location. Scrolls are undiscovered missions, corresponding to one of the chapter's face-down mission cards.

To discover one of these missions, remove the mission token and flip the corresponding card face up. Read the top half of the card. This will unfold some elements of the story and tell you what actions to immediately take. Here, it's to place one of your clan tokens on Osaka. The banner at the top of the card tells you exactly what to do to succeed at this mission.

The conclusion at the bottom tells you what happens or which sections to read when the mission is over. Some missions will have different conclusions whether you pass or fail them. Sometimes missions will involve enemies being placed on the map, and as soon as they're there, any player in that location may attack them, or alternatively be attacked.

The same is not true for missions which involve placing clan tokens. If by discovering this mission, I place one of my clan tokens in Osaka, this means that my character has learned of something that needs to be done in Osaka, but none of the other characters on the board know about it. Orange could travel here, but could not complete the mission.

However, if two characters ever share the same location, even in the middle of travel action, they may take the free action to share information about that mission. Right here, purple is telling orange about what needs to be done in Osaka, and so orange may now place a clan token on that same location, and can now validly complete that mission.

If you're in a location with your clan token, then it costs one action point to interact with that mission. You resolve the conclusion effect on that mission, and then remove all clan tokens related to the mission. Finally, remember that if you have a personal mission token on the board, then that was placed from your personal mission booklet.

Spend one action point to resolve that mission, and read the corresponding section from your booklet. Players cannot share information about their personal missions. Only the player who owns that mission may resolve it. A character in a city may spend one action point to interact with one of the shops in that city.

There are three different types: blacksmiths, inns, and markets. And not all types will be available in each city. For one action point at a blacksmith, you may buy, sell, or repair any number of cards from your blacksmith deck. When buying, choose any card from your blacksmith deck that you wish to buy.

Its cost is shown in the bottom right corner, and so you'll pay that cost in coins and move the card face up to the right-hand side of your board. You may have at most one armor and two weapons, and among those weapons, one will be equipped and one will be in reserve. In the adventure phase, it's a free action to swap between your equipped and reserve weapons.

When at the blacksmith, you may sell any of these items back to the blacksmith. Gain half of its cost in money rounded down, and then return the card face down to your blacksmith deck. You may only do this at the blacksmith. If for whatever reason you end up with more than one armor or more than two weapons when you're not at a blacksmith, you'll have to discard the excess without compensation.

When you purchase new armor, reset your armor cube to match the full armor of that new piece. Through the course of battle, you'll find effects which reduce your armor, and this cube will go down and can go to as low as zero. Whenever you're at a blacksmith, you can spend 10 coins to repair your current armor all the way to its maximum value.

Selling damaged armor still earns you half the value rounded down, and new armor purchased is always at its fullest resistance. In a city with a market, you can spend one action point to visit that market. Here, you can buy and sell the items which you'll find in the market deck. This is a matter of terminology.

The cards in the market deck are items, which is different from the cards in your blacksmith deck. When you visit a market, the first thing which happens is the top three cards are flipped face up from the market deck. These are the only items available for purchase on your turn. You may now purchase any number of them for the cost shown in the bottom right-hand corner.

Excluding blacksmith cards, each character may hold a maximum of five item cards, a maximum of three of which may have the permanent word. This count excludes any of the purple special items, which may only be gained through specific sections and events which give you those items. At a market, you can sell items back to the market for half their cost rounded down.

While otherwise, if you exceed the item limit outside a market, you'll have to discard down without compensation. Also at a market, you can sell heads. You'll collect normal heads as you defeat enemies in the game and boss heads as you defeat bosses. Normal heads are sold for 10 coins each, and boss heads are sold for 30.

Once your action is done, anything you didn't buy or anything you sold back are shuffled back into the market deck. Using an item is a free action in the adventure phase. Although not all of them are going to be relevant at all times. To be allowed to use an item, you must have at least as much knowledge in your knowledge attribute as shown in the top of the card.

