‘Each Turn represents 10,000 years: the Great Old Ones do not experience time as we do! But remember as each eon rolls by, the time of the long-awaited Grand Conjunction draws nearer.’
Each numeral of the Cosmic Clock equates to one Game Turn. Each Great Old One performs each action Phase in a Turn before play passes to the right. Once all actions have been performed by each Great Old One, a Turn has been completed, the Turn Token advances one space forwards on the Cosmic Clock, the First Player Token passes to the next Great Old One to the right and the next Turn begins.
A game Turn is broken up into the following action Phases:
- Draw Arcana— on his turn, a Great Old One with fewer than five (5) cards in his hand, draws cards up to five (5) from the Arcana Deck. If there are too few cards in the deck, shuffle in the discard pile and continue to draw.
- Spawn Cultists—on her turn, a Great Old One draws the top card from the Spawning Deck and turns it face-up to reveal which Alchemical Ring spawns tokens and how many. In addition, she and only she may choose to exchange Arcana cards for additional Cultists based on the value in yellow on each card. Spent cards go face-up on the Arcana Discard pile.
- Summon Servitors—on his turn, a Great Old One chooses whether or not to sacrifice Cultists in order to summon Servitors, and then places them in his Nodes.
- Movement—on her turn, a Great Old One chooses whether or not and where to move her Cultists and Servitors.
- Combat—when a Great Old One’s Cultists or Servitors enter a space occupied by another Great Old One’s forces, combat occurs and ownership of the Node must be resolved.
- Conjunction Ritual— on his turn, Great Old Ones may choose to complete a Conjunction Ritual and claim a Node as part of his winning condition.
- Discard— at the end of her turn, a Great Old One may discard as many cards as she wishes face-up onto the Arcana discard pile.
Play continues until a Great Old One achieves the Grand Conjunction—completes the winning conditions of their Constellation Card—and secures the correct Node sequence before the end of turn 10. At the end of turn 10, the game ends and if no one has successfully completed their winning conditions, no one wins.