Cooperative card games live and die on one question: does every player feel useful? Regicide answers with a confident yes, and it does so with rules you can teach in five minutes and depth that keeps you coming back long after you have won your first game. Whether you are playing solo or with a group, this little game punches well above its weight.
What Is Regicide?
Regicide is a cooperative card game designed by Paul Abrahams, Luke Badham, and Andy Richdale, published by Badgers from Mars. The premise is wonderfully direct: a castle is filled with twelve royal enemies, four Jacks, four Queens, and four Kings, each progressively more powerful than the last. Your team must defeat every single one of these enemies before running out of cards.
The enemies fight back. Every turn you do not kill an enemy, it retaliates, and surviving that retaliation means discarding cards from your hand. Lose your whole hand, lose the game. The cooperative tension this creates is immediate and constant.
Getting The Cards
The official Regicide deck is available to buy directly from Badgers from Mars, who also stock other games and accessories. The cards feature bespoke artwork tailored to the game’s theme, with the royal enemies illustrated as formidable castle-dwelling adversaries and the adventurer cards rendered with real character.
You do not need to buy the official deck, though. Regicide plays just as well with a standard 52-card deck, using zero, one, or two jokers depending on your player count. The rules map cleanly onto familiar suits and face cards, so dig that old deck out of a drawer and you are ready to play tonight.
The Enemies
The enemies you face are the twelve court cards: the four Jacks, four Queens, and four Kings. Before the game begins, these are separated into three groups and arranged with Jacks on top, Queens in the middle, and Kings at the bottom, creating the castle of increasingly fierce opponents.
The stats are straightforward and scale predictably:
| Enemy | Hit Points | Attack |
|---|---|---|
| Jack | 20 | 10 |
| Queen | 30 | 15 |
| King | 40 | 20 |
Jacks are manageable, Queens require real coordination, and Kings are brutal. You will face all four of each rank in sequence, so the difficulty ramps steadily as you progress through the castle. Defeating all twelve is a genuine achievement, especially in your first few attempts.
Each enemy also has a suit, and that suit makes them immune to one type of card power. A Jack of Spades is immune to the defensive power of Spades cards. A King of Hearts means Hearts cards played against it restore nothing to the tavern deck. This immunity forces you to adapt your strategy with every new enemy revealed, keeping the game fresh from one encounter to the next.
The Role Of Each Suit
The numbered cards, Ace through Ten, are your weapons, and their suits determine what happens beyond the raw damage they deal. Each suit has a distinct power that activates when you play cards of that suit.
- Spades reduce the current enemy’s attack when it retaliates. The reduction is cumulative: every Spades card played against the same enemy across all turns contributes, so chipping away with Spades over multiple turns stacks up into meaningful protection. Facing a King with an attack of 20 becomes far more survivable when you whittle that number down before it hits back.
- Hearts shuffle the discard pile and place a number of those cards equal to the combined value face-down at the bottom of the tavern deck. This is the lifeblood of a long game, replenishing the deck blind so the team has cards to draw from later.
- Diamonds deal out cards from the tavern deck equal to the combined value played. In a solo game all those cards come to you; in multiplayer they are distributed around the table one at a time, up to each player’s maximum hand size.
- Clubs double the damage dealt to the current enemy. A ten of Clubs hits for twenty. Played cleverly, Clubs can dispatch an enemy in a single well-timed strike.
Remember that the current enemy’s suit blocks that suit’s power entirely. Playing a six of Hearts against the King of Hearts restores nothing to the tavern deck. Keep track of the active enemy’s suit and plan your plays accordingly.
How A Turn Works
Turns follow a clean, repeatable structure that is easy to internalise after the first round.
- Play a card or combination. On your turn you must play at least one numbered card or Jester from your hand. You may also play multiple cards of the same value together as a combo, multiplying both the suit power and the damage dealt, provided their combined value does not exceed ten. Alternatively, an Ace can be paired with exactly one other non-Ace card, triggering both cards’ suit powers at once.
