The Sheep

1. Map Setup

1. Place the game board in the center. Use Side A for your first game.
2. Find the Pollution meter matching your player count and place it in its zone.
3. Place the Pollution tracker on the lowest space on the pipe.

2. Shepherd Setup

Each player:

1. Select a Shepherd Board and place it in front of you.
2. Take your figure, starting Equipment cards, and Trait tokens.
3. Choose a Level I Trait and place it in the top slot of your Trait board. Keep the rest nearby.
4. Place starting Equipment cards face-up below your board.
5. Place three Lantern tokens lit side up in your Lantern zone.
6. Place two Essence tokens in your Essence slots.
7. Place a tracker cube on the leftmost slot of your Experience meter and your Corruption meter.
8. Place your figure on the Start space.

3. Deck Setup

1. Build the Flock deck: shuffle each Flock deck (1, 2, 3) separately, then stack as follows - bottom: all Flock 3 cards, then 4 Flock 2 cards, then 4 Flock 1 cards on top. Return unused cards to the box.
2. Shuffle the Mutation deck and place it in its zone on the board.
3. Separately shuffle and place nearby: Equipment, Curse, Day Event, and Night Event decks.

4. Caravan Setup

1. Randomly select (player count + 1) Caravan Boards. Return the rest to the box.
2. Place each Caravan's figure on its board.
3. Place a tracker cube on the leftmost slot of each Caravan's Corruption meter.
4. Create each Caravan's Inventory: place three Equipment cards face-up to the left of its board.

5. Remaining Pieces

Keep Sheeples, Pollution tiles, and Essence tokens in separate piles nearby.

Begin Game

Objectives

WIN: Move all Caravans to the Finish.

LOSE:

• Any Caravan's Corruption meter overflows.
• Pollution is not averted when all three Pollution tiles are already Major.

Difficulty Adjustments

• Easier:
  • Add more Flock 1 and 2 cards to the Flock deck.
  • Use a Pollution meter for a lower player count
  • Play with Side A of the map
  • Gain 2 XP when purifying essence
  • Give Caravans larger inventories
  • Play multiple Shepherds but base the difficulty on player count, not Shepherd count
• Harder: Add fewer Flock 1 and 2 cards to the Flock deck.
• Much Harder: Start with one or more Pollution tiles already in play.

Key Concepts

Hand limit: Starts at 3. Increases when you gain Traits (4 at Level II, 5 at Level III). If over the limit, discard Equipment. You cannot discard Curses.

Essence limit: Each Shepherd holds up to 5. Excess is immediately discarded.

Corruption: When a Shepherd's meter overflows, draw a Curse and reset the meter to 0. If your hand is full of Curses, your Shepherd dies (but the game continues).

Caravans: Only one Caravan per space. Caravans that haven't entered the map yet can't be struck or traded with.