March of the Red Queen

You are the Red Queen. The road goes through their country.

Seven rival Queens hold seven realms, and the only way to any of them is the long way across their fields, through their villages, past the people who live there. At the far end of every road there is a Queen, a table, and a reckoning.

THE MARCH

Travel through tiles of villages, magicians, tithe barns, until you reach the standard of rival Queen.
Everything is open information. There are no hidden statistics, no invisible timers, no rolls the game makes behind your back.

THE CHOICE

Every tile is a card and every card asks something. Feed the starving and your column grows and eats more. Seize the grain and you'll be fed and remembered. The peasantry, the clergy and the merchants each keep their own count of you, and when a count crosses a line, a door opens or closes: a back gate offered, a road picketed, a convoy gone.

THE RECKONING

The choices that matter don't pay out on the spot. They become deeds: Oaths and Intrigues that will shape the rest of your march and decide your destiny.

THE DUEL

Three hits and a Queen is finished. Your army is the people still marching behind you, and it is the only thing between her and you. Play from a hand of five — mercenaries, peasants, reinforcements, sacrifice, assault — roll the clash die, and hope the crown comes up on your side of the table.

FEATURES

• Seven rival Queens, each with her own realm, her own voice, her own way of fighting, and her own deck of schemes.

• Over a hundred authored decision cards and more than a hundred deeds. No procedural text, no filler, every card written.

• A moral ledger that persists across the whole run. Reputations, counters and consequences carry from march to march.

• Four difficulty tiers, from a road you can walk to one that expects you to have learned something.