To be clear, having insufficient knowledge doesn't stop you from holding an item, just stops you from using it. For a simple consumable item, you'll use it once and then shuffle it back into the market deck. For a permanent item, you may use it as many times as you like, and you never need to discard it.

If an item says it has a number of uses, then use these tokens to track the number of times you've used it, then return it to the deck once you've used it the maximum number of times. As a free action, two characters in the same location may exchange items, equipment, heads, or coins between each other.

The last of the city buildings is the inn, and at an inn, you may pay 10 coins to heal an amount of health equal to your current level plus two. So, in this case, I can heal three health. You're never allowed to have health above the maximum for your current level. Some game effects will result in a city being either captured or razed.

You can enter a captured city, but can't interact with its shops. You're not even allowed to enter a razed city. If a city's captured or razed, it remains that way until the end of the chapter after the chapter in which it happened. So, take note of such cities on the campaign sheet. In setup, each character gets a kami card, and you'll keep that same card throughout the act unless a specific effect tells you to change it.

Each kami is associated with a specific name sanctuary. And in any sanctuary, it doesn't have to be the one which matches your kami, you may spend one action point to exchange karma. You can spend any amount of karma, but for each three karma you spend, increase your kami tracker one step. You begin the game with access to the bottom ability on this card, which applies during the adventure phase.

You'll unlock the second and third effects once you reach steps three or six, and these apply during the exploration phase. For an action point in a discovered location, you can interact with that location, and the act book will tell you what to do. Then in any location, you can take the work or camp action.

In a city, you can work, and this gives you two coins. Outside of a city, you can camp, which lets you heal one health. In the same location as an enemy, you may spend one action point to attack that enemy. In the adventure phase, all information about how an enemy reacts and how to attack it will appear on the card or in the book section which brought that enemy into play.

To attack an enemy, look for the section of text next to the swords. The associated number is the difficulty of the enemy, so this will be an attack with difficulty three. This would be an attack with difficulty seven, but you'd get a plus one bonus on your die roll if you had the lucky or explorer traits.

You'll attack with your weapon and refer to the small icons around this red flame in the bottom right corner. This represents the colors of dice you'll use for this attack. This attack is one orange, one green, one purple. Orange dice do the least damage, then green, then purple, then red. Roll the dice, add up the values, so here it's three using the Japanese characters on the dice, and add your power attribute.

So, the total value here is four. If you meet or exceed the combat difficulty, then gain the combat success effect. If you roll less, gain the failure effect. Fail effects often tell you to lose health, for which you reduce your health bar. You could also receive direct damage represented by this drop, and that similarly reduces your health bar directly.

You could also receive hits represented by the flash. Here, it's three hits. For hits, you deduct the value of your armor cube from that number, so here it would be 3 - 2 is 1, and then take only that remainder as damage. Sometimes from attacks or other effects, you'll suffer both hits and lose armor.

In this case, the four hits would first be reduced to two for two damage, and then you would lose one armor, making your armor weaker for subsequent combats. That explains attacks and how to resolve combat tests. The other type of test that you may come across during your turn is an attribute test, and there you'll see one of the four attribute icons, again followed by a number in brackets.

For an attribute test, simply roll the white die. This is a standard six-sided die. You just look at the number of points on the die that tell you the number. Add your value in the attribute to the test. If this were a knowledge test, it would be 4 + 2 for a value of six. If you meet or exceed the difficulty, you get the success result, otherwise you get the fail.

Returning now to the Shogun's turn. Remember, you'll advance the round marker and resolve influence. The final step is for the Shogun to activate any enemies on the map. As before, the behavior of all enemies is based solely on the card or the book passage which brought it into play. These enemies, for example, will advance three locations towards the Tengu forest location, but they won't engage the players in combat.

