New Avernus

New Avernus is an apocalyptic city-building game. This competitive game pits you and up to three friends in a race to build the greatest city that just might last the oncoming apocalypse as the Meteor strikes and reduces your ambition to rubble. The meteor can strike at any point from turn 7 to 10, so plan accordingly and take big risks as time runs out. Once the smoke clears, and your cities are surrounded by their ruin, the player with the most points still standing wins!

The game also has a single player mode where you vie against your own leaderboard, or a more indepth single player experience when paired with the Glass and Stone Oracle deck.

Pledge in the first 24 hours (Oct 4th 8AM MST to Oct 5th 8AM MST) and get a free copy of the Oracle with your purchase of the game!

New Avernus sees 1 to 4 players claim a faction of the Koukyla, the stone people who live in this world and construct their cities in the name of a capricious god who sends ruin and doom to destroy them over and over again. The god Xerxes once believed this world would be the place to build the perfect city, one that would last any apocalypse. Now, so many years later, he has grown cold. Now, he only destroys. Can you build a city worthy of his adoration, and warm his icy heart?

Taking turns, you and the other players will explore ruins of old destroyed cities, gather resources, and then plot and build your city, beautifying and bolstering it to make it more worthy of Xerxes himself. But each turn, the Occurrence deck ticks down, throwing you resources or woes in equal measure, until the Meteor card is revealed and the game ends as you watch all your hard work be destroyed.

The player with the most points remaining in standing structures after the meteor hits wins.

The game is for 1-4 players, and can take anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes, depending on the number of players. Expect it to take longer your first play through as you learn the rules. The game is intermediate in complexity, and can be learned quickly during play. 

Play the game right now with the free mod for Tabletop Simulator! Lookup "New Avernus" in the Steam Workshop and download the original look of the game, or watch a TTS playthrough with the old aesthetic of the game here.

Game Contents:

You can watch the tutorial for general gameplay in the video above, or see a step by step of more indepth setup and explanation of the rules below in text and gifs!

New Avernus can be played by 1-4 people, and no matter how many players you have at the table, play always begins the same way: Choose your faction.

Will you be the gray Seen, and gather resources from the Tithe Pots as you work towards your Glass Staircase?
Will you be the purple Transporters, and explore your ruins faster and cheaper, before setting up your Stations?
Will you be the orange Architects, fortifying your buildings as you build them, and erecting your Great Archive?
or Will you be the green Ag Foundation, and start with an extra worker, working towards building your Grand Cultural Center?

Each faction has their own unique buildings, abilities, and starting resources, so try each over your first four games to experience all the options they offer.

Then, you set up the center of the table. First, the Meteor Tracker goes in the middle of the table and gets the Red Stone placed on 0.

Second, you shuffle the Occurrence Pink and Red decks, first pulling the Meteor card out of the Red deck. Deal out 6 Pink cards, and 3 Red cards, face down. Shuffle the Meteor card into the Red pile, then place the Pink pile on top.

Third, you place out the Home, Quarry, and Furnace tile decks, face up. These are open use structures that any player can build from, and should be reachable by all players.

Finally, place the two wooden bowls, the Stone and Glass Tithe Pots, on either side of the center of the table. Players will often put resources in these and take them from them, so make sure they can be reached by everyone.

Setting up your boards is as easy as placing matching tiles on the empty spaces. Shuffle the structure tiles in their groups, Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. Then deal them out to players to begin setting up their boards.
Level 1 structures, denoted with a 1 on the back in sky blue, are placed in the spaces with the matching color border The same is done for purple-blue Level 2 structure tiles, and then yellow Level 3 structure tiles. When they are dealt face down and placed like this, these tiles are called Ruins.

Then gather your starting resources and claim your foundation's unique structure tiles and set them beside your board.

On your turn, especially on your first turn, you will use your workers to explore spaces. Exploring a Ruin space with a level 1 structure tile costs 1 worker. A level 2 structure tile costs 2 workers to explore, and a level 3 costs 3 workers. You must start in the center of your board on your first exploration, but after that you can branch out in any direction adjacent to spaces you've explored.

When you explore a ruin, you keep the faceup Structure Tile as a blue print beside your board to potentially build later, and you gain Exploration resources from flipping it over.

The other most common action during a turn will be building a structure. You can build a structure that's in your reserves from having discovered it in the ruins, a structure from your faction which you start with, or one of the basic 3 structures all players have access to (Home, Quarry, or Furnace.) Building a structure costs resources with black Stone and white Glass, as well as using a worker.

Whenever you build a structure, you pay into the tithe pots 1 of each resource you spent with the resources you used to pay the structure's cost. In this example, Shopping Center costs 3 stone and 1 glass, so 2 stone goes into the general bank of resources, but 1 of each goes into the little wooden tithe pots.

On your turn you can also use your workers to place glass or stone on your structures to beautify or fortify them, increasing their value or helping them survive a single meteor hit, gather resources on a one-for-one basis, or collect a tithe pot with three workers, potentially getting a much better deal than simply gathering.

