turncoats
Turncoats is a competitive game for 2-5 players, where three factions are at war. The players take on the role of Aspirants and Interlopers, not obviously tied to any one group. Instead, they must manage their loyalties, represented by stones in their hand that they keep hidden from everyone else.
During the game, players spend stones from their hand to take actions with the matching faction. However, they need to keep a tight eye on their remaining stones and the tiebreakers, as at the end of the game, the winning faction will choose the player with the most stones remaining in their hand as the new ruler.
LB_NUMBER_OF_PLAYERS: 2 - 5
Game duration: 10 mn
Complexity: 2 / 5
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Play turncoats and 846 other games online.
No download, directly from your web browser.
With your friends and thousands of players from the whole world.
Free.
Rules summary
Overview
The players are trying to obtain the best control over the neutral pieces on the map, once all players take the negotiate action consecutively, the game ends
Control
A colour has control of a space if it either has clear majority OR it ties and has majority on the AXE space OR it ties on the space and AXE space but has majority on the FLAG space
Turn
On your turn, you can take one of the four actions:
| Recruit | Place a stone from your hand onto a normal space in the map |
|---|---|
| Battle | Place a stone from your hand onto the AXE space and pick a normal space, each stone of that colour then attacks and kills one other stone of a different colour of your choice e.g. in a space there are 3 blues, a black and 2 reds, you place a red on the AXE space and pick this particular normal space, so can kill (remove) up to 2 non-reds as there are 2 reds present, this can be 2 blues, or 1 blue and the 1 black |
| March | Place a stone from your hand onto the FLAG space then pick an a normal space, 1 or more matching stones from that space can move to one adjacent space, but cannot be split up i.e. only 2 areas will be affected, the start and the end |
| Negotiate | Take a stone out of the bag and put a stone back, this can be the same or different, you take secretly but return viewable to all. If there is a full round where every player has Negotiated in turn, the game ends. |
Scoring
Once a round of Negotiation has ended the game, first figure out which colour has won:
• The colour with control over the most normal spaces wins.
• If tied, compare the tied colours first with the AXE space then the FLAG space to break the tie.
• If still tied, no colour wins, therefore all colours lose, and you go on to player tie-breakers.
Whoever holds the most pieces of the winning colour in their hand is the winning player. If tied, compare stones from all losing colours (i.e. the ones in 2nd and 3rd place, or all stones if no colour won) and the player who holds the least losing stones wins. If still tied, turn order determines the winner.
