Regicide - First Play!

15th March 2022

It's another Tuesday evening with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns and we're playing Regicide

Is Regicide a cooperative game about recruiting heroes from a local tavern to go fight epic battles and raid a castle against a series of bosses (Who happen to be regents!), or is it just a deck of cards?

Turns out it's both.

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What's in a game?

• Cards: Regicide consists of a regular 54 card deck of playing cards with the 4 regular suits, and 2 jokers.
  That's it really.

Well... there's not much that can be said here. It's a game that can be played a deck of ordinary cards and that's what it look like.
The official Regicide deck is nicely illustrated with some stylised and quirky fantasy themed artwork but it's still recognisability a standard deck of card.

And the game's iconography, well they're clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades. You get the idea.

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How's it play?
Setup

• ​Castle Deck: Separate all the jack, queen and king cards from the deck.
  Take the kings and shuffle them into a face-down deck, then take the queens, shuffle them and put them on top of the kings. Finally shuffle the jacks and place them on the queens. You'll now have the castle deck, a 12 card deck starting with jacks and going down to kings.
• Tavern deck: Take the remaining cards and add in jokers according to the player count, then shuffle the cards into a face-down deck, this is the tavern deck.
• Players: Deal cards to each player from the tavern deck up to the maximum hand size as determined by player count.
• First player: Determine a first player.

On to play
In Regicide, players must coordinate actions in order to prevail, however, they cannot communicate with each other.
During their turn, the active player uses one or more cards in their hand to attack the current enemy before then using more cards to resist the enemy's counterattack.
Play then continues to the next turn and the player on the left.

• Enemy: Reveal the top card from the deck, this will be the current enemy. Obviously the players will face 4 jacks before facing 4 queens and then ultimately 4 kings.
  All enemy's have 2 stats, Attack and Health, the higher the suit, the higher the values of these stats.
  Attack values go from 10-20.
  Health varies from 20-40.
• Attack: The active player may attack the current enemy by playing a single card from their hand next to the enemy. The attack's strength is determined by the card's value and thus goes from 1-10, this is how much damage is done to the enemy's health. Additionally, each card will also have a special power depending on its suit that is triggered during the attack.
  Clubs: A club deals double damage to enemy's health.
  Diamonds: This allows players to re-fill their hands from the tavern deck according to the value of the diamond card that was played.
  Hearts: Playing a heart repopulates the tavern deck with cards from the discard pile.
  Spades: If a spade is played, it lowers the current enemy's attack score by its value.
  Other rules: Below are the other rules that apply during the attack.
  Immunity: The current enemy will be immune to the power that matches its suit. Thus the queen of clubs will not take double damage from any clubs that are played. Immunities can be removed by jokers; see below for more information.
  Animal companions: The aces are animal companions and have a value of 1. This might not seem good but animal companions may be played with another card.
  This has 2 effects. Firstly it increases the value of the other card by 1, secondly it also triggers the animal companion's suit power. Thus a 5 of clubs accompanied by a ace of spades would do 12 damage and lower the enemy's attack by 6.
  Combos: If a player has cards with matching values, then they can be played as a set and their values added together, provided that combined value does not exceed 10. The max value of a combo would be 5+5.
  A combo also triggers all the suit powers of the cards involved. So theoretically, the 2 of every suit could be played for a combined value of 8 that would do 16 damage, put 8 cards into the tavern deck, deal 8 cards to players and lower the enemy's attack by 8!
  Joker: A joker can only be played on its own and has a value of 0. When played, it removes the current enemy's immunity. It also immediately ends the current turn, skipping the enemy's counterattack. The active player may then choose who gets to be the next active player which can be very useful.
  Yield: Players may choose not to attack, not play a card and instead endure the enemy's counterattack. Why would a player do this? If a player does not have enough cards to both attack and defend, they're going to want to yield and defend instead.
  Vanquished enemies: When the current enemy has their health reduced to 0 or less, they are defeated.
  The defeated enemy card and all cards played against them should be put into the discard pile (This is the only time cards are placed into the discard pile.), the current turn ends a new enemy is drawn from the castle deck. Thus the active player immediately begins a new turn against this newly revealed enemy by playing a new attack card.
  This means once an enemy card is defeated, it can be used by the players. This is very useful since the enemy cards are considered to have a value of 10-20.
  However; if an enemy was defeated by their exact health (Reduced to exactly 0 and not lower.), then that enemy card is placed on top of the tavern deck, not in the discard pile.
  Getting an exact defeat on a enemy card is a really powerful move because it immediately puts a strong card in possession of the players.
• Defend: Now the enemy can counter attack! When this happens, the active player must discard one or more cards which must have a combined value that is at least equal to the value of the current enemy's attack. Thus a queen has an attack of 15, therefore the defending player must discard cards which have a combined value of at least 15.
  Don't forget that any spades that have been played will reduce the enemy's attack and if the attack value has been reduced, then the defending player doesn't have to discard any cards.
  If a player can't prevent all of an enemy's attack, it's not good news!
• Next player: Once the active player has dealt with the enemy's attack, play progresses to the player on the left.

Endgame
Play progress until 1 of 2 conditions are met.
If the players defeat the 12th and final enemy, then they collectively win.
If at any time a player cannot discard enough cards to cover an enemy's attack, then the players collectively and immediately lose.

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Overall
On a basic level players are faced with 4 choices when attacking and how to use the 4 suits and their respective abilities when playing Regicide is vital. The advantages of each ability are contextual and players will need to learn recognise when to use which suit. Suffice to say, players will need to make use of all the suits appropriately.
Of course it's not as simple as I'm making it sound. As with all cooperative games, luck plays an important part here and players will frequently find themselves lacking the cards they want, the immunity rule can also well and truly throw a spanner in the works too.
This forces them to make tricky decisions or find other approaches to how they attack and or indeed manage defence.

It should also be said that Regicide is a very hard game, very hard! I heard someone state that players can expect to win about 1 in 6 times but I feel this is an underestimation of the game's difficulty. We've played it numerous times and never won, we barely ever made it to the kings! Not only is the game hard off the bat, it just gets harder and harder!
I would argue that the Regicide is too hard, which would be my one gripe with it. Although it's entirely possible that there's some strategy that we overlooked.

​​Regicide has a fairly quick playtime which is in part due to it's brutal difficulty curve and could be a good filler game, although bear in mind that it definitely tests the grey matter.

It's a fascinating game that condenses a fair chunk of cooperative gameplay into a deck of 54 cards and gets a lot out of it. The rules are as impressive as the game is ruthlessly hard.
Regicide is a game worth trying if only to experience how such a game plays, just so long as you don't mind losing.