These enemies advance three locations towards the nearest character, and then will start combat if they reach. In any case, the information will give you a target, and you choose that target with in the event of a tie choosing the nearest version of that target, and if still tied, the target of your choice, and then movement will be via the shortest path towards that target stopping if it reaches the target.

You'll then resolve any test which applies. Resolving a test on the Shogun's turn is exactly the same as resolving a test on your own turn. Here it's a combat test. I would base it on my weapon. I would roll my own dice, and I would see whether I succeeded or failed, gaining the pass or fail effect as appropriate.

The only difference here is that you're not granted the choice. You can't choose not to attack the enemy if it attacks you. If a character's health ever is reduced to zero during the adventure phase, that character is defeated. Remove its mini from the board. It will take no further part in this phase.

The adventure phase will end in defeat if all characters are defeated or if influence reaches 12 or if you read a section which states the phase ends in failure. The phase ends in success if you read a paragraph which states the phase ends in success. Either way, the phase ends immediately when one of these things occurs.

Discard all blessed tokens. Any characters who were defeated are now resurrected. Restore health to your maximum health, then perform a spirit test with difficulty equal to your level. If you pass the test, nothing happens. While if you fail the test, you must lose one attribute point which cannot be the one you started the game with.

If you have no excess attribute points to lose, then nothing happens. If there are any discovered or undiscovered missions which have failure consequences, then resolve each of those failure consequences. This includes on personal missions. All characters who weren't defeated heal one health per level.

Leave everything else as it is, and now proceed to the exploration phase. To set up the exploration phase, your character begins exactly as it ended the last adventure phase. At this moment, all characters are allowed to do share actions with each other. That is, they can exchange heads, coins, items, and equipment.

At this moment, you're also allowed to change which of your two weapons is equipped. These are important choices because everything I just said is going to cost you an action point if you do it during the phase. Take a number of the small blue key dice equal to your level, and roll them into your supply.

To be clear, you'll need an area called your supply and another area for exhausted dice, and I'm going to place them like so. Turn to this phase in the act book and read the story. You may be given a choice. This is chapter one, and you're given the choice between starting at the cliff or the onsen.

Read and continue making choices as before until you reach a red box which will rate to help you with setup, but you won't proceed to the numbered sections. Find the matching numbered zone tiles and set them up as shown. Place your character minis as depicted. Place out any tokens. The token components are showed as these circles which don't have this white shape underneath them.

And so here I'd be placing red and green spawn points, a letter A interaction token, and a closed door, placing them all as shown. Next, place the starting enemies. This scenario uses Kappa's. This is a type of minion. It's the weakest of the enemies. Minions are represented by these smaller enemy cards and can be on the blue side for a basic minion or the orange side for an advanced one.

And you'd be using the advanced ones if there's a plus next to the name in components. There could be up to six copies of each individual minion, and they'll be represented by these six different color shape combinations. You'll use the base rings to tell them apart on the board, and you'll set them up as shown.

As you progress, you'll encounter larger enemies. The servants are the next most challenging. They'll be represented by one of these larger cards and their mini, and the most challenging types of enemies you'll face are the chosen. These are effectively the bosses of the game. Each chosen has a matching deck of AI cards which you'll shuffle and place, and this will drive their actions.

You may also need to set up wanderers, and you'll set these up like servants. They're represented by a mini and one of these larger cards. Wanderers could behave as either allies or enemies depending on how the scenario pans out. Flip over the initiative board to reveal the malice board, and set the marker at zero malice.

Malice reaching six is one way to lose a scenario, and some scenarios also have an additional effect based on the malice. Set up the oracle deck. This is just a deck of green and red cards, and they're going to tell you whether you're going to have a good round or a tough round. The composition of this deck is going to depend on your success or failure and other things that you've done across the course of the game.

If a game effect ever tells you to add more oracle cards, then add them to all of the deck and discarded cards, and reshuffle them into a new deck. Find all the exploration events for this chapter, and then find the one or two which correspond to your current zone. Here for example, we picked the onsen zone, so I would take the two onsen cards.

