Deus
BGG rank
BGG #621
BGG rating
7.3

Deus

2014

Rules assistance for Deus

Plain-language explanations of turns, card effects and disputed situations, with official source references and saved question history.

  • 2–4 players
  • 60–90 min
  • 14+
  • Complexity 2.8/5

For 2 players

Rules assistant for Deus

What would you like to know?

Answers come from the official rulebook, with the page to check.

Deus is a board game released in 2014 for 2–4 players, 60–90 minutes per game, and ages 14 and up. It was designed by Sébastien Dujardin and its main mechanics are Hand Management, Area Majority / Influence, and End Game Bonuses.

Expansions

Similar games

About the game

In Deus, players work to develop their own civilizations in a shared environment. Each player starts the game with five building cards, and on a turn a player either uses one of these cards to construct a building or discard one or more cards to make an offering to a god. Cards come in six colors: red for military, green for resource production, blue for trade, brown for scoring, purple for temples, and yellow for a variety of effects. When you construct a building, you build it in the appropriate location on the modular game board — which is sized based on the number of players with the hexagonal tiles composed of seven landscape "circles" — then you place the card in your personal tableau in the appropriate stack of colored cards and activate the power of all of those cards already in your tableau, starting with the card at the bottom of the stack. When you make an offering, you discard cards, then receive the help of a god associated with one of the cards that you discarded, with the number of cards determining the strength of the associated action. You then refill your hand to five cards. The game ends either when all the barbarian villages on the game board have been surrounded and attacked or when all the temples have been constructed. Whoever has the most points wins.

Questions and answers

Deus supports 2–4 players according to the catalogue. This range comes from the publisher’s listed player count, so the game can be set up for any group size within it. Some setups, rules and scoring details may still vary by player count, so check your edition’s rulebook for the exact configuration.