After an 8 year journey, you arrive on the surface of Enceladus, the 6th largest moon of Saturn. As you step out of your ship, you find a series of mysterious otherworldly runes carved into the icy surface of Enceladus.

A Brand New, Classic-Style Card Game

Draft matching sets of ancient runes, newly discovered on the surface of Saturn's moon, Enceladus, in this matchmaking card game for 2-3 players!

How to Play Runes of Enceladus

Objective

The goal of Runes of Enceladus is to draft matching pairs of mysterious runes. But don't be too greedy, because any runes you fail to match will count against you in the end!

Setup

Determine who will play first by revealing a random card from the deck for each player. The player with the highest value in the center of their card goes first.

Shuffle the deck. Deal the top three cards of the deck face down into three separate piles next to the deck. (During the game, players will discard cards into a separate pile on the opposite side of the deck.) Then, each player draws three cards.

Gameplay

A hand of Runes of Enceladus is played by taking turns in clockwise order. Each player’s turn is made up of two short phases: Drafting and Matching.

Drafting Phase

Reveal the top card of the deck, and place it face up on the first pile. (Do not look at any other cards in the pile.) Note the value of the revealed card: I, II or III.

Then, either draft the entire pile by discarding a number of cards from hand equal to the revealed value; or turn the card face down. When a pile is drafted, replace it by dealing a new card face down from the top of the deck. (Do not look at it.)

If the first pile is not drafted, repeat this process with the second pile. If the second pile is not drafted, repeat this process once again with the third pile. If no piles are drafted, draw the top card of the deck. (Whenever the deck runs out of cards, reshuffle the discard pile. If both deck and discard piles run out, reshuffle all piles, and deal three new single-card draft piles.)

Once a pile has been drafted, or a card has been drawn from the deck, move on to the Matching Phase.

Matching Phase

If at least two cards in hand share a rune, a pair (or full set of three) must be played. Place these cards on the table face up with their matching runes visible. Additional pairs beyond the first may be played, but are not mandatory.

If there are no cards in hand after matching, draw a card from the deck (unless it’s the final turn).

Scoring

Once any player has made five matches, remaining players take one final turn.

To calculate each player’s score, add together the value of all matching pairs (or sets of three), then subtract the value of any unmatched cards remaining in hand. Full sets of three are worth double, for an automatic twelve points!

The player with the most points wins the hand. The player with the fewest points goes first for the next hand. A full match of Runes of Enceladus is played best two out of three.

Three Player Variant

To play a three player match of Runes of Enceladus, follow the standard rules as written above, with the following modifications:

• The final turn begins once any player has made three matches, rather than five.
• The winner of a three player match is the first to win three hands.

Photo Credit: Some images on this page provided by the blog All The Points (Nikki Gibson-Murphy & Corey Murphy)