Royal Court

Royal Court is a two player game using a standard deck of poker cards with the jokers, two 6-sided dice, and 9 Favor tokens of some sort.  To set up the game, separate the face cards from the Jokers and ace through ten cards.  Then the face cards are shuffled and dealt into a 3 by 4 grid, that will make up the Royal Court, which the players will navigate using their respective player die.  The ace through ten cards are split into their four suits, and then each player takes one suit of each color for their draw deck.  After this, they shuffle their decks and draw a hand of five, and then determine where to place their Jokers.  They must place it one side of the Royal Court, next to two cards within the court, but both players are not allowed to place their’s on the same side. They finally place their player die on their Joker, with the one pip face up.  These two players take on the role of a jester who is attempting to win over the Royal court.  They will do this by playing quips on the Kings, charming the Queens to gain their favor, and utilize the Jacks of the trade to manipulate their opponents.

There are specific movement rules for each card in the Royal Court, and the Jokers. which you can simply move to either adjacent card.  Jokers are set by each player at the start, adjacent to two cards within the Royal Court, so moving from a Joker means you have two options.  From the Kings, the players can move to any adjacent card to that King, meaning it has a number of possibilities, depending on where that King lies. From a Queen, a player may move anywhere within that Queens row, which gives players three options. Moving from a Jack, players must remain in that Jack’s column.

Once a player has moved to a new card, they initiate a Jest, except when moving back to a Joker.  When a Jest takes place, each player must play a a card matching the color of the In addition to each face card having a different movement rule, they also have their own Winning Jest Scores, and Win Results. Unless the players happen to be on the same card, only the initiator (the one who moved onto the new card), may gain the Win Result for that Jest.  When moving to a King, the player who plays the highest car, wins. The initiator may gain one Quip Point for winning.  If a player moves to a Queen, the lowest card wins, and the initiator may gain a Favor Token for winning.  Finally, on a Jack, the initiating player decides whether high of low will win, before the players play their cards.  When the initiator wins on a Jack, they may take away a point of their choosing, either a Favor Token or Quip Point. If there are none to take, the initiating player gains a Favor Token instead.  The end game trigger is when a player reaches six quip points, which is indicated by them turning their die with the six pip face up. The players will then compare scores, and whoever has the most points, Quip points and Favor points, wins.

—description from the publisher