Slot each active event into an omamori envelope so that you can't yet see the events on them, and set the ones from the other zones aside for now. In general, if the events are red and green, there'll be two of them. If they're purple, there'll be only one. Read the objective and any special rules for this phase, and you're now ready to play.

The exploration phase plays in rounds, and in every round, there'll be a chance for events and then for all the minis to activate. The first step of a round is to draw a new oracle card, determining whether it's a green or a red round. Next, resolve an event for your zone. If it's a green round, then you'll slide the green omamori up and resolve the next visible event.

If it's a red round, you'll resolve the next red event, and if your zone has purple events, then you'll just resolve the next one regardless of the oracle. If you run out of events to resolve on a card, then the event is to gain one malice. Next, determine the initiative order in which all of the minis will activate, and for this you'll need the initiative cards with this back.

Take the initiative cards for each active character and each active enemy and wanderer with the exception of any chosen, and shuffle those cards into a deck. Now, lay the cards out into a face-up row. Next, check for any characters who have the ability to change initiative. Akiko's starting skill, for example, lets his initiative be changed by one position.

After characters, any enemies or wanderers with initiative effects will resolve those. Then players may collectively and optionally choose any two characters, consecutive or non-consecutive in the queue, and swap their positions. And finally, if there are any chosen in play, those chosen automatically go to the very head of the initiative queue.

You'll then activate each mini in the initiative queue from left to right, rotating the card when complete. So now, let's have a look at character activations. On your activation, you gain three new action points. Unlike the adventure phase, you do not have to use them all in the same activation. You are allowed to carry at most one through the next round.

Therefore, you'll start the next round with four action points, which is the maximum you're allowed to hold. You'll then spend these action points to take the following actions, and do note that some of the action point costs differ from the adventure phase. These are move, attack, interact, use item, a technique skill, or rerolling your key dice.

Move and attack are limited to once per activation. The others are not restricted. During activation, you may also complete any number of these free actions, and these can be done at any time even in the middle of another action. These are retrieving heads, using kami mode abilities, placing key dice, or withdrawing key dice.

The first action is movement. For one action point, you gain movement points equal to three plus your dexterity plus any other modifiers you hold. Like in the adventure phase, you can exert to get more movement points, but unlike the adventure phase, exerting gives you three extra movement points instead of one.

At its most basic, movement may be orthogonally or diagonally around the board. My three movement points could take me here. By definition, adjacency considers both orthogonal and diagonal spaces, so purple is adjacent to all three of these other minis. You may freely move through your allies as long as you don't end your movement on an ally's space.

A terrain space bordered in red is considered impassable terrain. You're not allowed to enter it, and you can't move diagonally past its edge. That means it would take two movement points to move here. Yellow-bordered terrain is considered an obstacle, and this has the same effect. You can't move into it, nor can you move diagonally across its corner.

This movement would take three movement points. The difference between the two is that a mini who can fly is allowed to move over or diagonally across an obstacle, as long as its movement doesn't finish on that obstacle, but not even a flying mini can cross over impassable terrain. All minis treat their enemies as if they were obstacles.

So right now, this character would need to move two steps to get here because of this blue enemy serving as a movement obstacle. The very same is true in reverse. This blue enemy treats this character as an obstacle, and would therefore take three movement points to get here. The purple spaces are difficult terrain.

It costs one movement point to enter, but two movement points to leave each square. Flying creatures ignore this penalty. Any blue squares are considered special terrain, and the rules applying to those will appear in the act book. Finally, it's not represented by any particular border, but the images on the tile may depict a change in elevation.

Here you can see two stairs and a ladder. From here, my character could climb the ladder for one movement point, or could move up and down the stairs. You cannot change elevation without a ladder or stairs unless your movement is flying. A mini whose base is too big to fit on the stairs or ladder cannot use it.

