1. Core Draft & Selection
Every round, you are dealt 8 cards from a multi-deck shoe. You have 15 seconds to select exactly 5 cards to lock into your combat hand. If the timer runs out, your highest cards are auto-selected.
2. Royal Court & Modifiers
- King (The Tyrant): Copies the highest total hand value of any player in the ring. Warning: Two or more Kings cancel each other out (redundant / 0 value).
- Queen (The Sanctuary): Provides full defense against any opposing hand that does not contain a King.
- Jack (The Riot): Multiplies the value of all non-royal cards in your hand by 2.
3. Ace Mutations (Wildcards)
Aces hold a base value of 1. When paired with Royal cards, they corrupt or invert their behavior:
- Ace + King: Reverts the hand's highest value card (including doubled Jack cards) into a negative penalty.
- Ace + Queen: Turns defensive protection into a -2 point penalty on cards (avoid this combination!).
- Ace + Jack: Supercharges the riot, multiplying non-royal cards by 4 instead of 2.
4. Ring Combat & Leaderboards
Hands are pitted against adjacent players in a continuous ring (P1 vs P2, P2 vs P3...). Combat net points are calculated by subtracting the lesser score from the greater score. Players with Kings always outrank players without Kings. Your net positive combat points are added to your rolling 1-hour hourly score ledger. Every 10 rounds, the geopolitical order of kingdoms is randomly shuffled!