Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
More strategic control
How it plays
How does it play?
Draft a leader and hand, gather colored Etherstones from dice, summon an evolving tableau, and attack the threats consuming the strange world of Nobura.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Closed Drafting
Choose from hidden cards or items before passing or revealing the remainder.
Variable Player Powers
Each player has different abilities, restrictions, or strategic advantages.
Deck / Bag Building
Add new pieces during play to improve the cards, tokens, or dice drawn later.
Hand Management
Time and sequence a limited hand of cards to preserve future options.
Open Drafting
Select cards or items from a shared face-up display.
Read the full game description
Etherstone is a competitive card-and-dice strategy game set on the threatened planet Nobura. Each player begins with an asymmetric faction leader and a drafted hand, then takes one action per turn: draft a die, summon a card, attack, rest, or enter a costly Void Pact. Colored Etherstones pay for followers and rituals, while dice values and colors trigger abilities already built into a player’s tableau. Leaders and followers can confront shared threat cards for rewards and victory points, but attacks can drain precious life. The game ends when a hand, the threat deck, or the common victory-point supply is exhausted, so players can accelerate different clocks depending on their engine. Premade opening hands ease the first game; later drafts expose a large combination space built from leaders, card types, triggered powers, and multiple scoring routes.
