I. The Two Crowns

Two rival monarchs of the Holy Roman Empire vie for the Imperial Throne. Gold funds your armies, sharpens your dynasty, and bids on the cards of the Audience Chamber.

Base game — one path

Capture the enemy King. The game ends the instant a King is taken. Build up your dynasty across five tiers, sharpen your hand at the Court Ball, and bring the blade to its conclusion.

II. The Round

Each round unfolds in two phases: Reign → Court Ball.

Reign Phase — 5 turns each

Players alternate turns, 5 per player. At the start of each of your turns: you collect Prestige based on where your King stands (see Gaining Prestige). no passive income fires (Gold comes from Mine actions and capture rewards — see below).

Then choose one action:

• A — Play a Card. The heart of the game. Reveal or mark a card, move a piece, optionally cycle a card. (See next page.)
• B — Build. Spend Gold to construct a Castle or Cathedral. (See Building & Gold.)

Action B consumes the full turn slot — no card played, no move, no draw.

Court Ball Phase

End-of-round poker showdown. Each player's 5 played cards form their poker hand directly — head-to-head, no community pool. The winner claims a Royal Decree — resurrect a captured piece, scaled by hand tier (see The Court Ball). Coronation also pays Prestige (1 / 2 / 3 / 5 by hand tier) on top of the Decree. The phase closes with brief housekeeping that resets the table for the next round.

III. Play a Card

Note (base game): Cathedral bonus fires when one of your pieces lands on a Cathedral via a card-play move — you may then discard one card from your hand and draw a replacement. Standing on a Cathedral does not re-trigger the bonus on later turns; a fresh landing is required.

1. Reveal a card from your hand and either move the piece matching its rank, move any piece standing on its suit-zone, or (Diamonds only) Extract instead of moving — see Mines.
2. Move a piece. Two options: a rank move (the piece type matching the card's rank) or a suit move (any of your pieces standing on a hex of the card's suit-zone, moving as its own type). See Movement on the next page.
3. Cathedral bonus (optional). If your move ends a piece on one of your own Cathedrals, you may discard one card from your hand and draw a replacement.
4. Draw a card OR Grant Audience. Blind-draw from the top of the deck, OR pay escalating Gold (1G/2G/3G+ within each Reign) to bring a card from the Audience Chamber into your hand. Granting Audience replaces your draw.
5. The card you played goes face-up to your Court — that's your poker tableau for end-of-round Court Ball.

IV. Movement

Cards drive pieces. The card you play tells you which of your pieces may move and how far it goes.

The River — frontier of the realm

The central horizontal row is the River — the Spades suit-zone. As of v2.13, pieces flow freely across the River (no crossing-stop rule). The River's mechanical role now is purely as a Spades alt-move launchpad: a piece standing on a River hex can be activated by any Spades card. Capture beyond the River costs the opponent 1 Gold (Sack — both modes; renamed from Pure Denial in v2.28). Capture on a River hex pays the captor +1 Gold; Sack in Coronation also drains 1 Prestige if the captured piece stood on an opp-owned building.

V. The Land & Its Zones

Four kinds of terrain divide the realm. Each is tied to a suit. Each gives you a passive reward for holding it, and lets you move any of your pieces standing on it whenever you play that suit.

Ownership notes (Coronation). A piece of yours standing on an enemy-owned Castle or Cathedral still triggers the suit-move when you play that suit — suit-moves don't care who owns the building. The Cathedral bonus is the exception: you must own the Cathedral at the start of the turn for it to fire, so capturing one does not unlock the bonus on the same move.

VI. Check, Capture & Rewards

Check

When one of your pieces threatens the enemy King, you announce Check and gain +1 Prestige (cap 1 per turn). On their next turn, the checked player must escape: move the King, capture the attacker, or block the line of attack. If no legal escape exists, the King is captured — you win the Military victory.

Capture

A piece moving onto an enemy piece captures it. The captured piece is removed from the board and set aside.

