As players expand their empires and come into conflict with each other, they eventually run out of useful tiles, which they can then turn over (the game calls this “going into decline.”) The pieces stay on the board and can still accrue points (but they can no longer be used to gain new territory). Once a player picks their characters, they get a set of tiles representing their troops during their turn they use the tiles to take over land on the board. For instance, if you pick up Wizards with a Flying power, you get bonus gold for occupying magic spaces (the Wizards feature), and you can send your troops anywhere on the board (the Flying feature).
Each race is paired with a separately shuffled stack of powers, which modify what the troops of that race can do. How it’s played: At the beginning of the game, every player gets to select a fantasy race to control from a shuffled stack.