This particular mini is stuck at ground level. Squares at a different elevation are not considered adjacent. In this case, only these five squares are adjacent. For these purposes, consider stairs to be at the lower elevation. And therefore, from this position, this is the only adjacent square. The next action is attack, and this costs either one or two action points.

You may attack with your currently equipped weapon, and first choose a valid target within that weapon's range and line of sight. To determine range, count the shortest path through orthogonal or diagonal steps between the attacker and the target, including the target's square, but not the attacker's.

If the count of squares is equal or less than the weapon's range, then the target is within range. Range is determined the same way for minis at different elevations. However, the weapon used must have a range of at least three to be valid at different heights. Two or less is not enough. For line of sight, draw the same center-to-center line.

If that line crosses over any obstacle squares, remember, that's anything with a yellow or red border, or anything containing an enemy mini, then line of sight is blocked. If the line touches the corners of two obstacle squares or more, then line of sight is also blocked. All other cases have line of sight.

So purple has line of sight to this kappa because orange is an ally and does not block line of sight. But line of sight to this kappa is blocked by the kappa in front. Line of sight to this kappa is blocked by the line touching two of the yellow-bordered obstacles. Purple does have line of sight to this kappa.

Again, the ally does not block line of sight. While line of sight to this fifth kappa is blocked by touching the corners of these two. When looking at it in reverse, this kappa's line of sight to purple is blocked by orange because orange is not the kappa's ally. But this kappa's line of sight is not blocked.

Both of these lines of sight are blocked by orange. And this one is blocked by the two yellow obstacles. If attacker and target are at different elevations, obstacles and enemies do not block line of sight. Impassable terrain still will. Having chosen your target, now choose whether you're going to do a fast attack or a strong attack.

A fast attack costs only one action point. A strong attack costs two, but lets you roll more dice. Having made a choice, gather and roll the relevant dice. Add up the values you've rolled. Here, it's three. Add your power attribute. So here we add up to four. Many weapons have a yin-yang effect, and this occurs if you roll both a black and white symbol on the dice.

For this roll, it would not be active, but had I rolled this on the purple die, I would activate my yin-yang effect, which for the fast attack is plus two hits. That would give this attack a total of six. Add one hit if you're at a higher elevation than the target. Apply any other applicable upgrades or effects you may have.

We've got none here, so my total hits was seven. From your hits, deduct two values, the enemy's defense and the enemy's armor. What remains is the damage. So here, 7 - 2 - 0 is five damage dealt to the appropriate enemy. If wounds exceeds that enemy's health, it is defeated, removed from the board, and drops a head token.

Picking up a head is a free action if you're on or adjacent to the head space. Enemies have separate defense and armor values because it is possible to damage an enemy's armor, thus making them easier to defeat. Armor cannot go below zero, and the enemy's defense can never be affected. Some attacks also apply negative conditions to the targets.

These are bleeding. When a bleeding mini begins its activation, it suffers one wound. Blinded. After a blinded mini attacks, it rolls the D6, and if the value is between one and three, the attack misses, applying no hits or conditions. There is downed. A downed mini acts as if it has one fewer armor, and will be slower on its next turn.

For the player characters, this means having one fewer action point. And for the enemies, it means they're not allowed to move or use special skills on their cards. Finally, there's poisoned, which results in minus one on all rolls. You can have multiple poison or bleeding tokens, and their effects will be cumulative.

If you have a blessed token, you can discard it to discard a negative condition. As part of any attack, you may choose to roll the black focus die in addition to the dice on the weapon. This gives you a higher chance of doing more damage, but comes with an increased chance of missing altogether. If focus rolls the white symbol, and there are three of them on the die, then after you've applied wounds, also do one point of armor damage.

If on the other hand, focus rolls the green symbol, then ignore all armor and defense when calculating wounds before again reducing armor by one. However, if you roll blank, your entire attack misses. You deal no wounds and no negative conditions. And if you roll red, not only do you miss, but the enemy now gets to counterattack.

