IncogniK - Incognito King - board game online

Rules of the game IncogniK - Incognito King

The main game modes:

• Closed Game - the default game mode is the standard closed game. None of the players can see the opponent's pieces either at the beginning or in the middle of the game until a piece performs an action - attacks the opponent's piece, opens a card of the cup with living water or poison. When a player's card and an opponent's card exchange places, they are revealed face up, but do not engage in combat without knowing their opponent.
• Closed start - players place pieces and fix their layout without knowing how their opponent will place the pieces. The cards are revealed only after the game has started, which ensures that the probable course of the game cannot be calculated before the game starts.
• Open play is a standard fixed layout where each piece is known before the game starts and is arranged in a given order, from left to right: King, Lady, Footman, Knight, Counsellor. The opponent's pieces in relation to the player are arranged in reverse order - from right to left: King, Lady, Footman, Knight, Counsellor.

The main options for the game:

• Standard variant with throne and cups - The goal of the game is to capture the throne, which can only be done by the King, who manages to sit on the throne for one turn and next turn to capture the throne - to get the crown, this is the main goal of the game by default and by the original idea of the game by its author. To the right and left of the throne room there are cups with poison or living water, which either take the piece that drank the cup out of the game, or give an advantage - one life in case of an attack by a stronger opponent's piece.
• Standard variant without cups - The aim of the game is the same - to capture the throne, but unlike the standard variant with cups, there are no cups in this variant of the game, so none of the players can gain an accidental advantage or fail by using a cup by a piece in the field to the right or left of the throne (in the refectory rooms).
• Additional mode - Survival Game - the goal of the game is to defeat the opponent's king, the game lasts until complete victory when the king is defeated, or until a draw - when the players are left with a set of cards that cannot end in victory for either side, in this mode capturing the throne would not matter as long as there is a threat from the opponent.

Length of the game, time limit per turn:

• The duration of a move is set; similar to chess, a move can be limited to 90 seconds, 1 minute, 30 seconds. An additional option allows you to allocate a limited amount of time for each player: 3, 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes per game.

A description of the highlights of the game:

• Each player has 5 cards - King, Queen, Counsellor, Knight and Footman. One player plays with black and the other player with white pieces (The colours of the player's and opponent's pieces can include not only black and white variants, but also other colours). The player places the cards on the row nearest to himself on the board in random order, face up - picture down, so that the opponent can neither know nor guess how you have arranged the pieces.
• The order of moves is arbitrary, the first can be both white and black pieces, so the choice of colour is determined at will and does not affect the course of the game, so the online version of the game can assume the opponents play in one colour, while on the screen they will see their opponent in a different colour.
• In the tabletop version of the game, the turn order can be determined by taking turns drawing the cards that were dealt after determining the colour of their cards, until one of the players has a stronger card than the opponent. In the case of the online variant of the game, the turn order is determined by the choice of the "host" of the game room when it is created. The guest of the room can choose whether or not to join the created game according to the rules of the host of the room or to create a game room according to his own rules.
• The main goal of the game is to defeat the opponent's king. However, in the standard variant of the game, a player can win if his king takes the imperial throne and stays on it until his next turn. On his next turn, an incognito king in the throne room can claim the Imperial throne and win immediately if there is no enemy card on the four nearest squares - top, bottom, right or left - that can remove him from the throne, so players should be very careful about allowing an enemy king piece onto the throne room field. Being revealed, the king can instantly take the throne if there is no one to remove him from the throne next turn.
• Additional options - to the right and left of the throne room are goblets - at the start of the game 6 goblets (just for 3 rounds) are stirred and handed out, the goblets can contain either poison or living water, but no one can know where which goblet is located. It takes one turn to drink a goblet. Each cup can only be used once.
• Any piece that enters the field with a cup may spend its next turn using a cup whose contents are not known to the players by default, so it may be either living water, which gives any next piece that is hit the advantage of another chance, or poison, which immediately removes the piece from the game. Note that when using the cup, the piece reveals itself, thus putting the piece at greater risk and reducing the chances of other pieces remaining incognito.
• The lady on the cup field may, with her next move, place any of the player's available cups in place of the cup placed in the given cup field, however, she reveals herself, the contents of the cup that was placed in the refectory at the beginning of the game remaining unknown until the end of the game.
• Cups. The total number of cup cards is 6, of which 3 are poison and 3 are living water (poison kills the character if the card is used, living water saves once from killing the next card under attack). Two random cards are placed in the right and left refectory, two are dealt to the player and two to the player's opponent, so the contents of two of the six cups are already known to the players.
• The pieces can go in any direction for one square with some restrictions: vertically and horizontally they can change places with other pieces, including the opponent's pieces, diagonally they can go only on an empty square.
• A move to a field occupied by an opponent's piece swaps the pieces, and the cards are revealed and turned face up. A player cannot win a battle with an incognito piece, he can only exchange places with it and reveal its identity by moving towards it. On the other hand, the incognito piece can attack and defeat the obviously weaker uncovered piece, but by attacking the obviously stronger piece, the incognito piece will lose, while forcing the stronger piece to switch places with its move.
• If the player's piece is stronger than the opponent's piece, the opponent's piece is eliminated. If the player's piece is weaker than the opponent's piece, the player's piece is eliminated from the game. Thus, the opponent's card takes the place from which the player's card came, and the player's card takes the place of the opponent's card, regardless of the outcome of the "battle" between these cards.
• Kings are the only pieces that can beat each other, so when one king attacks another, the king who made the move beats the opponent's king and ends the game with a victory.
• By swapping places with their own pieces, the player does not reveal their incognito state.
• Once the cards have been swapped, the cards do not have the opportunity to swap back and return to their original place during the next turn, the same applies to allied cards belonging to the player.
• The first line on which cards are placed at the start of the game cannot be reoccupied by a card that has left it, however, with a card still on the first line, cards may change places, including an opponent's card attacking a card in the starting position.
• Players may not swap between their own cards and the opponent's card while on the front lines (sleeping rooms).

	King	Lady	Footman	Cavalier	Advisor
King
Lady
Footman
Cavalier
Advisor

Explanation of the table: flag - surrender, arrows - change places, swords - capture.