Capturing an enemy piece standing on an enemy-owned Castle or Cathedral flips that building's ownership to you — the building stays on the board, now flying your colors. Forward enemy buildings become hostile-takeover opportunities, not just obstacles.

Sack — capture beyond the River

Capture in the enemy half (any hex past the River, from your perspective) drains the opponent: they lose 1 Gold (cannot drop below 0). The captor gains nothing extra — the reward is purely the opponent's pain. In Coronation, if the captured piece stood on a Castle or Cathedral the opponent owned, they also lose 1 Prestige. A capture exactly on a River hex doesn't trigger Sack — the River is neither half. (Renamed from Pure Denial in v2.28.)

VII. Building & Gold

Gold is the operational currency. It pays for House upgrades and marks community cards in the Audience Chamber — and in the Coronation module, also funds buildings and ransoms.

How to gain Gold

Sack (both modes; renamed from Pure Denial in v2.28): capture in the enemy half costs the opponent 1 Gold. In Coronation, also drains 1 Prestige if the captured piece stood on an opp-owned building. The captor gains nothing extra — the reward is the opponent's pain, not income. (v2.28: the v2.25 Mine raid bonus is retired; capture-on-Mine no longer pays Gold.)

Mark costs (1G/2G/3G+ within each Reign, both modes) and House upgrades (4/6/8/10 G across tiers, total 28G to reach T5) sink Gold in both modes.

VIII. Gaining Prestige

Section VIII — Gaining Prestige — is part of the Coronation module only. The base game has no Prestige track; the path to victory is capturing the enemy King.

IX. The Court Ball

At the end of each round, the great hall fills and the cards come down.

The showdown

Each player's Court is the 5 cards they revealed from hand during the Reign Phase. The two Courts are compared head-to-head — each 5-card Court is a poker hand directly. No community pool. The higher hand wins.

Standard poker tie-breakers apply (higher pair, kicker, etc.).

Royal Decree — universal Court Ball reward

The Court Ball winner receives a Royal Decree in both modes: choose ONE of two rewards. Promotion is uniformly Knight or Rook across tiers; the Resurrect track carries the tier scaling. The reward is board-state, not currency — a freshly promoted Knight, or a fallen Rook returning to your line.

Dead-roll fallback: if you have no Pawns alive AND no captured pieces, the Decree converts to +3 Gold. Resurrected pieces return to any empty Castle hex on your half of the board (Coronation: any Castle you own).

Prestige rider — Coronation only

Housekeeping — closing the round

Played-Court cards and remaining community cards go to the discard pile. Each player draws back up to a hand of 5. The House Upgrade slot resets — you may upgrade once again next round. Mark counters reset to 0.

Round-start order: the round-1 first player stays first across all rounds (no rotation across the Court Ball boundary; v2.9 rule).

X. Royal Houses

Each player chooses one of ten historic medieval European dynasties at game start. Each House grants one ability that scales across five tiers. Tier 1 is active from setup; Tiers 2–5 are unlocked by paying Gold during a round — once-per-round free side-action via the Upgrade House button. Two players cannot pick the same House in a game.

Upgrade ladder — the same in both modes

The mnemonic across all ten Houses: tier number = magnitude of the effect. Habsburg at T3 silences within 3 hexes; Piast at T3 defects 3 captured pieces per Reign; Wittelsbach at T3 caps Pawns at 8 (5+T). One sentence teaches the system. (v2.26: cost ramp 10/20/30/40 → 4/6/8/10 to track the v2.25 Mine economy overhaul.)

The ten Houses

v2.26 balance pass: Habsburg aura migrated from starting Castle to King; Hohenstaufen free-release replaced with opponent-Gold ransom; Luxembourg teleport replaced with Mine-Extraction boost; Welf loser-discard retired (loser keeps card); Papal Holy See requires a Bishop on a Cathedral.

