Turns and Chess Movement
Use a two-card turn to move a piece, resolve a colour board and manage Time.
Beginning a round
At the start of a round, secretly choose one of your two Train cards and decide whether it will apply to White or Red. Reveal together and resolve the printed Train rewards in player order. You receive only the rewards shown by the Train card, not the usual location reward.
Your turn
1. Discard a card
Discard one card from your hand and immediately take its reward.
2. Play an action card
Play a second card. If it has a play reward, resolve it now. Its colour selects the matching action board and chess piece. Move that piece according to chess movement, or rescue an eligible jailed piece, then resolve the landing space. A piece may be activated in place when its movement is blocked, even if another same-colour piece could legally move. A pawn moves one space at a time. Kings may capture but are never in check.
A capture sends the opponent’s piece to its jail. The captured-piece owner receives a cumulative bonus: a pawn gives 1 Time; a knight, bishop or rook gives one resource and 1 Time; a queen or king gives one paw of the captured colour, one resource and 1 Time.
3. Repeat (optional)
After resolving the action, you may spend 6 Time to repeat the same action. Pay the action cost again. You cannot switch to a different action during the repeat. An action’s once-per-turn discount does not refresh for the repeat.
4. Rest
Draw and discard until you have no more than 3 cards. Refill each market slot from the left, reactivate per-turn Bookmark effects, and score any Wish that Alice reached during your turn.
Time and resources
Time ranges from 0 to 10. Each Time you would gain above 10 becomes 1 IP. Cake and Toast are the coloured resources; Tea is shared. Gain resources by moving a cube from your slider. Spending returns it to the slider. If you have no cube there, reassign one of your available cubes first.
Spend 3 Time or relock one unlocked black cube to buy a resource, paying immediately; resources cannot be stored. A black cube used as a normal resource may not be relocked during that same action.
Landing, rescue and skipping
The chessboard row grants its matching resource, then the column selects the action. The central wild column lets you choose an action board and grants one extra resource of your choice. A repeat does not grant that wild-column extra resource a second time. A move activates the row and column where the piece lands. If you cannot or do not want to perform the action, skip it and pay 2 Time. If a piece is jailed, you may rescue it to its indicated starting space of its own colour; if that is occupied, use any empty space of that colour. A rescue activates the piece without moving it, and its owner gains 1 Time.
The action discount applies once per turn. Mandatory rewards such as Alice advancement or taking a crown must be resolved; other rewards are optional and may be taken in any order.
End of game
When the final crown is removed, finish the current round. Score the game-end Wish, invitations, final Bookmark effects and remaining IP. If the two Alices are tied, each player scores 8 IP for every crown they obtained. Otherwise score 8 IP for each crown matching the leading Alice’s colour.