Among that enemy's attacks, choose the one which has the highest range, and resolve it without any of its bonus skills, as long as you are within that range and line of sight. We'll talk more about how to read these enemy cards a little bit later. For one action point, you may interact with an adjacent token or an adjacent door, and in the case of the latter, that permanently flips the door to open.

In both cases, the act book will tell you how to respond. For one action point, you can interact with your own weapons, swapping the equipped one for the unequipped one. For one action point, you may use a relevant item. And for one action point, you may share any number of coins, heads, items, or equipment with an adjacent teammate.

Throughout the phase, you'll be managing your key dice, and there are many different free and unfree actions associated with managing them. You will have as many dice as your level, and as a free action, you can insert a die into one of your skills as long as the skill either has no prerequisite value or the die has a value which meets or exceeds the skill's requirement.

Right now, with only one die exceeding a four, I'm only able to fill one of these two skills. A skill with a key die in it is available, and there are three different types. Those showing this ninja star are passive skills which are always in effect. Those showing the lightning bolt are called technique skills, and it costs you one action point to use such a skill.

The ones with swords are called combat skills, and they will apply passively to any attack which you're taking. At the end of each round, all key dice are reduced in value by one. Any die reduced to zero as a result of this is moved to your exhausted pile. As this happens, you may end up in a situation where the key die is lower than the requirement for a skill.

When this happens, that die simply fills up that skill, making it impossible to put another die in there. To deal with this or otherwise to get flexibility, you can take the free action to withdraw a key die, taking it out of the skill and moving it to your exhausted pile up to as many times per turn as your spirit attribute.

Therefore, if you have no spirit, you won't be able to do this, but as you build spirit, you'll have more flexibility on the dice. If at any point all of your key dice are in your exhausted pile, then at that stage you may reroll them back into your supply. Other than that, you may, as an action for two action points, reroll key dice, taking any number of your dice from your supply, exhausted pile, or the slots in your skills and reroll them to your supply.

As you level up your Kami tracker, you may unlock two more skills. The skill on level three works the same way as the skills in your player board. That is, they could be combat or they could be technique, and they'd apply to action points accordingly. Working quite differently to that is your top Kami skill.

If it's unlocked and your health is less than half of your maximum health for your current level, and if no other players currently have this skill active, then as a free action, you may enact Kami mode. Think of this as a sacrificial beast mode. There'll be a special and strong power which will apply to your character for the rest of this round and the entirety of the next round, but at the end of that next round, your character is defeated as if it were out of health.

Each enemy card looks something like this. Near the top of the text, there'll be a list of skills and attacks available to that enemy. You'll have the basic enemy stats, and then a series of choices for how you work out what that enemy does on its activation. In the case of a minion, roll the D6 and check the current oracle card to determine whether you'll be resolving the normal or aggressive skills.

Consult the list for the number that you've rolled, and then attempt to resolve each row until you find one row which you can fully resolve. For example, here, the enemy would attempt to do the peck attack against an adjacent character with plus one hit. If there are no adjacent characters, it will attempt to move until it is adjacent to a character and then do the peck attack.

And if it's not possible to get adjacent to a character, then it will simply move towards an enemy. Servants are resolved similarly, but they generally have more and stronger attacks. You won't need to consult the oracle cards, simply roll the D6 and resolve that section. Again, attempt each line one at a time until you find one line which can be fully resolved, and that's the line you'll use.

When facing a chosen, draw its top AI card, and again, attempt to resolve each step from top to bottom until you find one step which you can resolve. Reshuffle the chosen's AI deck once it's empty. Each enemy skill shows a condition and a priority. Any character who meets the condition is a valid target.

So again, in this case, it's any character adjacent to the enemy. If multiple characters meet the condition, then you'll refer to the priority to determine which character is the target. For example, here, it's whoever has the most health or whoever has the most armor. This will be least health or least armor.

