Regicide

¶ Setup

• Build the Castle Deck:
  • Shuffled Jacks, on top of shuffled Queens, on top of Shuffled Kings.
  • Flip the top card.
• Shuffle all the non-face cards together into the Tavern Deck
  • Everyone draws up to maximum hand size.
  • (Mulligan if you don’t have any diamonds.)

¶ The Royals to ‘Cide

• A Royal is “immune” to their own suit.
  • Those cards can still be used to attack,
  • but suit abilities don’t activate while a matching Royal is active.
  • Jokers cancel immunity.

¶ Each Turn:

1. Play a card or cards onto the table. Do one of the following and determine X.
   • Play a single card. X = the rank of that card.
     • Jacks count as 10, Queens as 15, Kings as 20.
   • Play a matching set of low valued cards. X = the total sum of those cards.
     • The cards must be the same rank.
     • Their sum must be no greater than 10.
   • Play an Ace along with any other non-joker card. The Ace adds +1 to the other card’s X.
   • Play a joker:
     • The current Royal’s immunity is cancelled.
     • Skip the rest of the turn (The Royal doesn’t get to attack.)
     • Choose which player takes the next turn.
   • Or yield. X = 0.
     • The rest of the turn still happens.
2. Activate the Suit Powers of the cards played.
   • If you played multiple cards, then activate the power of each played suit.
   • ♥ Hearts: Refill the deck.
     1. Shuffle the discard pile.
     2. Draw X cards at random from the discard pile.
     3. Put those cards on the bottom of the Tavern Deck (without looking at them).
   • ♦ Diamonds: Draw cards.
     • Starting with the current player, go around in clockwise order drawing cards until X cards have been drawn or hands are full.
   • ♠ Spades: Shield.
     • The current Royal’s attack is permanently reduced by X.
   • ♣ Clubs: Double damage towards beating the royal.
3. Check if the Royal is Defeated.
   1. Deal X damage to the Royal.
      • If the Royal’s health < 0, then place the Royal in the discard pile.
      • If the Royal’s health = 0, then place the Royal on top of the Tavern deck.
   2. Flip over the next Royal, and discard all cards on the table.
   3. The current player immediately starts a new turn.
4. Suffer damage by discarding cards.
   • Discard cards until the total value of the discarded cards meets or exceeds the Royal’s attack power.
   • If the current player runs out, then the next player has to start discarding cards.
   • If all the players run out of cards, then they lose.

¶ Single Player Variant

8-card max hand size, 0 jokers in deck. Twice per game, you can discard your hand to refill back to 8 cards.

Regicide, by Paul Abrahams, Luke Badger, and Andy Richdale