Idol A Live

In Idol A Live, players will form and lead an idol group in a 1v1 battle to see who can recruit the most fans! Players will need to play the right songs, activate the best events, and utilize their collected cheer tokens to gain the edge on their opponent's group. Below is a brief overview of the game. More detailed rules can be found in the rulebook.

Basic Game Setup:
Players decide on which three of the six idols will form their unit, then proceed to setting up the play area. After placing the playmat, stage boards, and each player’s respective music and event decks, players pick which character will be their center idol. Center idols can make use of their “Center Skill” to provide a major boost at different times throughout the game, so this decision is important. After shuffling the fan cards to form the audience deck, three cards are drawn and placed into first, second, and third audience slots. The order is relevant for understanding which audience members can be converted into your fans.

On Your Turn:
There are two phases to a turn: the Standby Phase and the Main Phase.

During the Standby Phase, all idol pieces are returned to the backstage area and, with the exception of the first player’s first turn, the player draws one song card from the music deck.

The Main Phase is more action-packed - the player has four things they can do in any order as many times as they want, provided they meet the conditions:

1. Use a song card

2. Use an event card

3. Engage with their fans

4. Spend cheer tokens to gain effects

Using Song Cards:
To use a song card, players must be able to move the required idol pieces from the backstage area to the stage. Some songs are solos, requiring only one idol piece to perform, while others are duets, requiring two pieces. Songs often require a specific idol to play, but sometimes, any idol piece can be used. 

Song cards have two possible effects: increasing the voltage or recruiting fans. In order to recruit fans, players must be at or above the required voltage, which varies depending on the song. Some songs are better at one objective than the other, and have a bonus effect depending on the player’s choice. For example, one song earns the player a free cheer token when they use it to increase their voltage. Another song allows the player to recruit two fans instead of one if they sacrifice 10% of their voltage. Skillfully deciding when to increase your voltage and when to go for fans while considering secondary effects is the essence of the game!

Fans are recruited in audience slot order, and have different effects that occur upon being recruited. Some effects are useful - the “Cheer Captain” fan provides a free cheer token upon recruitment, for example. Others are detrimental - the “Troublesome Fan” sends another fan recruited at the same time back into the audience deck, robbing you of potential victory points! Try to avoid recruiting fans with negative effects and focus on recruiting the fans who show pure devotion.

Using Event Cards:
To use an event card, players will need to pay song cards they have already performed from their memory as the cost. This means it is necessary to play multiple songs before event cards can be used. In exchange, event cards often have powerful effects, like allowing the player to recruit an additional fan the next time they use a song for that purpose, for example.

Engaging with Fans and Spending Cheer Tokens:
Players gain one cheer token each time they engage with their fans. To do so, players must move one of their idol pieces from the stage to one of the two engagement areas. There can only be one idol per engagement area, so players can typically gain 2 cheer tokens per turn without utilizing additional effects that move idols. The maximum number of cheer tokens a player can have at one time is seven.

Cheer Tokens are Paid to Activate Several Powerful Effects:
Pay 2 cheer tokens: [Request] - Draw an additional card from the music deck.
Pay 3 cheer tokens: [Call & Response] - Decrease the idol-nonspecific memory requirement for the next used event card by 2.
Pay 6 cheer tokens: [Encore] - Return all of your idol pieces to the backstage area. 

Of these effects, “Encore” is clearly the strongest, allowing the player to play additional songs and perform more rounds of fan engagement, should they have the relevant cards. Of course, this means it is quite expensive. Having to decide when to save up cheer tokens for an encore and when to use them for the less powerful (but still useful) effects, is a truly fun challenge.

End of the Game:
The game ends when one player earns at least 20 victory points! Victory points are shown in the top left corner of each fan card and are additive in nature. 

Can you lead your idol group to victory?!

The following is a brief introduction to the game. The video is in Japanese, so please enable English subtitles.

You can access the English rulebook here.