Heroes of the Three Kingdoms

Heroes of the Three Kingdoms is a light strategic card game with 75 unique renderings of legendary heroes of the Three Kingdom period. The deck consists of 75 hero cards in five colors with three types of icons (goblet, sword and fan) and 25 contract cards, and each player starts a round with a random hand of three hero cards.

On a turn, a player lays down 1-5 hero cards or 1-5 contract cards; played hero cards must share either a color or an icon. If she lays down hero cards, she can steal one card of the same color or with the same icon from each of her neighbors. (If her cards share both color and icon, then she must steal cards of the same color or icon.) She then adds these cards to her holdings, sorted by color.

With each contract card, a player can either scout — meaning she steals the topmost card from any opponent's hero stack and adds it to her holdings — or secure a color by placing the contract card on one color of hero stack in front of her. When she does this, the player with the most cards of this color removes one card of this color and places it under her castle card as a point; in case of ties, all players score. The hero cards under a contract card cannot be stolen by a scout, but they can be covered by additional hero cards. After either move, a player then refills her hand to five cards.

When the deck runs out, keep playing until each player has had the same number of turns, then score each color of hero cards, with the player who has the most of a color scoring three points and the secondmost player one point. Record the points, then shuffle the cards. The game lasts as many rounds as the number of players, and whoever has the high score wins.