The Old King's Crown

Overview & Aim You play as the head of your own faction, staking a claim to the future of the kingdom after the old king's departure (p. 2). To win, you must accrue the most Influence (represented by i tokens) in your supply by the end of the game (p. 16).

Setup Before beginning, players choose a game length: a standard game of five rounds, a short game of four rounds, or an extended game of six rounds (p. 25). Players set up the central play area and player boards by following these key steps:

• Place the central Kingdom Board, Councils Tile, Reserve (holding i and lore p tokens), and Great Road (populated with neutral Kingdom Cards) within reach of all players (p. 27).
• Players choose or randomly determine their factions, taking the corresponding Player Board, Herald, Supporters, Faction Deck, Site of Power Tile, and asymmetric Tactic Tiles (p. 4, 26).
• Players set their starting hand size, place their starting cards and markers, and determine the starting player order (p. 4, 27).

How a Round Works The game is played over a fixed number of rounds representing years, with each round broken into five seasonal phases and individual steps (p. 2, 4, 10). Players move through these phases together as a group:

• Start of the Year: Players draw cards up to their hand size and determine turn order based on supplies of i (p. 4). This phase is skipped in the first round (p. 4).
• Spring: Players use cards from their hands to bid on neutral Kingdom Cards on the Great Road, declare their intentions by placing Heralds onto locations, place cards next to regions, and activate available actions and commands (p. 10).
• Summer: Clashes take place across the three regions of the map when players reveal their face-down cards (p. 10). Players use multi-use cards, supporters, and abilities to win rewards in the region (p. 10).
• Autumn: Players put plans into motion by utilizing free Govern and Journey actions—allowing them to invest in Councils or spend p tokens to acquire advanced faction and HQ cards from their sites of power—followed by playing actions (p. 9, 10).
• Winter: Players simultaneously resolve any winter effects, perform cleanup (returning pieces, removing clash markers and active cards), and advance the round marker on the round track (p. 14).

How the Game Ends The game ends at the end of the final round, once the round marker reaches the last slot of the round track (p. 9). Players then tally up the i tokens in their supply, and the player with the most influence is declared the winner (p. 9).

If players tie for the most influence, the winner is determined by the following tiebreakers:

• The tied player who has control of the Kingdom’s Favour B wins (p. 9).
• If none of the tied players have it, the tied player who is highest on the Order Track wins (p. 9).