When each player has taken a turn, the round is over. The player who acted first this round hands the Starting Player counter over to the player on their left, and then they reveal the top of the Occurrence deck and read it out loud. These cards often have beneficial outcomes for players, but they always increase the Meteor Strength. Perform the effects of the card, then move the tracker on the Meteor Tracker up by 1.

As a new round begins, players gain resources from all structures they have in play that Produce, gaining Stone and Glass more regularly from their production. They also remove their workers from the board, refreshing their actions for the turn ahead.

Play continues like this over several rounds until the Meteor card is revealed from the occurrence deck, somewhere between turn 7 and 10. At that time, players take turns rolling the Meteor Dice, one red, and one white. Using the numbers on the side and top of their board, players then play a brutal game of bingo as the meteor hits again and again, destroying any building in spaces it hits. Some structure abilities and of course, fortified stone, can protect hit structures, but typically only for a single hit.

As structures are hit by the meteor, they are flipped over. Each time the Meteor Dice are rolled, reduce the Meteor's strength by 1 until it hits 0. Then, the game is truly over. Each player then counts up the remaining points on their structures, counting glass placed on buildings as a single point, and the player with the highest points wins. If there's a tie, the Meteor hits again until there isn't.

In the upcoming game world of Confluence, peoples from across my various game worlds come together and share their cultures, working as newfound families and towns to craft new homes. Though it is rare, there have been Koukyla who have appeared here, and with care and sympathy, a historian has helped them develop their own deck of cards, reflecting their cultural faith and beliefs. The Glass and Stone Oracle is that deck, and it can be yours to work with.

This 30 card deck is a unique item from the world of my games. It is a deck that you can play a game with, and as well it is a deck you can perform divination with. 

The deck is printed on 330GSM German Black Core Stock, and is in a standard tarot size. It comes in a simple 2 piece box, and is paired with a small foldout white book with rules for using it in solo play with the board game, and information on the card meanings for divination uses.

In the 30 cards, you'll find:

The 30-card Oracle Deck comes in its own deck box with a foldout sheet of meanings and rules for use in the game. At this tier, you get only the deck, for use as a divination tool.

You get the full game, clocking in at a whopping 13"x13"x4", this box contains everything you need to jump into the world of New Avernus and raise a city, only to watch as your capricious god strikes it all down with a meteor, forcing you to start again.

Please note that if you pledge for a copy of the game from the 4th to 8am on the 5th, you get a copy of the oracle for free with purchase of your game.
You get both a copy of the game and the Oracle.

Would you like additional copies? Wait until the campaign is over and we reach the post-campaign, where you can add some add-ons to your order!
Would you like to purchase 5 or more copies as a retailer? Email [email protected] and we'll set that up!

New Avernus is one of my 40 worlds, all tied together in a loose cosmology across my various games. From Generations to NuAEther, from Dogs the GAEM to ZOETROPE, I have written, designed, and produced a handful of my worlds in games. The upcoming project, Confluence, will marry many of these worlds in a unique TTRPG setting.

But New Avernus takes place in its own world, the 29th World to be exact. Here, Xerxes hoped to find the perfect city that could have saved humanity from itself-- the city that could have perfected transportation, protected its citizenry from war, strife, and disaster, the city that could have saved the human race. But it is too late. The human race ended before Xerxes could ever finish the perfect city.

So the Koukyla, his endlessly regenerating stone people, labor to please a god who has given up hope in his goal. His cruelties increased as the years went on, and now a meteor falls from the sky every few days. Still, the Koukyla believe in their sacred duty. To make a city worthy of their god's attention. Then their work will be done, and the organic beings will come to populate the world. Then they can rest.

But not all Koukyla believe in their duty any longer. Some actively seek to destroy the cities being built, believing it to be the real divine will of Xerxes, or to spite him. Others merely live in the cities before they are destroyed, and still others live beneath the ruins of the endless cities. But those are a tale for another time... An expansion, perhaps.

Asher Stuhlman

Asher Stuhlman is a game designer and improv performer from Chicago. His favorite games are Netrunner and Fury of Dracula. When he's not creating games or on stage, he loves escape rooms, theme parks, Eurovision, and Taskmaster. He was brought on the project by Seven to take the game, totally rework it and finalize it into the form we have today, and he did a damned good job.

Emma Clinton

Emma Clinton brought her incredible illustration skills to this project, defining the visual language of the game from the very start. Her absolute vision brought a gorgeous minimalism to the game's overall look, and solidified us in clear color languages.
Website: emmaclinton.com

Instagram: @lifeasillustrated

Seven Dane Asmund

Seven is the Publishing Goblin, the CEO of Publishing Goblin LLC, the writer, editor, artist of so many things. New Avernus started as Avernum three years ago, and at the time it was a card game. After a few iterations, and a block on how the game flowed, Seven brought in Asher to finalize and revitalize the game, and now resides as the one with the original idea and the publishing business. If you'd like to see more of what they've done, you can check www.PublishingGoblin.com!