The Royal Court

Those pesky royals, always using their influence for their own needs, and for what? Power...

Normal Use

As an action, you can play a jack, queen, and king together into the space in front of you (not onto the discard pile). Like castles, this action is unnopable. Unlike castles, these cards do still need to be played in the future.

• With any cards from the royal court, these cards count as "in your hand", even though they are visible to other players.
• When you play the royal court, all the cards in the court are upgraded by one:
  • Jacks now roll with one die higher as per the dice law.
  • Queens differ depending on the number of players:
    • With just two players, queens grant one additional action on top of the normal, i.e., with a once-upgraded queen, you get two extra actions after playing the queen.
    • With more than two players, you can choose who plays next and in which direction they play (you cannot choose yourself to play next). When upgrading more than once, this power is not upgraded beyond this.
      • "Who plays next" takes place immediately after your turn is over.
  • Kings now swap one extra card with an opponent. If the opponent does not have enough cards in their hand to switch, they must draw from the draw pile until they do.
• Note that playing the royal court is an action, i.e., you cannot begin playing these cards on the same turn unless you have multiple actions.

Other Players

• Whenver you play a royal court, every player must reveal all of their royal cards and place them similarly on the space in front of them, face-up. Think of this as a game of politics: all the royals must show up to big events to maintain their reputation.
• Players do not need to reveal new royals that they pick up during a royal court unless another royal court is played.
• When the royal court is disbanded (i.e., the original player plays all of their cards or the original royal court is executed), players should take back these cards into their hands.
• If multiple royal courts are in play at the same time, players with cards on the table can only take these back to their hands when all are disbanded.

Multiple Royal Courts

• Multiple royal courts may be in play at the same time. If you are lucky enough to play more than one, all the cards in all your courts are upgraded once more. These upgrades last only as long as the royal courts last. For example:
  • Leviathan plays a jack, rolls a 2, then plays 2 royal courts for his two actions.
  • On his next turn, he starts by playing one of his jacks; as he has played two royal courts and both are still active, this jack is twice-upgraded, meaning it rolls 1d8 instead.
  • In this case the jack rolls 4, so Leviathan plays another jack, again rolling 1d8 as both courts are still in play.
  • He is lucky enough to roll a 7, but Jeremias nopes it, leaving him with 3 actions left.
  • He uses his next action to play a king-queen combo, with both a twice-upgraded king and twice-upgraded queen. As it details in the king-queen combo rules, this means he gets to take three cards from his opponent and try again up to three times, if he likes.
  • He now has two actions left. For his first, he plays the last remaining queen, using it to specify that he would like Jeremias to go next and to play clockwise.
  • Finally, he plays his last remaining king. However, there is now only one royal court in play. This king is upgraded only once. He takes two cards from his opponent and switches them with two of his own.

Protected Royal Courts

A royal court is protected if the player holding it also has a castle in front of them. Keep the royal court behind the castle to signify this.

• Any protected royal court is not executed by a revolution until the castle is destroyed. Note that you still need to play these cards, however they have no function any longer (as per the revolution rules).
• Players that did not start the royal court, but have cards in front of them as a result, may also protect these cards with castles.
  • As before, if the original royal court in play is disbanded or executed, these players should take their cards back into their hands.

Swapping Cards

Players cannot swap cards from or out of a royal court. For instance, if someone else plays a king, they cannot attempt to take cards from a royal court. Similarly any "guests" cannot be taken or swapped out.

Using the Royal Court in Combos

You may take the cards out of the royal court to play in combos as usual, but ensure that you are careful when combining upgraded and non-upgraded cards.

Doubling Up

No, you cannot play a double, triple, or quadruple royal court in the same action.