Card game · 2020

Regicide

One poker deck, twelve corrupted monarchs and a team: spend the right suits to topple the king without emptying your hand.

1–4 players
15–30 min
2.1 / 5 · Light

Set up the game

0 of 5 steps

Tick each step as you complete it.

1Separate the twelve face cards: four jacks, four queens and four kings. Shuffle the kings and leave them face down; on top, shuffle and place the queens; and on top of those, the jacks. That pile is the castle deck.
The twelve enemies
2Build the tavern deck from every number from 2 to 10, the four aces (which are animal companions here) and the jesters allowed by the player count. This is the deck you draw from all game.
The tavern deck
3Reveal the top card of the castle deck: it will be a jack, and that is your first enemy. Put the reference card beside it: jack 10 attack / 20 health, queen 15 / 30, king 20 / 40.
Cards
Player aid
4Deal cards up to each player's maximum hand size: eight for one, seven for two, six for three and five for four. The tavern deck stays in the middle with a shared discard pile beside it.
A game in progress
5The player who most recently committed regicide goes first, as the rulebook jokes. In practice pick someone at random and play clockwise.
Table from above

What it is about

Regicide fits in a pocket and plays with a poker deck, yet it feels like nothing else you have played with cards. Enemy health is a number to match, the team's life is its hand, and each suit solves a different need.

The tension is that every resource is a card. Doubling damage with a club means that club will not be there to pay the next attack; healing with hearts spends cards that could have killed the enemy; drawing with diamonds refills your hand but deals no damage. Every decision is a loan against the next turn.

And the enemy always answers. Against a jack you can absorb it; against a king, the attack forces you to discard half your hand. That is why winning teams are not the ones dealing the most damage, but the ones reaching the kings with cards left and the spades already down.

BGG page Official rulebook

Source note

The two-page official rulebook fits on the table: setup, the four steps of a turn, the suit powers, combos, animal companions, enemy immunity, the jester, communication, defeat and the solo variant.

Reglamento EN (Badgers from Mars, 2020) · Reviewed: 24 Oct 2026