Queen Alice

Setup

To prepare the game, follow these steps:

• Place the central board, four action boards, and card market board in the center of the table using the side matching your player count (p. 24).
• Set up the chessboard by drawing a random player reference tile and arranging the chess pieces as shown on its back (p. 24). Form a random set of four Wish tiles and place them face-up on the Wish spaces (p. 24).
• Place the appropriate number of crown tiles on the bottom of the central board with their "x2" side facing up (8 for 4 players, 7 for 3 players, 6 for 2 players) (p. 24). Place the Red and White Alice pieces at the start of their paths (p. 24).
• Shuffle the bronze, silver, and gold card decks and fill the card market (p. 24).
• Each player takes a courtier board, tokens, player reference tile, starting cubes, black cubes, and their 10 starting basic cards shuffled into a deck, drawing 3 cards for a starting hand (p. 22). Choose train cards to determine starting bonuses, and place the Influence point marker on space "0" of the track (p. 22).

How a Turn Works

Each player's turn proceeds through four phases — three required and one optional (p. 3):

1. Discard a card: Choose a card from your hand to discard, place it face-up in your discard pile, and receive its discard reward (p. 3).
2. Play a card: Choose a second card from your hand to play, placing it over the discarded card on your pile to receive any play reward and move the indicated chess piece according to standard chess rules (p. 3). Alternatively, you can "rescue" a piece from jail instead of moving it (p. 3).
3. Repeat action (optional): Once per turn, you may optionally pay 6 Time to repeat the action just performed in the same colour, paying its action cost without playing a new card (p. 20).
4. Rest (clean-up): Refresh your hand up to the limit (usually 3 cards), slide and replenish the card market, flip used per-turn bookmarks back to active, and score any Wishes triggered by Alice reaching a Wish space this turn (p. 20).

How the Game Ends

The end of the game is triggered when the last crown is removed from the crown display (p. 1, 2). Play then continues to the end of the current round so that all players receive an equal number of turns, ending once the player to the right of the one holding the Looking-glass token has finished their turn (p. 1, 2).

Final scoring includes: Alice's coronation (awarding 8 IP per crown of the winning colour and flipping upgraded Wish tiles), progress on the Cat tracks to score Alice's Wishes, IP from Invited cards, and IP from final scoring bookmarks (p. 7). The player with the most Influence points wins (p. 7).