Nobles the Game

Nobles is a fast strategy board game about land, supply and sieges, played on a hand-painted map.

Each house begins in its own province on a hand-drawn hex map. Every turn you move your spearmen, bowmen and knights, claim the fiefs they cross, and spend your income on outposts, villages and new recruits. Units must be fed: a soldier cut off from your castle or villages deserts at the end of the turn, so every march is a question of how far your supply line can stretch.

Three roads to the crown: • Population — grow your realm to 15. • Income — earn 36 gold a turn from fiefs and villages. • Conquest — batter an enemy castle's walls to nothing and walk in. The game ends at once.

Rock–paper–scissors combat you can read at a glance: spearmen beat knights, knights beat bowmen, bowmen beat spearmen. Recruiting at a besieged holding throws the new unit straight into the fight — the last line of defence.

A deck of event cards turns each round: Winter freezes the lakes into roads, a Bumper Harvest fills every treasury, Banditry thins the largest army, a Peace Treaty stops every siege for a round.

• 2 to 6 houses: against the computer, pass-and-play at one table, or online with friends by room code • Five difficulties, from a tutorial that teaches as you play to a Brutal AI that plays to win • Turn order rotates every round and every house starts on equal ground • A full game in about 30 minutes; autosaves so you can pick it up later • Designed for landscape on iPhone and iPad • No account, no ads, no purchases

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