Premium Heir to the Phoenix Crown

Premium

This Premium edition of Heir to the Phoenix Crown includes:

• The base game: Heir to the Phoenix Crown, plus
• Its expansion: Fae Followers.

In addition, the premium edition has the following upgrades:

• Solid clear boxes to hold the primary game cards (instead of flexible boxes)
• Tins to hold the smallest cards of the game (instead of no particular container)
• A luxurious linen finish to the cards
• A larger, sturdier (stout) box to hold all the game components

Theme

You are the rightful heir to the Phoenix Crown. Unfortunately, your fellow players, the usurpers, believe the same about themselves. To claim your crown, you will recruit a retinue and task them with attaining wealth, recruiting partisans, and inspiring luminaries to your cause.

You obtain your Phoenix Crown (and win the game) by obtaining the most royalty credibility (points). Royal credibility is found in your castle and its grounds. Also, luminaries drawn to your cause also yield royal credibility with the impressionable masses.

In the context of the game, your retinue, wealth, and properties are your deck, which you are continually building throughout the game. The individuals in your retinue are called your partisans and luminaries. The cards in your deck are the source of your royalty points.

Directly after the death of childless Queen Nuria (at the beginning of the game), each noble vying for the Phoenix Crown has a few family heirlooms, some wealth, a small holding, a tent, and a partisan.

Thematically, each day you will utilize the wealth, partisans and holdings currently in your vicinity to bring you closer to your rightful crown. Or, plainly, each turn you'll use the cards in your hand, discard them, and draw new cards from your deck to use on your next turn.

To acquire retinue and holdings that provide royalty creditability, you'll need to first work on collecting an effective following which works toward your cause. Your retinue and wealth provide six types of assets, and you'll need plenty of each type in order to purchase valuable lands and win the hearts of important personages.

Note: While many board games have an over-sized box that could hold four or five times the components, I've carefully crafted every game I've designed to perfectly fit the box it comes in. This means less wasted paper, lower print costs, and saved space on your game shelf! It also means my games are more portable.

Game Components

Partisans and luminaries are the cards in your deck that have abilities. These people need to reside somewhere to work for you in your employment, so when you play them, you house them in either a tent or a castle. (Luminaries require a castle unless you have the trait of being charismatic and can thus convince them to follow you even if you can only offer a tent.) Luminaries give you royalty credibility, but partisans do not.

Castles and tents are your properties. Castles remain in play and do not return to your deck at the end of your turn, whereas tents return to your deck. You start with one castle called a Cob Home and one tent in your base deck. Castles are worth royalty credibility at the end of the game, and tents are not.

Wealth provides you with assets (as do your retinue cards – partisans and luminaries) but they do not have any special abilities, nor do they require a castle to be put into play.

Potions are one-time use cards that may impact you, the usurpers, or you and the usurpers together in an unpredictable way. Usually potions are favorable, but sometimes they go awry. Potions are put into play by certain partisans.

Spells are the same as potions except that they are more powerful, more consistently useful, and they are put into play by luminaries.

To see and understand the game components better, refer to the “action shots” (images).

Actual Game Play

Charismatic Sonya recruits a luminary to her cause, despite only having a tent for Amber's accommodations.

(Player #1, Sonya, has chosen the charismatic trait which allows her to acquire "luminaries" — unique and powerful cards — in her deck, even if she doesn't have any special castle cards in play.)

Matthew, using ample logic, purchases the Shroom Path, adding significantly to his royalty credibility.

(Player #2, Matthew, acquires the castle card called "Shroom Path" which is worth 2 points and requires 2 logic to purchase.)

Quick Moriah employs a Scholar causing all of the usurpers to add to their available options, but most importantly adding to her own options. Then Moriah employs an Acrobat who casts a spell, causing her assets to continue to multiply. She sends her retinue into town; Her Scholar returns with a Political Gift and her Acrobat returns with a fierce Tiger.

(Player #3, Moriah, draws 6 cards instead of 5 because she has the "Quick" trait. She places her Scholar card on a castle of hers, "employing him for his abilities" which causes her to draw 2 cards and the other players ("usurpers") to draw 1 card. She places her Acrobat card on another castle of hers which causes a spell card to be drawn. The spell, in this case, causes her to draw yet two more cards. Then, with all of the wealth cards in her deck totaled together she is able to purchase two unique wealth cards which she places her on Scholar and her Acrobat (Political Gift and Tiger).)