Usurp the King: The Game of Intrigue, Secret Plans, and Shifting Loyalities

From the publisher:

In Usurp the King, you play as one of five dominant families in the Kingdom. Use your influence to back the person that you believe will be in power when the dust settles. As the game evolves, you may find that who you are supporting changes. Daggers, Poisons, Conspiracy, and Bribery are only some of the tools at your disposal.

Play in Usurp the King occurs over two phases. Usurp is packed with moves and counter moves. In this 20-minute game, so much can happen in such a short period!

• INTRIGUE PHASE: Players take turns placing Leverage cards around the courtroom. Families will give the appearance of support or disapproval. A dagger may be placed on a court member giving the illusion that you would like to eliminate them. But you have a plan to move the dagger to another court member. However, other player’s spies may move your dagger to a court member you care about, and suddenly your priorities change!
• REBELLION PHASE: Use the Leverage cards to bribe, conspire, stab, poison, and shifting alliances.
• SCORING Determine which Court Member becomes King. The family with control of the new King is victorious.

Usurp the King has a hierarchy of seven victory conditions. To win as the Heir, you will need to eliminate King and the Usurper victory condition (or make sure that someone else does).

The Bastard and the King may both be working towards eliminating the Usurper victory, but they are in no way working TOGETHER!

TEAM PLAY
½ of the players (A players) will take a family player reference card. Their teammate (B players) must sit opposite them across the table. They will take the corresponding duplicate family reference card. Randomly deal out the 10 family cards to each family member so that the A and B player for each family have 5 leverage cards of that family.

The rules follow the base game rules. Each PLAYER will end up playing 3 cards instead of 6. Turn order is still serpentine.

Communication between players
Players are not allowed to communicate using electronic devices, notes and must communicate in a language that everyone knows (including ASL). Rudimentary signs are allowed but it must be possible for other players to intercept communications.

Each game comes with

• 5 – Ten card Leverage decks. One for each family.
• 11 – Court Members cards
• 5  – Family turn order reference cards
• 8 – Tutorial Objective cards
• 10 – Loyalty/Disgruntled markers
• 1 – Turn marker