If valid targets are tied for priority, then the players get to choose which one will be the target. Enemy rules for movement and attack are more or less the same as they are for characters. Movement rules for difficult terrains and obstacles are the same, and you'll always choose the shortest valid movement which meets the condition, with ties going to the player's choice.

As a default, all enemy attacks use the dice indicated down here in the bottom left of the card. If any extra dice are used, they'll be listed in the specifics for that card or action. Calculate hits as you would for a player attack, including a benefit for being at height, and apply any modifiers as shown.

The player will suffer wounds equal to hits dealt minus current armor. If the attack says the enemy adds the focus die, then that too is resolved exactly as it would be for the player. The white symbol means you lose one armor after taking damage. Green means you'll take damage ignoring armor before losing armor.

Blank means the enemy misses. And red means you can counterattack using your weapon's fast attack dice and none of the added bonuses or skills which come with your attacks. In some scenarios, you'll also come across non-player characters with resistance tokens. Here, you've got civilians with one or two tokens.

In any such cases, an enemy will always prioritize a resister with any resistance tokens that meets its condition, ignoring whatever priority is shown on the enemy card. When an enemy attacks a non-player character with resistance, you don't roll any dice, you simply remove one resistance token. An exploration may take place over several different zone tiles, and the act book will always tell you when you've found a new tile.

There are two different ways this can happen. If the act book's image of the new tile does not show a starting location for the characters and shows part of the previous tile, this is called exploring. Set up the new zone adjacent to the old one. Lay out the depicted pieces. In the initiative queue, gather up any minis who are yet to activate, add any new mini cards into that pile, shuffle it up, and then redeal the rest of the initiative row.

Unlike at the start of the round, you don't apply any skills which relate to initiative. Add the new zone's exploration events to our memory, placing them next to those for the zones already still on the board. Then the character who explored the new tile continues its activation if it had any action points remaining.

In subsequent rounds, when resolving events, you'll always resolve an event for each zone tile which still has any minis in it. Therefore, right now, you'd resolve both events, but at this point, you would no longer resolve the first zone's event. If, on the other hand, you go to a new zone within an exploration phase, and the new tile has a new set of starting locations, this is called travel.

When you travel, the current round ends immediately and you clear off the previous tile and all previous events. You can effectively treat this as if you're setting up a whole new exploration phase. A character which runs out of health or completes two rounds in Kami mode is defeated and its mini is removed from the board.

The phase ends immediately in defeat if all characters are defeated or if malice reaches six or if you ever read a phase fail condition. For a phase to end in success, you must reach one of these paragraphs. Regardless of how a phase ends, any character still in Kami mode is defeated upon the phase ending.

And if this does result in your last character being defeated, then that fail condition trumps the success condition. As in the adventure phase, defeated characters now resurrect to full health and must perform a spirit test against their level to determine whether or not they lose a point of attribute.

Then if you fail the phase, all characters heal back up to their maximum health, but you leave everything else the same and must try to repeat the phase. If you succeed, read the matching paragraph. Restore all characters to full health and remove key dice and then proceed to the next chapter. At various points through the act book, you'll be instructed to level up your characters.

This occurs after any resurrection rolls and before characters heal and proceed to the next chapter. To do this, take your next numbered skill, flip it over to the side of your choosing. This will be a permanent choice and add it to your skill row. Find the blacksmith cards which match your class and new level and add them to your blacksmith deck.

You'll move up to your next new maximum health and you gain one new attribute point, which you can spend on a different attribute or increasing the same one. You can finish your game session after any successful or unsuccessful phase and use these player trays to save your game. This includes sections for your active equipment and items, one for your blacksmith deck, one for your kami and other large-sized cards, a place for your tokens, with your player board finally going on top.

The lid is such that pieces should remain in place, but you may also want to record your progress in case pieces get dislodged. You should then be able to unpack this tray to begin any future session. And that's how to play Harakiri Blades of Honor. Thanks so much for watching. Your like and comments are much appreciated.

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