Teach the Game

Build your chess court, complete the four action boards, and steer Alice toward a crown that scores for you.

How you win

You are preparing for Alice’s coronation. Earn Influence Points (IP) from the four action boards, completed Wishes, invitations, bookmarks, flowers and crowns. At the end, the player with the most IP wins. Alice’s final position and the colours of the crowns you collected change the Wish score.

The boards

The central board holds the two Alice tracks, crown spaces, Wish spaces, the Influence Point track and the chessboard. Each colour’s action board gives you a different way to earn its pieces and advance its Alice: Hearts grow a garden, Spades send messengers, Clubs build a library, and Diamonds arrange a wall. Your courtier board tracks Time, resources, your card deck and the five locked black cubes.

A turn

1. Discard one card and take its printed reward.
2. Play a second card. Move the matching chess piece using its normal chess movement, then resolve the action board for the row or space where it lands. Some moves rescue a jailed piece instead.
3. You may repeat that same action by paying 6 Time and its action cost again.
4. Rest: draw or discard until you have at most 3 cards, refill the market from the left, ready your per-turn bookmark discounts, then score any Wish Alice has just reached.

Players reveal their Train cards together at the start of a round. Resolve their rewards in turn order. The reward printed on a Train card replaces the usual reward for the indicated action; it does not add to it.

Four action boards

• Hearts — Gardener: collect flowers, plant them in a garden zone and unlock permanent benefits.
• Spades — King’s Messenger: travel through the message path to invite characters or acquire stronger cards.
• Clubs — Twins: move books through the library and buy a Bookmark for ongoing or final-scoring benefits.
• Diamonds — Humpty Dumpty: build a colour’s wall, earning rewards as you fill rows.

See the action pages for chess movement, costs, rewards and the free mini-actions.

How the game ends

When the final crown leaves play, finish the current round so everyone has the same number of turns. Alice reaching a Wish removes the Wish crown; an action-board crown is a separate milestone.

Ways to score

Earn IP from board rewards, completed Wishes, invited characters, Bookmarks, flower powers and crowns. At game end, the leading Alice determines which colour Wish side scores for players with that colour of crown. If the Alices tie, score 8 IP for every crown you earned.

What each resource is for

Cake and Toast pay colour-specific action costs. Tea is shared and pays costs on both colours. Time pays for repeats, skipped actions and resource purchases. Influence Points are victory points. Coloured cubes move between your slider and the action cost; black cubes start locked and can be relocked to buy resources.

Teaching tips

Explain the two-card turn first: discard for a reward, then play a different card to activate a chess piece and its matching colour board. Show one movement, one board reward and one Alice advance. Point out that the Train reward replaces the board’s normal arrival reward. Then teach Time, black cubes and repeats; leave the optional card and crown variants for later.