There are a lot of chits, but that's pretty normal. The board is interesting - you deal out a series of mostly random hexes of various terrain types face-up so that every game is different.
The goal of the game is to build the first citadel, with no one else building one the same turn. If someone else does, the first person to capture a citadel wins.
The turn looks like this, where everyone completes a step before going onto the next.
- Collect your income (basically your hexes, special chits, and strengths of fortresses)
- Try to hire special mercenaries *
- Draw chits from the cup (number of draws = hexes/2) *
- Add monster chits to your hexes as your troops
- Play an event chit (optional)
- Move any/all of your monster/mercenary chits
- Battle *
- Build up fortresses - Towers to Keeps to Castles to Citadels *
Let's briefly talk about chits - there's gold chits and fortress chits in the bank. There's a limited number of special mercenaries to hire. Then there's the CUP. It has treasures, chits that are added to hexes to increase income, event chits, magic item chits, and mostly monster chits.
The monster chits have 3 values - the terrain type they are supported by, a combat value (sometimes including a first-striking or double-striking notation), and possibly flying. These monster chits start face-down until they are forced to reveal through combat or blocking - if you don't own the supporting terrain type, it dies...until then, it's a bluff.
Combat is simple - the monster value is 1-6, and you have to roll on or below it to do a hit. During combat, each player lines up their creatures and rolls dice for each combat speed category - Magic, then Missile, then Melee. You roll a hit, it removes one chit from your opponent's spread. Everyone resolves their Magic before going into Missile, etc.
There is light exploration in the beginning - any hex not controlled by a player has random chits added. 1 & 6 mean no chits, while 2-5 is that many chits.
Money is so completely important, that it drives the game. You can buy extra chit draws, increase your chances of hiring special mercenaries, bribe NPC chits into leaving, and increase your fortresses (giving you income and more defenses).
Therefore, where you spend your money is where players go in different directions. If you spread out and capture lots of hexes, you'll have more monster-types supported...but maybe more fragile when it comes to holding turf. You can build up fortresses, but then you're giving space to other players (but you need a citadel and an income of 20 to win the game). And buying chits - well, you don't know what you'll get. Let's guess at least 120 different chits in the cup.
It's not a tremendously deep game, but the combat is fast and there's enough going on that it doesn't feel like you're flipping a coin. I'll play it when my friend Rob brings it over.
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