- Apply the suit power. If the enemy is not immune to the suit you played, the power activates. Spades reduce the enemy’s attack, Hearts shuffle discards back into the tavern deck, Diamonds deal cards from the deck to the team, or Clubs double your damage.
- Deal damage. The combined face value of your cards, doubled if Clubs and the enemy is not immune, is subtracted from the enemy’s hit points.
- Check for victory or retaliation. If cumulative damage reaches or exceeds the enemy’s hit points, you defeat them and reveal the next castle card. There is a crucial distinction here: if your damage exactly matches the enemy’s remaining hit points, the defeated enemy card goes face-down to the top of the tavern deck, making it the very next card drawn. Getting court cards into your hand this way is central to winning the game. If you overkill the enemy, the card goes to the discard pile, where it may eventually return to the tavern deck if someone plays Hearts later, but that is far less reliable. If the enemy survives this turn, it retaliates immediately.
- Survive the retaliation. The enemy’s current attack value, after any cumulative Spades reductions, is the damage the current player must absorb alone. That player discards cards from their own hand until the total value meets or exceeds the attack. If they cannot cover the full damage from what they are holding, all players lose immediately.
Play then passes clockwise to the next player and the cycle repeats until the castle falls or your team does.
Jesters: The Wild Cards
Jesters, the jokers in a standard deck, are the most powerful cards in the game, but they work quite differently from what you might expect. In the official Regicide deck they are called Jesters. The number included scales with player count: none for one or two players, one for three players, and two for four players.
Playing a Jester must be done alone and has two effects. First, Steps 3 and 4 are skipped entirely for this turn: no damage is dealt and the enemy does not retaliate. This makes a Jester a lifeline when your team is in trouble, low on cards and facing a painful incoming attack. Second, the Jester permanently cancels the current enemy’s suit immunity for the remainder of that battle, meaning all suit powers now work against that enemy regardless of its suit.
The player who plays the Jester also chooses who takes the next turn, which opens up strategic sequencing opportunities. If you are using a standard deck in a one or two player game, set the jokers aside; they do not come into play at those counts.
Balance And Player Count
Regicide is remarkably well balanced across every player count from one to four.
Hand size scales with the number of players to keep the total cards in play roughly constant: eight cards for one player, seven for two, six for three, and five for four. The enemies do not change in any way based on how many people are playing. What changes is the communication dynamic and how your team coordinates the suit powers across turns.
Solo play is a genuine and satisfying experience. You manage a single hand, make all the decisions yourself, and the tension of having nobody to fall back on is perfectly calibrated. Solo also gives you exactly two lifelines across the whole game: immediately before you play a card to attack, or immediately before you discard to absorb an enemy’s retaliation, you may discard your entire hand and draw eight fresh cards from the tavern deck, then continue from that same point in the turn. Since Jesters are not used in solo play, the two physical joker cards from a standard deck make convenient tokens to track how many of these redraws you have remaining.
Multiplayer shifts the challenge in a surprising direction: communication is banned. Players may not reveal which cards they hold or announce what they intend to play. The only exception is when a Jester is played, at which point the group may briefly discuss who should take the next turn before silence returns. This rule transforms the game from a planning exercise into a test of reading the table, trusting your teammates, and playing the cards that best serve the moment with only what you can observe.
The Free Companion App
If you want to keep things tidy at the table without tracking numbers on paper, there is a free Regicide companion app available for both iOS and Android. The app tracks each enemy’s hit points as you deal damage, displays the correct attack and hit point values for every enemy, and helps enforce the rules if your group is still learning. It is a clean and practical companion that removes the need for pen and paper entirely. Search for Regicide in your phone’s app store to find it.
Strategy Tips
Spoiler alert: this section contains strategic advice that will reduce the discovery experience on your first few plays. If you would rather figure things out for yourself, skip straight to the verdict.
The following tips come from repeated play across all player counts.
