A Study in Emerald (Second Edition)

About this board game

A Study in Emerald (Second Edition) is a board game for 2–5 players that plays in around 60 minutes, set in an alternate 1882 where the Old Ones have ruled Earth for seven hundred years.

Most people accept their monstrous rulers, but a growing resistance movement called the Restorationists is determined to free humanity. Their secret war against the forces loyal to the Old Ones unfolds through a world of assassins, informers, police agents, and anarchists.

Nobody is quite sure who is who—or which side they truly serve. The invention of dynamite has shifted the balance of power, giving a lone assassin the ability to destroy an Old One and intensifying the atmosphere of suspicion.

• A hidden conflict between the Restorationists and the Old Ones’ loyalists
• A dark alternate-history setting combining the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft
• A story enriched by real nineteenth-century history and its unrest
• Streamlined rules designed to reduce complexity while preserving paranoia

The game’s central plot draws from Neil Gaiman’s award-winning short story, while its broader setting merges fictional worlds with colorful historical figures and the turmoil of the nineteenth century. This creates a shadowy contest in which allegiance is never entirely clear.

This second edition of A Study in Emerald features new artwork by Ian O’Toole and Tatiana Kuzilova. It also removes inconsistencies and reduces the number of available actions to the minimum, making the rules more streamlined while retaining the mood of paranoia from the first edition.