Characters and troops

Character cards represent the significant individuals in the game. All characters have allegiances to different factions within the game, which determines how much it costs to recruit them and be able to play them from hand. Most characters have some special ability that they can use as listed in their effect text. Characters have up to four abilities at various ratings: Politics (green), Intrigue (Blue), One Power (white) and Combat (Black). The numbers in these colored boxes are how many dice the character rolls of that color. Troops are like characters, but they represent large amounts of secondary characters in the game and they usually only have a Combat Ability.

A player can normally only have one copy of a troop or character in the game unless they have the "Multiple" trait. Troops and characters usually participate in challenges, but do not interact with one another directly. Instead, characters interact with characters and troops interact with troops.

Advantages

(Including Starting Advantages) Advantages are long-term effects that a character, the player, or troops can gain. Advantages tell a player what they can affect (Character, Troop, Player, World [world affects all players]). Until discarded, the advantage remains in effect. If the card an advantage is attached to leaves play, so does the advantage.

Prophecy cards are very powerful advantages, and have certain requirements that must be met before they can be played. They reflect the various concepts of the Prophecies from the Jordan novels.

Challenges

Challenges represent the goals a player tries to accomplish to win the game. Challenges have various effects depending on whether they are successful or not. Characters and troops must be allotted to participate in challenges in order to try to get them to succeed. Many challenges allow a player to gain Pattern, some have other effects.

Events

Events represent actions taken by characters or a happening that is beyond their reach. The effects are determined as soon as the card is played. Its effects must be resolved immediately and no other events can be played until after the effects of the first event have been resolved. Unless it says otherwise, effects expire at the end of the current turn. Some events are limited events that a player can only play during their action round. There are few events which specify when they can be played, and most events are simply played when appropriate.

The Wheel of Time playing mat

Ability symbols

Ability symbols are marked on the dice. Each book a player rolls on the green die indicates a point of Politics they can spend, each Chalice on the blue Intrigue, each Yin-Yang on the white is One Power and each Rider and Horse on the Black is Combat. Most all cards have a number of these symbols listed at the bottom, which represents the cost of recruiting the card.

The other three symbols on the dices are used in challenges. The sword counts as a point of support for a challenge, the shield counts as a point of opposition, and the skull counts as damage done toward the opposition.

Some dice have sides with multiple symbols. These faces count as either symbol, depending on what the dice is rolled for.

There are also colored blank tokens used to show which challenges players are participating in and numbered tokens used to keep track of how much of an ability a player has generated.

The Pattern

The Pattern is the focus of the game. Each turn a token is to be placed on the Pattern. Depending on how various challenges go during the turn, the token could be in the neutral area, the light area, or the dark area. When there are 20 tokens on the Pattern, the last battle starts, in which the side with the most tokens has an advantage.

Last Battle

The Last Battle is a special challenge at the very end of the game that goes on until a player has enough points to win. 'It's the big battle at the end of every good book, where all the cards are on the table and it's do or die time!', according to Precedence ads.

Dominance

Whichever faction has the most pattern tokens on their side has dominance. This affects who goes first and last at the various stages of a turn.

Allegiances

It is easier to for a player to play a character card when they have other cards with the same allegiance on the table, and it is less expensive to recruit cards of the same allegiance.

The factions

Dragon Reborn: Led by Rand al' Thor, the faction of Light attempts to sway the Pattern to their side to stop the Forsaken.

The Forsaken: Never truly trusting one another, but working together to bring their own darkness to the Pattern and rule the world.