Players take on the roles of rival stage illusionists, each with their own strengths and characteristics.
They are striving for fortune and fame in a competition hosted by a legendary magician, looking for a successor worthy of the mighty Trickerion Stone, which is fabled to grant supernatural power to its owner.
Using worker placement and simultaneous action selection mechanisms, the Illusionists and their teams of helpers — the Engineer, the Assistant, the Manager, and a handful of Apprentices – obtain blueprints and components for increasingly complex magic tricks, expand the team and set up performances by visiting the Downtown, Dark Alley, Market Row and Theater locations on the main game board depicting a late 19th century cityscape.
Behind every great magician there is a team of helpers: a gorgeous Pretty Assistant, a cunning Manager, a resourceful Engineer and some diligent Apprentices. Using these characters and their resources, players will be able to sculpt their own repertoire of Tricks from 40 available magic illusions in 4 different categories, prepare and perfect them on their very own Workshop that can be expanded during the game, and finally perform them at the Theater.
How these Performances shape up is entirely up to the players: they build them from the ground up with the tricks of their choice, and they can perform them alone, or choose to temporarily cooperate with others in a co-performance for mutual benefits.
On top of managing their team and trick repertoire, players can also improve their magician’s skills by collecting shards of the mighty Trickerion Stone and learning new abilities using its power. If they are willing to get their hands dirty, they can even visit the Dark Alley location to obtain some insidious extra actions, or change their fate by dabbling into the supernatural at the fortune teller.
