Avalon Board Game Rules: How to Play

The Resistance: Avalon is a social deduction board game for 5–10 players. Learn how to play in four steps, then check role setup, team voting, the mission-size table and Merlin assassination. Differences between the original board game and this platform are explained separately.

Game Objective

Objective for the Loyal Servants of Arthur

The Loyal Servant must successfully complete three out of five missions. They must work together to propose teams for each mission and vote on team compositions, always trying to keep traitors off the teams to prevent missions from failing.

Objective for the Minions of Mordred

The Minion try to get onto mission teams and cause three failures while misleading the Servant in discussion. Bluffing is allowed, but players must not show their character cards during play.

Additional Objectives

Merlin sees evil players at setup, except for roles such as Mordred that remain hidden from him. He must help good without revealing his identity: after three successful missions, evil can still win by correctly identifying him.

Gameplay Rules

1. Team Proposal and Voting

• The player with the Leader token proposes a team of players for the mission. The number of players required for the team depends on the current mission and the total number of players in the game.
• Everyone, including the Leader, votes. More than half of all players must approve; a tie rejects the team. After rejection, leadership passes clockwise and a new team is proposed for the same mission. In the original board game, five consecutive rejections give evil the win. On this platform, the fifth team normally goes without a vote after four rejections; Plot Cards can affect approval.

2. Mission Phase

• Only the approved team submits mission cards in secret. In the base game, good players must choose Success ; evil players may choose Success or Fail .
• In a physical game, the Leader collects and shuffles the selected team members’ mission cards before revealing them, so nobody can identify who played each card.
• Normally, one Fail makes the mission fail; otherwise it succeeds . The exception is mission four with 7–10 players: it requires at least two Fails, so a single Fail still gives a successful mission.

3. Progression of Play

• After the outcome of the mission has been determined, the Leader token moves to the next player in clockwise order.
• Repeat team selection and missions until three missions succeed or three fail. There are at most five missions; do not play the remaining missions once either side reaches three.
• Players must use their powers of persuasion, deduction, and bluffing to influence team selection, the vote, and discussion to further their side's agenda.

Conclusion of Gameplay

Three failed missions immediately give evil the win. After three successful missions, stop questing and resolve the assassination: in the original game, the Assassin names one good player after discussion with the evil team. If that player is Merlin, evil wins; otherwise good wins. On this platform, the evil team handles assassination, with other targets possible in custom role setups. To win by assassinating the Cleric after three successful missions, evil must identify two players in order: first the Cleric, then another good player, selecting both that player and their exact role from the available list. Both guesses must be correct; a wrong guess at either stage gives good the win.

Through strategic discussion, careful observation, and clever tactics, each side must do their best to achieve their objectives without revealing their true allegiances, making each round of Avalon: The Resistance play out uniquely and full of suspense.

Mission Team Size

Note: On missions marked with an asterisk (*), two Fail cards are required for the mission to fail.

Recommended Roles Setup

General tips

Avalon supports 5–10 players. The setups below are suggestions for this platform, including custom roles; they are not the original board game’s required setup.

For the original base game, use Merlin and the Assassin, then fill the remaining places with loyal servants and minions in the correct good/evil ratio. Add optional roles when everyone understands voting and missions.

Once the group knows the basics, consider these additional roles and variants; Tristan and Isolde are custom roles on this platform:

Merlin -> Percival -> Morgana -> Oberon -> Mordred -> Lady of the lake -> Tristan + Isolde

Note: The original board game includes a separate Assassin, who makes the final Merlin guess after evil discusses it. The custom setups above use this platform’s evil-team assassination instead. For an original board-game setup, include the Assassin among the evil players.

Excalibur:

We recommend adding Excalibur to games for any number of players, but only in the company of experienced players.

Avalon rules FAQ

Setting up an in-person game

This role-aware opening script starts with Merlin, Percival and Morgana selected. Adjust the selection to match your group; it is a customizable script, not the original base-game setup.

1. Everyone close your eyes and hold a closed fist in front of you.
2. Minion open your eyes and look around so that you know all agents of Evil.
3. Minion close your eyes
4. All players have their eyes closed and hands in a fist in front of them
5. Minion extend your thumb into the air so Merlin can see you
6. Merlin open your eyes to see the agents of evil
7. Minion put your thumb down and re-form your hand into a fist
8. Merlin close your eyes
9. Merlin Morgana extend your thumb into the air so Percival can see you
10. Percival open your eyes and see Merlin Morgana.
11. Merlin Morgana put your thumb down and re-form your hand into a fist
12. Percival close your eyes
13. All players have their eyes closed and hands in a fist in front of them
14. Everyone open your eyes

Note: For the purposes of game setup, the term "Minion" refers to all agents of Evil unless otherwise stated