How to Teach The Night Cage in Ten Minutes

The Night Cage has fewer rules than it looks. Under the moody art is one idea: your candle shows you the next space, and the dark eats everything else. Teach that idea with tiles on the table and the rest takes a few sentences each. This script runs about ten minutes, and it follows the The Night Cage teach sheet, so print one and keep it in the middle.

Before anyone sits down

Do the setup yourself. Pull the advanced tiles and the extra Keys and Wax Eaters, set aside the opening Passages, fill the Tile Holder, and put the opening stack on top. Then take one Start tile and a candle and keep them in your hand for the demo. Dim the room lights if you can. The game earns it.

Minute 1: the goal

“We are all trapped in a pitch-black maze, and we win or lose together. Each of us needs to find a Key. Then all of us have to stand on the same Gate at the same time, holding our Keys. Gates are the only tiles where we can stand together.”

Point at the Tile Holder. “This stack is our candle wax. Every tile we draw or throw away melts it down. When it runs out, the end comes fast.”

Minutes 2 to 4: the candle

Place the demo Start tile in the middle of the board and stand a candle on it. “Your candle lights one space, along open Passages, no diagonals.” Draw a tile for each exit and place them so they connect. “When a Passage leads into a dark space, you draw a tile and choose how to turn it, as long as it connects to you.”

Now move the candle one space. Light the new Passages, then pick up the tile it left behind and drop it on the discard board. “Anything nobody lights is gone. If you walk back, the maze will be different.” This is the moment the table gets it. Pause and let it land.

Then add: “The board wraps. Walk off the right edge and you come back on the left.”

Minute 5: Stay or Move

“On your turn you do one of two things. Move one space, then light the new Passages. Or Stay, which burns one tile off the top of the stack and earns you a Nerve token. Your new Nerve arrives at the end of the turn. You can hold two, and spending one lets you move again or soften a hit.”

Only one Prisoner fits on a tile, except on a Gate. Say it now so nobody plans a route through a friend.

Minutes 6 and 7: Wax Eaters

Hold one up. “This is a Wax Eater. It looks down every straight Passage connected to it, in all four directions, as far as the Passage runs unbroken, even around the edges of the board. If you Move or Fall in its line, it attacks everyone still standing in that line.” Trace a line with your finger. “If it hits you, we throw away 3 tiles of wax, and you go Lights Out: your candle stops lighting anything past your own tile, and you have to keep moving every turn, unless you spend a Nerve to Stay, until you reach someone with a lit candle.”

Add the comfort rule: “Staying never sets one off.”

Minute 8: Crumbling tiles and falling

Show a Start tile’s crack lines. “Start tiles, straights, Keys, and a couple of T’s crumble. On your next turn after you step on one, it turns into a Pit. Move off and you are fine. Stay and you fall.” Then the good news: “Falling is not death. Next turn you land back in the maze on a fresh tile, somewhere in the same row or column.”

Minute 9: Keys and the end

“Step on a Key tile to take a Key. One each. If you are next to someone through a Passage, you can hand a Key over for free. Key tiles crumble too, so do not walk through one you cannot use. When the stack runs out, every turn also removes one more lit tile from the board. That is Final Flickers, and it is our signal to run for a Gate.”

Minute 10: first turns

Reset your demo tile. Starting with the host, each Prisoner places a Start tile on any empty, unlit space and lights its two exits. Then play.

Two things to settle before the first move

• Talk freely. The base rules put no limit on table talk. The Eerie Silence variant, where Prisoners only talk when a Passage connects them, is for later. If one player starts steering every move, our piece on the quarterback problem has fixes.
• Who runs the spare Prisoners. Solo, two players, and three players all mean someone controls more than one candle. Agree on it before the first turn. Lesson 13 covers each count.

Running the first game

Expect to lose. The game is built to be hard, and the first loss teaches the stack is a clock better than any rule. Keep the teach sheet face up, call out every Wax Eater’s lines when one is placed, and remind each player to light, then discard, at the end of every move. When the game ends, reset and play again while the lessons are fresh.