MageStone — Complete Rules

MageStone is played by 2 or 4 players (there is no 3-player game) on a 16×16 board with cut corners. Each player commands 1 Mage, 1 Priest and 6 Warriors, arrayed along their home edge as Warrior · Warrior · Warrior · Priest · Mage · Warrior · Warrior · Warrior. The central 8×8 holds the MageStones (4 per player: 8 for two players, 16 for four); the centre 2×2 is the Nexus.

Taking your turn

Players take it in turns — you, then your opponent, then you — and nobody ever takes two goes in a row.

1. Six squares, three units. On your go you have 6 squares of movement to spend, across at most 3 units. One unit can march all six, or three units can take two each — however you divide it.
2. Your go is one continuous turn. Move a unit and resolve its action, then the next, then the next. Play passes only when you end your go.
3. Whatever you do not use is lost. Squares never carry over to your next go, so end it with four squares in hand and those four are gone. Every go begins on a full six squares and three fresh units, however the last one went.
4. A unit goes once per turn — it moves, then acts, or simply acts where it stands. Acting costs no squares, but it still uses one of your three units: three Warriors ganging up on one enemy is your whole go's worth of units, even though the attack itself costs no movement.
5. Landing on something picks it up. A Mage that stops on MageStones collects them, and a Priest that stops on a Gravestone raises the Warrior and steps back one square to make room for it. Both happen automatically, and both count as that unit's action for the turn — so it cannot also attack.
6. Dice are for combat only — attacks, defence rolls and a Mage's power die. Movement involves no luck.

Movement is an orthogonal route that may bend through empty squares; units block, stones and gravestones do not. Every square walked comes off your six. A unit's action comes after its move — or instead of it — and is one of: attack, collect MageStones, activate MageStones, resurrect, or begin the ritual.

Combat

Warriors and Mages attack an enemy on an orthogonally adjacent square; Priests never attack — though they kill what attacks them. One Warrior rolls 1d6; two or three Warriors adjacent to the same target coordinate for 2d6 or 3d6 summed. The Mage rolls its power die — d6 with 0–1 activated MageStones, d12 with 2–3, d20 with 4+.

The defender rolls 1d6 (a defending Mage rolls its own power die). Higher total wins, and a tie is re-rolled until the result is decisive — neither side has any advantage, so an even fight is exactly 50:50. If the attacker wins, the target is defeated; if the defender wins, one attacker falls. That holds for a defending Priest too: it kills its attacker like any other defender, even though it can never attack of its own accord. A defender never moves off its square.

Mage sorcery

Activated MageStones can be spent as spells. A spent stone is never destroyed and never deactivated — it leaves the Mage, lands back on the board still Activated, and can be claimed by any Mage, including an opponent's.

• Bolt (1 Activated stone) — a ranged attack on any enemy within as many orthogonal steps as you have squares left this go. The flight spends those squares — a target three squares away costs three — and casting it is the Mage's action. Only a Mage can block it. Any other unit gets no defence roll and is defeated immediately. A targeted Mage rolls its power die against yours (ties are re-rolled): if it wins, the Bolt is blocked — it does not bounce back, so your Mage is unharmed — and if it loses, it is defeated as normal. Either way the spent stone lands on the target's square, still Activated, so a Mage that blocks is standing on it and can pick it up on its turn.
• Nova (4 Activated stones) — an area attack that nothing can block, not even a Mage. Every enemy unit in the 8 squares surrounding the Mage is defeated with no defence roll; friendly units are unharmed. The four spent stones are placed on the four diagonal squares around the Mage, all still Activated. Nova spends no squares — only the Mage's action and the four stones.

Defeat, gravestones and respawns

• A fallen Warrior leaves a gravestone — only while the shared bank still holds one, never on the Nexus, and never stacked on another gravestone. The bank is finite and never replenished: it starts at 4 per player (8 in a 2-player game, 16 in a 4-player game), a Warrior's death spends one, and a resurrection removes that gravestone from the game rather than returning it. Once the bank empties, Warrior losses are permanent.
• A fallen Mage drops its Unactivated stones plus exactly one Activated stone where it fell, keeps the rest, and respawns at its base. The dropped stone stays Activated. A fallen Priest respawns at its base.
• If an enemy occupies your base, you are under siege: respawns wait until the base is clear. A player whose last units are locked out is eliminated.

MageStones

The Mage collects a stone by ending its move on it, and may activate carried stones only while standing on its own base. Activated stones power the Mage's combat die (d6 with 0–1, d12 with 2–3, d20 with 4–5) and count toward victory; Unactivated stones do neither.

Activation is permanent. Once a MageStone has ever been Activated it can never become Unactivated again — not when it is dropped, not when its Mage is killed, not when it is spent on a spell, and not when an enemy takes it. A Mage that picks up an already-Activated stone counts it immediately and does not need to carry it home. More of the board's stones therefore become instantly useful as a game goes on.

The Priest

A Priest that lands on a gravestone resurrects a Warrior there automatically (up to 6 alive), then steps back one square the way it came so the Warrior can stand on the gravestone square; that gravestone then leaves the game for good. It costs no extra action and no extra squares, but it is that Priest's action for the turn. Only one gravestone may be raised per turn. A Priest that wins its defence roll kills its attacker and does not move.

The Rite of the Nexus

The Nexus is the central 2×2. A Priest standing on it may declare the Rite, which costs that Priest's action. To begin it, and to keep it, all four Nexus squares must be free of enemy units; friendly units may stand on the other three, and screening them is the usual way to hold one. While a Rite is running the Nexus glows in that player's colour.

The Rite is won once play has come back round to the player who began it — twice in a two-player game, once with four players. So a lone opponent gets two full goes to reach the Nexus or kill the Priest, while in a four-player game each of the three rivals gets one. (The counts differ because one lap of a four-player table already hands out three enemy goes.) A single enemy stepping onto any Nexus square is enough, and it also breaks if the Priest is killed or leaves the Nexus.

Victory

1. MageStone — your Mage stands on your own base holding 6 Activated MageStones. Instant win. Picking up a sixth Activated stone away from home does not win on its own — the Mage still has to reach its base.
2. Ritual — your Priest still holds a clear Nexus when play has come back round to you after declaring the Rite — twice in a two-player game, once with four.
3. Conquest — every rival is eliminated.

Stalemate

One position is a declared draw. If every remaining player has been reduced to Warriors that are all standing on an enemy base, while their own base is held and their Mage and Priest are stuck in the respawn queue, nobody can ever win — there is no Mage on the board for a MageStone victory, no Priest for a Rite, and marching your besieger off to go hunting just hands that opponent their army back behind you. The game ends as a draw rather than running for ever. The classic shape is two players with one Warrior each, parked in the other's base.

Prefer to see it in motion? Read the quick guide or play the guided tutorial free in your browser.