House	Ability (scales by tier N)
Habsburg	Spanish Inheritance (v2.26) — your King radiates an N-hex silencing aura. Enemy Castles, Mines, and Cathedrals within range are inert (no Pawn-immunity, no Extract yield, no Cathedral landing-bonus, no Tour Prestige). The aura travels with the King turn-by-turn. T1=adjacent (1 hex), T5=5 hexes. Binary & one-sided.
Hohenstaufen	Trophy Hall (v3.5) — captures go to your Trophy Hall (capacity N). Trophies cannot be Resurrected by your opponent at Court Ball (ransom-immune by default). Ransom: opponent may pay Gold equal to piece value (P=1, N=B=2, R=3, Q=5) to release one trophy back to the captured pile (Resurrect-eligible). Hohenstaufen receives the Gold. Click a trophy in the Trophy Hall on the opponent's turn to ransom.
Hohenzollern	Imperial Pretension — on Check, demand Tribute: name a suit, opponent must give you one card of that suit from their hand (or reveal their hand to prove they have none). N Tributes per Reign. No-show still spends a Tribute counter.
Luxembourg	Prague Mint (v3.5) — when you Extract (play a Diamonds card to gain Gold from your pieces on Mines), gain +Gold = min(Mines you hold, your Tier). T3 with 5 Mines = +3; T5 with 2 Mines = +2. Passive — always on. Theme: Charles IV's mint at Kutná Hora — the silver-mining wealth of Bohemia struck into the Prager Groschen, scaling with both your Mine footprint and your dynastic standing.
Árpád	Magyar Cavalry (v3.6) — after any of your pieces completes a move whose destination is in the enemy half (past the River), that piece may immediately step one additional hex in any direction as a free bonus move — no capture on the bonus step. Up to N bonus moves per Reign (T1=1 ... T5=5). The bonus move spends no card. Building effects (consecration, Cathedral discard-draw, Pawn promotion) resolve normally on the bonus landing hex. Theme: the steppe horseman’s hit-and-run.
Piast	Casimir's Recognition — on capture of a non-King enemy piece adjacent to a Castle you own, the captured piece defects: place it on the Castle hex (or any empty hex adjacent to the Castle if it's occupied). N defections per Reign.
Welf	Henry the Lion (v3.5) — once per turn (cooldown), declare a Tournament: both players blind-commit a card from hand, then reveal simultaneously. Your revealed card gets +T (tier) added to its rank before compare. T3 with a 7 = effective 10; T5 Ace = 19. Opponent's card is face value. Higher effective rank wins. Ties: >>>. Loser keeps their card (no hand-size loss); winner adds their card to their Court (counts toward Court Ball).
Wittelsbach	Heerschild Levy — Pawn cap is (5+N). Once per Reign, if below cap, click your House button to levy a fresh Pawn on any empty hex adjacent to your starting Castle.
Capet	Reims Anointment (v3.6) — your King OR Queen's first arrival at an owned Castle Coronates it (place a marker). Arrival at a neutral Castle CLAIMS it for Capet AND Coronates. Up to N times per Reign, instead of a normal card-play move, teleport your King or Queen from any hex to any Coronated Castle you own (the card must activate the royal piece by rank or alt-zone). Capture on landing is allowed. Player chooses which royal at action time. Coronation persists while the Castle stands.
Papal States	Excommunication (v3.5) — once per Reign, FREE: disable an enemy piece for one full turn. Range = N hexes from your Holy See. The Holy See is a separate, persistent designation: click Designate Holy See on your House panel (free side-action) to anchor it on a Cathedral where your Bishop stands (in Coronation, also Cathedral you own). If your Holy See is "lost" (Bishop dies or Cathedral lost), re-designating costs your full turn slot. Voluntary re-designation while valid is not allowed.

Ten distinct reward currencies: silenced enemy buildings, Trophy Hall + ransom Gold, Tribute cards, boosted Mine yield, extended Knight options, defected pieces, Tournament Court-add, Pawns, Coronated Castles, disabled pieces. Nine pay no Gold directly; Luxembourg's Prague Mint is the lone Gold-receiving exception (doubly contested via Diamonds-draw + Mine occupation).