Time passes, and human civilisation is slowly heading towards destruction. Some of the most significant forces in the world are religions, and it is their duty to do what they do best: recruit Earth’s entire population before the inevitable end!
In Religion, the Board Game, you play as one of five Religions competing to amass the most Worshippers before the doomsday clock runs out.
Inside the box, you’ll find:
A circular World Board with spaces for card stacks, the general population pool and other tokens. The Doomsday Track is displayed along its circumference.
Five player board segments to be placed around the central hub. These track numbers of Believers, Followers, and Worshippers, as well as current values of Charisma (rate of converting Followers to Worshippers), Stability (susceptibility to unforeseen Events) and Stealth (ability of Believers to spread into other Religions’ domains). Each board segment is illustrated with an image of the Religion’s god(s) and a list of skills and reminders of relevant Action modifiers.
Sixteen dice with varying numbers of sides and distribution of values, to be used as directed by specific Actions.
Three hundred Population Tokens, representing the people of the world.
Five each of Blight, Conflict, Miracle and Misconduct Tokens (used as designated by relevant Action cards).
Seventy-three Event cards.
Five End time cards.
One hundred and eleven Action cards.
One Time Marker.
This rules booklet.
Taking on the role of a Religion, you start off with a small number of ^^ Worshippers ^^ as well as some Believers and Followers. Your goal is to convert Followers to Worshippers, recruiting replacement Followers using your Believers. The relationship between Believers and Followers is complex: some Believers go on to become Followers, while others inveigle themselves into other Religions to steal their Followers—sometimes at the cost of their own lives.
Strategy Tip! Cleverly deployed Missionaries can reap huge benefits, but if you send too many into one region, you might suffer a catastrophic backlash.
At the start of each turn, an Event will occur at random, such as Plague of Insects or Tsunami & Earthquake. This affects all players to a greater or lesser degree, but can be mitigated or deflected onto other Religions by playing an appropriate Action card. Note that not all Events are negative—occasionally a beneficent event occurs, such as the Miracle of Healing, but more common are Events which are positive for some Religions and negative for others.
The game ends in one of two ways: first, one Religion takes over the entire world, by acquiring Followers and Worshippers from opponents—a player will be knocked out of the game if they lose all their Followers and Worshippers. Second, the doomsday clock runs out and the world ends; the winner is the player whose Religion has most Worshippers (Followers and Believers do not contribute to the final score, but see the special case of Atheism later).
Strategy Tip! The world has a finite maximum population. Players can accelerate the end of the world by causing there to be a demand for more Followers and Worshippers than the world can sustain (i.e., by emptying the general population pool); trailing players are advised to keep an eye on the leader and take steps to decimate the world’s population to avoid a premature apocalypse.
The five Religions contained within the base game are:
Strategy Tip! Although you can omit any Religion if there are fewer than five players, it is recommended to remove Aliens and Atheists by preference, to maximise friction between players. It’s not advisable to play with fewer than three, or the Religions will self-destruct too quickly.
Strategy Tip! For a shorter game, start with only two hundred Population Tokens instead of three hundred; for longer games, add more tokens, using whatever comes to hand. Note that the New Religion: This Time We Mean It expansion pack includes extra tokens, as well as two more Religions, Narcissism and Ur, along with a new game mechanism, Resurrection.
For ease of explanation, assume play is in the order the Religions were listed earlier.
At the start of the round, Atheism rolls the Charisma die to determine their Charisma for the round. They roll a value of 10%.
The Schism Event card is revealed. This incites conflict within a Religion, causing Followers and Worshippers to be lost. Modern Monotheism is particularly prone to this and must roll the high-value white twenty-sided die to determine how many to lose as well as lowering the Charisma value by the number of percentage points indicated by rolling the Charisma die.
After this, the next player, Ancient Polytheism, rolls the low-value grey six-sided die for losses, but this player happens to have the Ask for Tolerance Action card and chooses to play this, which halves the number rolled on the die and also avoids any loss in Charisma.
Next, Technology also uses the high-value white die, but before the player can roll, Modern Monotheism plays the Man Should Not Meddle Action card, which means that lost Followers and Worshippers go to Modern Monotheism instead of back to the general population pool.
Atheism is not affected by Schism except to increase the Stealth level (unless it is already at maximum).
And finally, Aliens is also not affected by Schism, but the Event permits them to optionally reroll for Charisma, which they choose to do since their current value is low.
The population pool is not empty, and all players still have Followers and Worshippers, so the game end is not triggered.
The Time Marker is moved along the Doomsday Track.
Now, all players convert Followers to Worshippers, and begin the next round.
We hope this has given you a flavour for gameplay in Religion: The Board Game.
The Sainthood Event doubles a Religion’s Followers and Believers, except for Atheism, which loses both, unless the Contra-Evidence Action is played, which cancels all players’ gains and losses.
Both Natural Disaster and Human Disaster will lead to conflict between Religions, but take care to note which Religions attack which others as indicated on the Event card; Non-specific Disaster lets each player choose whom they want to attack. In all cases, the results of the conflict are determined as indicated on the Religion player board segments, not the Event cards.
The Missionary Event allows each Religion to roll the die indicated on their player board to either convert a number of one other Religion’s Followers into Believers of their own Religion or to convert some of their Followers into Believers to be spread into all other Religions. Both options can be countered by playing the Strength of Faith Action card.
In this mode of play, one player will be randomly and secretly designated as an End time Cult at the start of the game, and will do their best to end the world before the end of the fifth round. If they can do this, they win the game regardless of how many Worshippers any player has. On the other hand, if they fail to achieve this, they must lose half their Followers and Worshippers due to False Prophecy.
To play this variant of the game, deal the End time cards (only one of which has ‘end time’ printed on it) to each player, who will look at them in secret. At the end of the fifth round or the end of the world, whichever comes first, all players reveal their End time cards and take the action indicated above.
Strategy Tip! — Note that False Prophecy also exists as an Action card; when using the End Times mechanism, you may wish to remove this card from play to avoid confusion, but it’s not essential.
For the benefit of players familiar with the first edition of the game, here are the major changes:
Intelligence has been removed as a Religion attribute—its definition and value proved to be too contentious among players.
The Second Coming sub-game has also been removed for similar reasons. Instead, a Messiah Event card had been added, along with False Prophecy and Scepticism Action cards.
To reflect changes in the real world, the strength of the Antivax, Intelligent Design, and Conspiracy Theory events has been increased, while Scientific Evidence and Voice of Reason are weakened.
L.N. Hunter’s comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside works in anthologies such as Best of British Science Fiction 2022 and Ghostly, as well as several issues of Short Édition’s Short Circuit and the Horrifying Tales of Wonder podcast. There have also been papers in the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, which are probably somewhat less relevant and definitely less entertaining. When not writing, L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
https://www.houseblackwood.net/podcast/episode-2-the-case-of-the-saintsville-cat/
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