- Each player selects a starting color and places the corresponding starting Army card in front of themselves, face up.
- Separately shuffle the Army, Command, Event, Battle, and Objective card decks and place them in the middle of the table. Leave a spot for the Command and Event discard piles.
- Choose a Battle card at random. Place it on the table and return the remaing Battle cards to the box.
- Each player draws 3 Objective cards and selects two to keep. Return any cards that weren’t selected to the bottom of the Objective deck.
In a 4-player game, teams have a Shared Objective as well as individual teammate’s personal Objectives. Each player draws 2 Objective cards and selects one to keep. Then each team draws one additional Objective card; this is their Shared Objective. - Each player draws two Army Cards (#m)
- Reveal 4 Command cards (#n) from the top of the deck and place them in the middle of the play area. These four cards are the Battle Line.
- Starting with the First Player and proceeding to the next opponent to their left, each player takes a #n from the Battle Line. Repeat this process twice, so that each player has two #n cards. Then replenish it by adding 4 new face-up cards to the Battle Line from the #n deck.
In a 4-player game, replenish all four Battle Line cards as soon as the Battle Line is empty. - Each player takes the following:2 Coins (#o)5 Color Blazons, one of each color
1 of each Banner Token
(#a, #v, #p, #q, #t, #u)A blue General die (#b)
Three Action tokens (#x)
A set of reference cards
- Each player rolls their #b. The player with the highest roll gets the First Player token.
- Set your #b to 6 and place it in the blue slot on your starting Army card.
- Each player selects a starting color and places the corresponding starting Army card in front of themselves, face up.
You are now ready to play, starting with the player with the First Player token.
