4 Gods

About this board game

Four Gods is a real-time tile-laying game for 2–4 players that takes about 30 minutes. Players build a world one tile at a time, then claim one of four gods and send prophets into the landscape to win followers and points.

Players sit around a cardboard frame representing the limits of the world. Each double-sided tile shows one to three of the world’s four landscape types. Everyone plays simultaneously, placing tiles inward from the corners. A tile must touch two sides of the frame or previously placed tiles, with all landscapes matching across its borders.

• Place tiles into the world as quickly as possible while preserving legal landscape connections.
• Discard unwanted tiles into a personal area, or take a tile from another player’s discard area.
• Claim a god and use followers to place prophets on newly added tiles.
• Mark apparently unfillable spaces with cities that can later be smashed and replaced by matching tiles.

Each god is associated with a particular landscape. Once a player has followers, they can place any number of prophets in a landscape, provided each prophet is placed on a tile they just added. Players must also judge when an empty space cannot be completed: a city marker can fill that space, and a prophet can claim it. If a matching tile appears later, the city may be smashed and collected.

When the world is filled, or no more tiles can be placed, scoring begins. Occupied or smashed cities are worth five points each. Landscapes with prophets reward the player or players with the most prophets based on the landscape’s size, while bonuses go to the gods associated with the largest landscape masses and the most distinct groups. In Four Gods, the god with the most points wins.