Ascension: Pirates of the Abyss

Build your deck, sail the Fractured Sea, defeat monsters and bank more honor than anyone else.

2–4 players
40–60 min
2.3 / 5 · Light

Set up the game

0 of 6 steps

Tick each step as you complete it.

1Each player takes a starting deck of 10 cards (7 Apprentice, 2 Militia and 1 Buccaneer), shuffles it and draws 5; the other 5 stay in the deck.
Starting hand and deck
2Each player picks a ship and its crew dial. The first player starts with 0 crew, the second with 1, the third with 2 and the fourth with 3.
Ship and crew dial
3Place Heavy Infantry, Mystic and the Cultist in their fixed board slots, and Thukal the Kraken in the Abyss.
Thukal the Kraken
Fixed cards
4Shuffle all black-bordered cards into the center deck and reveal 6 cards: 3 on each side of the board, forming the center row.
Centre row
5Put 30 honor per player into the honor reserve: 60 for two players, 90 for three and 120 for four.
Honor reserve
6Randomly choose the first player. On their first turn, each player places their ship on any ship space on the board.
Ship spaces

What it is about

Ascension: Pirates of the Abyss is a standalone Ascension expansion that swaps the map for the Fractured Sea. Your deck works as usual —runes to buy, power to fight—, but now each player has a ship that determines where crew can be used.

That twist forces you to read the table differently: center-row cards sit on both sides and your ship only reaches the adjacent ones. Moving, anchoring and boarding turn a simple purchase into a positioning decision.

The rest is classic Ascension: thin your deck, chain purchases and finish with more honor than anyone else. Thukal the Kraken and treasures add a dose of risk for anyone sailing too close to the Abyss.

BGG page Official rulebook

Source note

Summary built from the Spanish rulebook in the rules folder; card images come from that manual, so their text is in Spanish.

Spanish rulebook (TCG Factory, 2023) · Reviewed: 23 Oct 2026