Evocabulary

In Evocabulary you will take the role of a wizard managing a team of familiars. Your goal is to experiment with and refine your craft to have the most spells published in the most reputable and prestigious journal around, Evocabulary.

Players will use their letter cards to create and manipulate spells that will activate a team of familiars based on the new length of the spell. Eventually, players will be able to publish a spell in order to gain the points printed on each of the letter cards in the spell and compete for a set of achievements.

Setup

General setup

1. Select the achievement cards relevant for the number of players in the game. Separate them into distinct piles based on their requirement and sort them into decreasing point values. The requirement types are 5 letter spell, 6 letter spell, 7 letter spell, 8 letter spell, 2 syllable spell and 3 syllable spell.
2. Shuffle the familiar deck and deal out 3 face up to create the familiar market. Place the remaining familiar cards face down next to the market to form the familiar deck.
3. Separate the wild letters from the rest of the letter cards.
4. Shuffle the normal letter cards and place them face down in the middle of the table where all players can reach them.
5. Place the wild cards face up in a pile next to the normal letter deck.
6. Leave space next to the deck for the discard pile.

Player setup

1. Each player takes one of each team leader (these are double-sided numbered from 3 to 6+). They should be placed in a line in front of the player in ascending numerical order.
2. Each player takes 7 letter cards to form their hand.

Game play

Starting with the player who last published an article and continuing clockwise around the table, each player will take an action until the letter deck has run out and no further spell can be published and no letters can be burned.

On a player's turn they can take 1 of 3 actions.

• Start a new spell.
• Modify a spell.
• Discard any number of letters then draw back to 7.

Each action is described in more detail below.

If at any point during a player's turn they have no letter cards in their hand they immediately draw 7 new letters before continuing with their turn.

Starting a new spell

To start a new spell you must play letters from your hand to make a word of 3 or more letters. Place the spell above the appropriate team leader according to spell length.

Only one spell can be next to each team at a given time.

After playing the spell, perform the action on each familiar in the team in any order. The various familiar actions are described in full below.

All familiar actions are optional.

Modifying a spell

To modify a spell you must add and/or remove letters from the spell. Then, if necessary, the spell is moved to the team that matches the new length and the actions of the familiar familiars in this team are performed (even if the spell hasn't changed in length). The various familiar actions are described in full below.

Letters in the spell may be rearranged and the player may select new letters for any wild letters in the spell.

This can create the same spell again as long as at least one new letter replaces an old one.

Familiar Actions

Draw a letter card ( ): Draw a letter from the top of the face down letters deck.

Draw a wild letter ( ): Take a wild letter from the wild card stack into your hand.

Burn ( ): Discard one of the letter cards in your hand and gain it's points value.

Publish ( ): Publish one of your spells. To do this, add the points printed on each letter card in the spell (other than locked letters) to your total and discard each letter card in the spell (other than locked letters).

If any of the achievement cards match the published spell, which includes no more than 1 wild letter, you may take one and immediately score it. If you meet the criteria on multiple achievement cards you may only select one of them to score. There are 2 types of achievement:

Achievements like this gain a set number of points when claimed. In this example 5 points are gained when publishing a 5 letter spell.

Achievements like this multiply the points gained by one of the letters in your published spell. In this example, one of the letters in the spell is worth double points when a 2 syllable spell is published.

Lock ( ): When you gain this familiar, tuck a letter card from your hand under it. This letter may be used when creating/modifying a spell for the team. When publishing a spell all locked letter provide no points and are not discarded.

In this example, the player can play an "S" and "T" using the "A" locked in the 3 team to create the spell "SAT". They would then get to draw 2 letters and a wild letter using the team leader and other familiar cards in the team.

Hire a familiar ( ): Take a familiar from the market and add it to any team, familiars are double-sided and may be added to your team either side up (one side has a special ability the other is draw a card). Each team can have a maximum number of familiars equal to the number on the team leader card (in addition to the leader).

Below, the player can take any of the 3 market cards and add it to the 4, 5 or 6+ teams. They cannot add it to the 3 team as the team already contains 3 familiars.

Teamwork ( ): Take the action of another familiar from any team. This cannot activate team leaders.

Pickup ( ): Take any of your spells back into hand.

Ending the game

The game ends when the deck of letter cards is empty and no player can burn a letter or publish a spell. If a player should draw and letter cards once the deck is empty they do not draw any cards instead.

Once this condition is met, the player with the most points is declared the winner. In the case of a tie, the player who has claimed the most achievements is the winner. If there is still a tie, all tied players share the victory.