King's Cloak

Welcome to the royal court! The King has requested each of you, the best tailors in the land, to construct for him a cloak. He has provided you the finest of materials. Whomever creates the most magnificent masterpiece will be appointed Royal Tailor!

King’s Cloak is a card game for 2-6 players. Each player constructs a cloak from 15 cards over the course of the game. Playing adjacent cards of the same suit gives a multiplicative score bonus. At the end, the player with the highest-scoring cloak wins!

A unique mechanic, the "King's Favor", allows a player to steal a card from the other tailors. However, once used, the Favor passes to the player whose card was stolen, to compensate their loss.


Gameplay:
Each player starts the game with four cards and discards one, in secret, out of the game. On your turn, you both draw a card from the deck and receive a card from the prior player. The first player takes one fewer card on their first turn, but begins the game with the King's Favor, which allows them to steal a card from another player.

Each turn you must choose one card from your hand to sew into your cloak in one of 15 locations, connected to an already-sewn piece of cloth. Strategic placement of cards and careful hand management are the keys to success. Adjacent cards of the same suit multiply their values, whereas adjacent cards of different suits sum their values. You must watch out for the special cuts of cloth with negative values, however. They will boost your score if you place them next to each other, turning the negative values positive, but decrease your score if you don't plan carefully.

After sewing a card into your cloak, you pass a different card than the one you received on to the next player. You'll want to try to keep the best cards for yourself and also avoid passing cards that will help the player after you. Similarly, you'll want to avoid helping the player with the King's Favor, who can steal the card you pass out of turn. But beware, you may not always have the option to avoid helping your opponents.

The game ends when all players have completed their cloaks. Scoring is conducted by multiplying values of adjacent cards of the same suit and summing the results. The player with the highest-scoring cloak wins the game.


-credits:
"Crown" icon above by Madeleine Bennett from the Noun Project (thenounproject.com).