First, prepare the deck and Player hands.
- Pick as many Seekers as the number of players. Add them all to the deck, shuffle, and deal fairly.
- From these starting cards, each player sets aside 1 secret card: their Loyalty.
Then, prepare the special cards.
- Place a shuffled deck of Thronecards and a deck of Seatcards faceup on the table.
- Draw the top Thronecard: its special rule will be true for the entire game.
During the game, you’ll track two piles. These should be handled by the Leader.
- A facedown pile holding all Votes (= Tell).
- A faceup pile holding all discarded cards ( = Discard)
Finally, pick a player. Their position is the “Kaizerseat” and whoever sits there is called “Leader”.
The game ends once nobody can Vote anymore.
Check the votes in the Tell. The Seeker with the most votes wins. Any player whose secret Loyalty matches a winning Seeker wins the game!
Gameplay happens in rounds.
At the start of each round, draw the a new Seatcard ( = top card of the deck). Its special rule will be true for this round only.
The Leader decides this round’s direction: clockwise or counter clockwise.
Then,
- All players secretly pick 1 Vote from their hand. Once done, reveal all.
- The Seeker with the most votes wins.
- Tied? The Seeker closest to the Leader, looking in the direction picked, wins.
All winning cards go into the Tell.
Now handle all remaining cards. (Do so starting from Kaizerseat again, going in the direction picked, until no cards are left.)
- Trigger the action written on the card.
- If the action does nothing, the player swaps places with another player.
- Add the card to the Discard.
That’s it! Next round!
Below is an overview of all different Seekers in the game. It’s roughly sorted based on how difficult the card’s actions are to understand.
It’s recommended to not include two Seekers of similar color in the same game. They have similar actions and might make the game monotone.
The cards explain themselves, but the overview below contains clarifications or extra details.
There are 5 possible actions that can appear
- When revealed: triggers as soon as the card is shown. (Normally, it’s when all the votes are revealed. In open rounds, this is when the card is played.) As such, these actions are taken before checking who won.
- When handled: triggers as soon as the card is handled during a round. (This category contains most cards.)
- When Tell: triggers when the card is inside the Tell. (Which influences the Vote count at the end.)
- When won: triggers when the card is part of the winning votes.
- When hired: these cards are placed permanently before you (faceup), granting a recurring special power the rest of the game. (Remember that this only happens if you did not win the round, otherwise the card just goes away into the Tell.)