Play multiple hands of trick-taking. Win an exact number of tricks, aided by your allies' special abilities, to win a hand. Win enough stars from hands to win the game.

Game modes

There are two ways to play the game: the standard game, or one of the 16 scenarios.

The following are the rules for the standard game. Scenarios put a twist on the standard game; see #Scenarios for more details about them.

Game overview

The game uses two kinds of cards: dialogue cards and character cards.

Dialogue cards are the cards used to play. They come in 4 suits (claws, flowers, leaves, eyes) and 8 ranks (1-8), for a total of 32 dialogue cards. During the game, dialogue cards will be either in the deck, in your hand, in the discard pile, or in the score pile.

Character cards have a suit and a special ability. There are 6 cards in each of the 4 suits, for a total of 24 character cards. All special abilities are unique.

There is a row of 8 fiefs. Each fief has a certain number of stars, and requires a specific number of tricks won. From left to right:

Each fief begins with a character card, called its ruler. Each ruler is initially neutral to you; your goal is to make them friendly.

You begin with 4 character cards, referred to as your allies.

The game is divided into 8 visits. Each visit follows the procedure below.

One visit

Each visit is played following the steps below:

1. 1. Shuffle the dialogue cards, and deal 8 cards as your hand. The rest becomes the deck.
2. 2. Choose an unvisited fief to visit. The suit of its ruler becomes the trump suit for the hand.
3. 3. Choose any number of friendly rulers to temporarily substitute an equal number of your allies.
4. 4. Play tricks until the visit ends. (See #One trick for rules on playing tricks.)
5. 5. If the number of cards in your score pile is exactly the fief's number, you have won the fief. Its ruler becomes friendly to you. Otherwise, you have lost the fief.
6. 6. If you substituted in any ruler (from step 3), remove them from the game. You will begin the next visit with your 4 allies again.

If there is still an unvisited fief, repeat this procedure. Thus you will play a total of 8 visits; each fief will be visited exactly once during the game.

One trick

The bulk of the visit is in playing out tricks. Each trick is played following the steps below:

1. 1. Choose if you want to activate any one special ability. You have access to any ability of allies that you didn't substitute out, as well as any ruler you brought for the hand. Each ability can be activated once during the visit.
2. 2. If your hand or the deck is empty, skip the rest of this procedure. The visit ends (see step 7 below).
3. 3. Place the top card of the deck into the discard pile. This is the ruler's statement.
4. 4. Play a card from your hand. This is your response. You must follow suit if able, i.e. play a card with the same suit as the ruler's statement. If you cannot follow suit, you may play any card from your hand.
5. 5. Determine if your response beats the ruler's statement:
   • • If your response is the same suit as the ruler's statement and your rank is higher, you win the trick.
   • • If your response is the trump suit and the ruler's statement is not the trump suit, you win the trick.
   • • In all other cases, you lose the trick.
6. 6. If you won the trick, put the played card into your score pile. If you lost the trick, put the played card into the discard pile (on top of the statement).
7. 7. If your hand or the deck is empty, the visit ends and you proceed to check if you won this visit. If neither is empty, the visit continues with the next trick.

Abilities

Each character card has a special ability.

During a hand, you have access to 4 of them. Normally, these are your 4 allies.

However, at the beginning of each hand, you may choose to substitute out some allies with friendly rulers (i.e. rulers from fiefs you have won). You must do the substitutions before you begin playing tricks for the hand.

You may only use abilities before a trick (i.e. before you reveal the ruler's statement), and you may only use one ability before each trick.

Each ability can only be used once during a hand. Once used, the character will be exhausted (represented by dimming out on BGA). However, allies will refresh between hands, so you may activate each ally once every hand.

Each friendly ruler may only substitute in once. Whether their ability is used or not, they are removed from the game after the hand concludes.

If you use an ability, you must do it in full. If you cannot, it does nothing. The exception is that you may move cards from piles that don't have enough of them.

For example: The ability of Queen of Claws is "draw the top card from the deck, the discard pile, and the score pile". If any of them is empty, you may still activate her to draw from the other piles.

See #List of abilities for a list of all character cards.

Game end

The game ends after all 8 visits.

Each fief you won awards stars according to the fief. You get the stars regardless of whether its ruler has been called in to substitute or not.

Each fief you lost gives no stars.

In total, there are 20 stars available. You win if you score 16 stars or higher.

Important points

• • Unlike usual trick-taking games, the ruler (the deck) always leads tricks no matter who won the previous trick.
• • You can click on the discard pile and the score pile to fan out their contents. They cannot be rearranged, however.
• • When moving multiple cards to the discard pile or score pile at once, you may choose their order by clicking the cards in the order you want. They are moved to the pile in that order; the last card clicked is the one on top.
• • There is no undo. Make sure you click correctly. There are game options to add various confirmations.
• • The win condition is set at 16 stars out of 20. The more difficult win conditions available in the physical rulebook are not compatible with the scenarios, and are too luck-based.

Game options

When creating a table, you may choose the game mode: "single game" or "scenario mode".

In "single game" mode, you may choose whether to play a standard game or any of the scenarios. There are 3 options for standard games:

• • "Introductory setup": Your 4 allies are the 4 Jacks. The 8 rulers are the 4 Queens and the 4 Kings, in random order.
• • "Standard setup": Your 4 allies consist of 1 random character from each suit. The 8 rulers consist of 2 random characters from each suit, in random order.
• • "Custom setup": When you start the game, you first choose your allies, then the rulers. You may choose up to 4 allies in any combination: it doesn't have to be 1 per suit, and you may even choose fewer allies. You may choose 8 rulers in any combination (it doesn't have to be 2 per suit), and the order you click them is the order of the rulers from left (fief 0) to right (fief 7).

You may also choose any one of the 16 scenarios.

In "scenario mode", you play through the 16 scenarios one by one. You may start at any scenario; BGA will also remember if you've played before, and the "Start/continue" option will let you start a new run or continue from your last scenario.

During the game, the following options are available:

• • "Display confirmation": When enabled, there is a confirmation button to every click (activating abilities and playing cards)."
• • "Display automatic visit completion button": When enabled, if your hand is guaranteed to lose every remaining trick (or sometimes win every remaining trick), a button will pop up that allows you to play out the hand automatically. The check is pretty rudimentary; you must be holding the lowest cards (i.e. 1, 2, 3, ...) of non-trump cards, in order for the button to appear. (For the auto-win, you must be holding the highest trumps and no other card.)

List of abilities

See this BGG thread for a list of all abilities, together with some frequently asked questions.

Scenarios

See this file on BGG for the scenarios.