Queen of the Hill Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Game Play
• During Your Turn
• The Dark One
• Special Notes
• Dark One Variant
• Timing Symbols
• Short Forms Used In The Game

Game Play

1. Shuffle all the cards into a single deck and place it face down in the middle of the play area. Optionally, you may choose to collapse the deck sideways for more stability on the playing area.
2. If this is the first game of a session, the first player of the initial round should be the oldest player. If it is not the first game, the previous winner goes first.
3. Starting from the first player, each player takes their turn in clockwise direction (see below 'During your turn'). This phase is known as the Drawing Phase.
4. After each player has had a turn, the Drawing Phase ends and the Tally Phase begins. Reveal all cards in all Battle Zones and the total Battle Points of each player is tallied and the player with the highest Battle Points wins that round. The revealed cards in the Battle Zones are discarded into a common discard pile. The winner of a round starts the new round first.
5. Important: Battle Points are reset every round.
6. When a player has won 2 rounds, the game ends with that player as the victor of the game.

During Your Turn

During your turn, you may do the GATHER action stated below as many times as you wish, until you choose to stop and pass your turn:

GATHER - This term refers to simply drawing the top card from the deck. You can keep summoning until you pass of your own accord or if you draw a Dark One. Cards drawn should be kept secretive from other players, and only the Dark One is an exception that must be revealed to everyone immediately.

FORM - After you draw a card, if it is not a Dark One, you can choose if you wish to use that card for scoring Battle Points for this round. If you do so, place it face-down vertically in front of you in your Battle Zone (refer to diagram). This is called Forming, and it symbolizes you sending this warrior out to challenge other players' parties for the Hill this round. The Battle Points contributed by a warrior is shown in its top right corner. Note that the warrior does not trigger its ability stated on its card (if any). After resolving a round, all cards in Battle Zones are discarded.

KEEP - After you draw a card, instead of using it for scoring Battle Points through the FORM action stated above, you can Form and Keep during a round. After the round is OVER, you may place all cards from your Keep Zone into your Ready Zone (still face-down and not revealed to other players) where you can now use them for their abilities from the new round onwards. Most abilities can be played anytime. A player can never exceed 5 cards in her Ready Zone. At any time you have extra cards in the Ready Zone, simply choose and discard back down to 5.

[Diagram of your playing area omitted: it shows the Battle Zone, Keep Zone and Ready Zone. Cards are always face-down and kept secretive from other players. You can check your own cards in any of your zones at any time.]

The Dark One

If you draw a Dark One at any point during your turn, you must end your turn immediately. You also lose all your cards in the Battle Zone and they are discarded without scoring any Battle Points. Cards in all other Zones are safe.

An important exception to the Dark One is that as long as you have no card in your Battle Zone and your Keep Zone, any Dark One you draw is discarded harmlessly. It actually symbolizes the evil creature sensing a rip in the realms as you summon warriors, and as it attempts to get near the rift, it loses the trail when there is no presence of warriors felt in the vicinity. Without a choice, it can only loiter nearby but harmlessly so for now.

Special Notes

• There are item cards in the game like the Ruby Heels and the Broken Mirror. These cards do not give Battle Points at all, and are meant to be KEPT and ultimately into your Ready Zone for future use. However, you can still choose to Form them, as part of your mind game to make other players think that you have more Battle Points than you really do. They are really precious though.
• When the main deck runs out of cards, simply reshuffle the discard pile to form a new main deck again.
• There are exactly 100 cards in the game. 15 of them are Dark Ones. The rest are mostly warriors worth 1 to 5 points each, with the higher values being rarer.
• In the event of a tie for highest Battle Points, no one wins the round.
• Even if a player ends her turn because of a Dark One, she can still play cards from her Ready Zone for the remainder of that round.

Dark One Variant

Compulsory for 2 players.

In the 2 player variant, there is a 3rd AI player called the Dark One. Yes you get to pit yourselves against the Dark One himself! He always goes last, so he is always 'seated' at the right side of the first player of any round. When it is his turn, draw the same amount of cards for him as the highest drawn by any of the human players. The cards are all played face-down. He never uses warrior abilities, and never Keeps cards. He always Forms them all, even item cards. Players can choose to attack his cards like they would normally, such as the Bombardier to remove his Formed cards. If there are any Dark Ones in his Formed cards, they all count as 8 Battle Points. The Dark One never misses his turn, for he is the Dark One himself. If he wins 2 rounds, all players lose the game with no winner.

Note: You may play the Dark One Variant with any amount of players. It is not restricted to just 2 players, though for 2 players it is a compulsory variant.

Timing Symbols

Warrior abilities have different effects, and all of them are one-time uses. After using their ability, a player must discard them. Almost all of these abilities can only be used at specific times in the game. Each warrior card will have a symbol at the bottom right of their picture area to depict this timing. The following is a list of what they mean:

• Any Time During The Drawing Phase, Before All Cards Are Revealed: (symbol: stack of cards)
• During The Tally Phase, After All Cards In Baby Zones Are Revealed: (symbol: cards numbered 1, 2, 3) [Printed as "Baby Zones" in the source; this is almost certainly a typo for "Battle Zones", the zone revealed during the Tally Phase. Transcribed as printed.]
• Anytime During Your Turn: (symbol: standing figure)
• At Any Time In The Game: (symbol: circular arrows)

Short Forms Used In The Game

• BZ - Battle Zone
• KZ - Keep Zone
• RZ - Ready Zone
• BP - Battle Points