Aether Captains: The Search

The Search is a game of evade and capture for two players taking place in the Aether Captains world of Arkady. One player, the criminal, must visit three marked map cards committing a heinous crime at each location. The other player takes on the role of the Watch & Ward, the court police force of Val Justinia, and must surround the criminal with their police officers and barricades.

Needed to Play: The game deck consisting of 20 map cards, 17 blue game cards for the police and 17 gray for the criminal. 1 criminal pawn and 3 crime scene markers (suggested color: black), 4 police pawns and 3 barricade markers (suggested color: blue), and 2 closed sewer markers (suggested color: yellow).

Play: A player’s turn consists of 3 possible actions. Players may do any one action or all of them during their turn, and may do the first two actions in any order. The third action, drawing cards, is always done last:

• Move a pawn one card orthogonally in distance (the police player will move only 1 pawn on a turn). tThe criminal player cannot move onto any map card occupied by a police pawn or on to any map card with a barricade marker on it.

• Play a card, discarding it beside the player’s draw deck. When the draw deck is exhausted, shuffle the discard deck and create a new draw deck.

• Draw back to 3 cards in your hand at the end of a turn.

Win: The criminal wins by either placing a marker at each of the three crime scenes or by wounding all 4 police officers.

The police win by surrounding the criminal on all orthogonal sides with police pawns, barricades or the edges of the 5x4 map. (example if the criminal pawn is on one corner of the map the police can surround the criminal with pawns, or barricades, on the 2 adjacent orthogonal cards).