Intrigue in the Royal Court

Each player represents a royal family that is attempting to influence the King or the Queen of an Ancient Kingdom in order to gain the royal favor that will make you become the next most powerfull family in the land.

In order to achieve the goal the players will have 10 (Ten) Archetypes they will use to surround the Royal Consort of their color with as much influence as possible.

The player who uses with cunning the resources at his/her disposal will be the winner.

SETUP

Each player will place his/her 10 tiles with the ACTIVE (This is the side with the banner) side up in his/her Activation Zone (Area close to the player where all the archetypes will enter play or return from play)

Place the king and the queen in the middle ground between the players in the same row with 2 spaces between them.

The game will be played in an imaginary grid with each space the size of one tile.

GAMEPLAY

Flip a coin, roll a die, find your method of convenience to choose a first player.

The game will be played in turns one player at a time. On your turn you must do the following actions:

1. PLAY A TILE from your Activation Area.

The first tile played by each player WILL NOT ACTIVATE ITS ABILITY. So it is very important you choose well which of your archetypes wont be used in the beginning of the game.

A tile played must always be adjacent to another tile (even diagonally) So you cannot place a tile anywhere in the imaginary grid.

A tile played always enters the game on the side it was in the Activation Area. So if the tile played was ACTIVE it stays with the side of the banner up and if the tile was INACTIVE it stays with the side that has a token drawn.

Consider INACTIVE tiles as protected from abilities when they are in PLAY since abilities cannot target INACTIVE tiles. It´s a very good strategy to keep this in mind because an opponent won´t be able to affect one of your INACTIVE tiles.

2. ACTIVE its ability (if possible)

Tiles that have been affected by an ability are turned to the INACTIVE SIDE (the one with the token on it). Same happens with the King and Queen.

Abilities cannot affect tiles that are in play with the INACTIVE SIDE up. This means that once a tile has been turned to the INACTIVE SIDE it´s safe on the board. It can be moved as usual by its owner but will not altered by an opponent.

3. MOVE ONE OF YOUR TILES IN PLAY ONE SPACE (diagonally or perpendicularly)

Notice that the joker has a special ability that allows you to move ONE MORE TIME after you placed it. This is a very strategical ability that can make big difference when you are trying to reposition a high influence tile on your turn or when you want to remove an opponent tile as well. Under no circumstance a tile can end up or move over another tile in the table.

When you move a tile it must always end adjacent to another tile. So you cannot move it on empty space unless it ended there due to the movement of the other tiles.

END GAME & WINNING CONDITIONS

The game will end when one of this two conditions happen:

1. One player starts his/her turn with his target consort surrounded by his own tiles (perpendicularly).

The victory is total. The more you play the less this condition is going to happen.

2. The players have played all of their tiles.

Once the players have played all of their tiles comes the scoring. For this step only the tiles that surround PERSPERNDICULARLY (up, down and sides) each royal consort will count. Add all the influence numbers in the tiles, PLUS all the tokens if there are INACTIVE tiles among them (each one is worth 1 point) MINUS the total influence on the tiles your opponent has surrounding your royal consort. Compare this numbers... the player with the most influence WINS the game. In case of a tie... you are both too smart to outwit each other :)

COMPONENTS

20 double sided tiles 1 king 1 queen