The Brotherhood of Essen: What Spiel Showed Us About the Upcoming Assassin's Creed Board Game

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood of Venice debuted at Spiel Essen '18 last week, and I was lucky enough to know a few wonderful members of the Assassin's Creed community who were demoing it: Sunny and Jaelle (who also specifically provided me with the fantastic photos in this article).

While it's important to note that the game is still in its development stages and certainly subject to change before release, we learned much of how the mechanics of this game will work, in contrast with some of our earlier predictions a few weeks ago.

The Brotherhood

Clara and Domenico join the previously revealed Bastiano and Alessandra as the heroic Assassins of the game. Domenico reportedly works as a support hero, offering additional actions to the other beefier Assassins, while the sneaky Clara gets buffs to stealth related actions.

A game turn is divided into two phases: the Assassin Phase, and the Guard Phase. This seems like it will work relatively similarly to how Descent 2E handles heroes and monster turns (outside of the app), in that the Assassins get to each freely take all of their turns before the guards get to activate for the turn.

The Assassins each start with three Action Cubes, and these cubes help players keep track of how many actions they've performed in a turn. Standard actions include, attacking, moving to an adjacent tile, hiding, looting, and claiming objectives. More special actions are where the cubes really become necessary, though.  For example, once per turn Clara can assassinate a guard without spending a cube at all, but it takes two cubes for the powerful skill of using a parachute to move to another rooftop on the map.

Changing of the Guard

The Venetian guard is reportedly made up of Assassin's Creed II classics such as Brutes and Agiles, with the addition of Followers of Romulus from Brotherhood. They come into play after the Assassin Phase. The Guard Phase has three subphases: reinforcement, movement, and combat (though again, it should be stressed that this could be subject to change after further testing).

During the Reinforce phase, new guards enter the map depending on certain factors such as how many Assassins are in play, if anyone has been revealed, and if an alarm bell has been sounded. This sounds like it can be pretty brutal, as a four player game could see more than twelve additional guards enter play simultaneously!

If the Assassins are anonymous, the guards move according to a card drawn, on a programmed patrol route.  Otherwise, the guards will zone in on the closest revealed Assassin, with the note that with few exceptions they cannot freely transition between rooftop and ground tiles. Sunny states that this system is pretty straightforward and "you rarely have free space to bend them (the rules) or cheat", which is nice given how AI in stuff like the Imperial Assault app or the vampire and demons in the Buffy board game could all be a little ambiguous.

Once the guards have all moved, they enter the Reinforce subphase. This sounds like it can be pretty brutal, as a four player game could see more than twelve additional guards enter play simultaneously!


After that, we enter the guard combat phase. Apparently, combat seems pretty brutal, as guards reportedly have 1 HP and Assassins only have 3. According to the demoists, "... basically, if there is a fight, someone will die."

The Assassins and Guards have their own dice for combat, and from what I can tell various equipment and weapons can help mitigate dice results, though there is no built in defense die as of yet.

If Assassins take their full damage, they enter a critical condition. If further left untreated, they are forced to withdraw and heal at the Assassin HQ for a time, away from the mission.

Hide in Plain Sight

Rather than working as a typical dungeon crawler, Brotherhood of Venice seems to really emphasize a need for stealth. Being undetected obviously helps keep the guards off the Assassins' backs, but it also causes fewer enemy reinforcements to arrive. 

Detection tests occur whenever an Assassin enters a tile with enemy guards. Depending on if the Assassin is already revealed or not, there are two different detection dice that could be used, with the "Hidden" one being the far more effective.

As stated earlier, guards will chase revealed Assassins. If the Assassin manages to outrun or kill them, a "Last Known Position" token will be placed, still acting as a sort of beacon to other guards, assuming they at least heard the commotion. So, even effectively escaping a combat situation doesn't mean you're out of the woods yet!

A Tribute to the Lore

In addition to stealth, Brotherhood of Venice pays homage to the series in many ways. Fan favorite characters like Ezio and Cesare Borgia will show up in the story, and Triton Noir has already revealed an incredible Auditore miniature for the game.

Synchronizing viewpoints, a mainstay for Assassin's Creed gameplay since 2007, manifests itself in the game by revealing secrets in the level, like hidden treasure chests.

Meanwhile, the campaign structure itself evokes the older games' structure by being divided up into various memories and sequences (of which there are reportedly more than twenty so far).

It definitely sounds like Sunny and Jaelle had a fantastic time at Spiel this year, and I'm very impressed with what I've seen from the game so far. When I wrote an article last year about what I'd want to see in an Assassin's Creed board game, I never expected something with the scope and quality of Brotherhood of Venice to become a reality so soon!

Keep an eye out on that Kickstarter that should be launching on November 13th. I assume more info will be available then too, so stay tuned!

Also, if you're interested in seeing other games from Triton Noir, I'd suggest checking out V-Commandos, their take on a stealthy World War II theme.

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- Thomas