Prioritise Spades early in each encounter
The sooner you reduce an enemy’s attack value, the safer every subsequent turn becomes. A King at full 20 attack demands a large and painful discard every time it retaliates. A King ground down to 4 attack is almost manageable. Get those Spades in early and protect your hands for the long fight.
Read the table before playing
You cannot tell teammates what you are holding, so watch what they play and infer what they need. If the last player used Hearts and the tavern deck looks healthy, they probably do not need another Hearts play right now. If Diamonds just went around and everyone drew cards, the team likely has full hands and wants damage over more draws. Use what you observe to sequence suit powers without a word being spoken.
Play combinations whenever you can
Two cards of the same value played together give you double the suit power and double the damage in a single action. Playing four of a kind is rare but potentially game-ending in the best possible way. Look for opportunities to hold matching values rather than spending them one at a time.
Save high-value Clubs for Kings
A ten of Clubs deals 20 damage after doubling, which is half a King’s health in one play. Against a King whose immunity is not Clubs, high-value Club combinations can win the fight in one or two turns. Resist spending Clubs too freely on Jacks when you know the Kings are waiting.
Discard low-value cards to cover attacks
When absorbing an enemy’s retaliation, choose carefully which cards to discard. Low-value cards that do not form useful combinations meet the damage requirement without sacrificing your best plays. Do not discard Jesters, combo pairs, or your Clubs just to cover a few points from a battered Jack.
Treat exact kills as a victory condition in themselves
Overkilling enemies is one of the surest paths to defeat. Every court card you overkill is a powerful weapon lost to the discard pile, available only by chance if Hearts happen to cycle it back. Every court card you exact-kill lands on top of the tavern deck, ready to be drawn immediately, and court cards in hand hit far harder than any numbered card. You cannot afford to overkill more than a handful of enemies and still expect to win. Count the remaining hit points before you play and hold back damage where you can.
Exact-kill the King of Clubs if he appears early
The next enemy is always face-down, so you cannot plan around a specific suit. What you can plan around is the Kings stage: four enemies each with 40 hit points and a 20 point attack. If the King of Clubs appears as an enemy before you reach the final King stage, try to exact-kill him. An exact kill places his card on top of the tavern deck, so it is the next card drawn. Follow up immediately by playing Diamonds, which deals cards from the top of the tavern deck around the table, putting the King of Clubs into someone’s hand. From there he is devastating: as a weapon his value doubles under the Clubs power, delivering exactly 40 damage and killing any other King outright in a single play. The Queen of Clubs is also worth holding onto as she delivers 30 damage in one hit, which is significant but not quite lethal on its own. Both are most valuable against the King of Spades, who is immune to Spades and cannot be weakened at all, making a fast kill your only reliable defence.
Protect your hand size with Diamonds
A healthy hand is what keeps you alive, especially once the Kings arrive. Every Diamonds card you play draws more cards from the tavern deck, either to yourself or around the table, up to each player’s hand size limit. Do not waste Diamonds early or spend them recklessly; keep a steady stock of them and use them intentionally to ensure nobody is sitting on one or two cards when a King hits back for 20.
Verdict: Is Regicide Worth Playing?
Yes, unreservedly. Regicide occupies a rare space: deep enough to reward repeated play, simple enough to teach in one round, and balanced enough to feel fair at every player count. The suit immunity system stops the game from becoming routine, and the escalating difficulty from Jacks to Queens to Kings gives every session a clear and satisfying narrative arc.
If you already own a standard deck, it costs nothing to try tonight. If you enjoy it, the official cards from Badgers from Mars are a lovely upgrade with artwork that makes the theme come alive on the table.
Wrapping Up
Regicide proves that extraordinary games can come in the smallest packages. A 54-card deck, clean rules, and genuinely tense cooperative play make it one of the best value games you can introduce to any group. Try it solo first to learn the rhythms, then gather your team and attempt the full castle together. Good luck, and may the Jacks fall swiftly.