The Acts of the Evangelists

About this board game

The Acts of the Evangelists is a 2022 board game for 2–5 players, with games lasting about 60 minutes. Players compose texts that history will know as the four Christian gospels by gathering traditions about the life and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Travel to nine cities of the Roman Empire to acquire tradition cards, then write those traditions into your text by physically placing them on codex leaf cards. Each player begins with three codex leaves, and each leaf can accommodate two tradition cards. You can also rearrange the leaves of your text as you develop your account.

Each turn, you receive three action octagons to initiate actions. These let you travel, gain a tradition card, interview an eyewitness, or rearrange your codex leaves. Every action has a weak form requiring one octagon or a strong form requiring two, giving you meaningful choices about how to use your available actions.

• Acquire traditions and place them into your codex.
• Interview eyewitnesses connected to those traditions.
• Use weak or strong actions to shape your turn.
• Give follow tokens to opponents to follow an action they took.

The game ends when all nine eyewitnesses have died. Players then score points for the witnesses they interviewed, the literary devices they create, and the traditions they acquire that match their theme.

With its combination of travel, interviews, text arrangement, and thematic collection, The Acts of the Evangelists turns the creation of a gospel into a competitive board game challenge. The player with the most points wins.