Game Setup

Take the board and place it as shown.

Players must split into two equal teams. One team is “Team red” and the other team is “Team blue”.

Take the Tie Breaker coin, flip it in the air, and then place it, result side up, near the corner of the board, as shown.

Place a number of Wave counters next to the edge of the board based on your desired game length:

• Quick game: 3 Wave counters.
• Long game: 5 Wave counters.

If any players at your table are new, use the Quick Game Setup. I know, I know, you are all experienced board gamers and want to skip the baby steps, but you do want your friends to have a fun time, right?

Take a number of blue and red Life counters based on your chosen game length and the total player count, as shown in the table below.

Place the Life counters on the corresponding Throne with their “unspent” side up. Return the rest to the box.

Take the coins and place them within reach of all players.

In a game with 4 players, take the hero dashboards for “Wasp the Warmaiden” and “Xargatha the Changed” and distribute them randomly to the players on the Red team. Do the same with the dashboards for “Arien the Tidemaster” and “Brogan the Destroyer” for the Blue team. Place the dashboards in front of the players.

In a game with 6 players, use the dashboards for “Tigerclaw the Cutpurse” and “Sabina the Gunslinger” for the third players on the Red and Blue teams, respectively.

In future games, you can use any of the methods described on page 22 for selecting heroes, but for your first game, use the recommended line-up above. Trust me on this.

Each player takes a Level indicator card and tucks it under the left edge of their hero dashboard to indicate their starting hero level (Level 1).

Attach the colored bases of the corresponding color to the hero miniatures.

Place the hero miniatures on the marked spaces in their corresponding Throne Zone (highlighted in Blue and Red). These spaces are called hero spawn points.

Your hero’s miniature is depicted on the back of your hero dashboard, along with tactical tips for playing that hero and their backstory.

There are three types of minions in Guards of Atlantis II: Ranged, Melee, and Heavy (more on that later).

Place the minions on the board in the starting Battle Zone (highlighted in white) on spaces marked with a minion icon that matches the team color and the type of that minion. These icons are the minion spawn points.

The image below shows which minion Spawn points correspond to which minion miniature and how many of each miniature you need to place during the setup.

Keep unused ranged and heavy minions in the box.

Each player takes their hero’s deck of 18 Action cards. The symbol on the back of the cards should match the symbol on their hero dashboard.

The Roman numeral in the top right corner of each Action card is its Tier. Find the three Tier I cards and the two basic cards with no Tier in your deck.

You should end up with five Action cards; these are your starting cards. Take them into your hand and return the remaining Tier II, Tier III, and Tier IV cards to your deck. These will be used later when leveling up (See pages 15-16). Return the Handicap card (“H” Tier) to the box.

If your hero uses tokens or markers (See pages 18-19), it will be displayed on the back of your hero dashboard. Take your Tokens and Markers and place them near you.

You never draw cards from your deck, so there is no need to shuffle it.