How to Play
Rounds, coins and where they go, locations and control, and the initiative.
Overview
The game is a series of rounds, and each round has two phases: Draw coins, then Use coins. It ends the moment a player (or team) places its last Control Marker (Game End and Scoring).
Your coins: bag, hand, discard, supply
Every coin is always in one of these places:
| Place | What it holds | Who can see it |
|---|---|---|
| Bag | The coins you can draw: 2 of each of your units and your Royal Coin at the start | Hidden, but its size can be worked out |
| Hand | The 3 coins you drew this round | Only you |
| Board | Your units: each unit is a stack of coins of one type | Everyone |
| Discard pile | Coins you spent this round and earlier: some face up, some face down | Face-up coins are public; face-down ones only you know |
| Supply | The rest of each unit’s coins, next to its card | Everyone |
| Box | Coins lost to attacks; they never come back | Everyone |
Your discard pile is not your supply. You refill the bag from the discard pile; the supply only feeds the discard pile, through the Recruit action.
Draw coins
At the start of a round each player draws 3 coins from their own bag and keeps them hidden. When your bag is empty while you still need coins, put your whole discard pile into the bag, shuffle and keep drawing until you hold 3.
Not enough coins
In that rare case, draw what you have. You take fewer actions this round; once your coins are gone, your opponent keeps playing until their hand is empty.
Use coins
The player with the Initiative Marker goes first. Players then alternate, one coin per turn, until every hand is empty. Each coin pays for exactly one of the nine actions. Nobody draws again until everyone has used their hand.
The Royal Coin
The Royal Coin matches no unit. It can only pay for face-down actions (claim initiative, recruit, pass), or for the Royal Guard’s tactic. It goes round your bag all game.
Locations and control
The 14 knotwork hexes are locations. Each holds at most one Control Marker. At the start each side controls its starting locations and the others are neutral (with two players, two of the neutral ones sit in the darker hexes and are out of play).
- You deploy new units onto empty locations you control.
- A unit standing on a neutral or enemy location can control it: your marker goes down, an enemy marker goes back to its owner.
- Starting locations are ordinary locations once the game begins: they can be taken.
The initiative
The holder of the Initiative Marker takes the first action of the round. You can take it with the Claim initiative action, which makes you first next round. It changes hands at most once per round, and never while you already hold it.
Open information
Face-up discards show which coins your opponent has already used and can’t draw until their next refill. Coins in the box are open to everyone. Watching both is a big part of reading the game.