A card game for 2-4 players in which players take on the roles of the Cossacks and their enemies!
Players share a common deck comprising 20 suits. Each suit has 3 cards. The cards have 7 basic characteristics: Enemy, Disaster, Men, Control, Action, Fight and Victory. Each suit performs one or two of these basic characteristics.
There is a common set of Victory Tokens (VT) and Cossack Tokens (CT) and one Hetman Token (HT).
Each player takes the role of one Cossack enemy: Russians, Poles, Ottomans, or Tatars.
Players take turns with each turn comprising 7 Phases:
1. Fate Phase
- You draw 3 cards. You may discard a control card to draw 2 additional cards.
2. Sich Phase
- You may trade cards, CT, and VT with other players.
3. Control Phase
- You may discard a control card to gain possession of the Hetman Token.
- You may discard a disaster card to cause a target player to
discard 3 random cards from his hand.
4. Cossack Phase
- You may discard men cards: If you discard 2 men cards gain 3 cossack tokens (CT); 3 men cards gain 5 CT; 4 men cards gain 7 CT and so on. Add 1 CT if one or more cards are from the same suit.
5. Raid Phase
- To go on a raid, you must be the current Hetman and you must discard 1 enemy card and 1 action card, otherwise skip this phase.
- You cannot play an enemy card corresponding to the role that is yours.
- Roll 3 dice and add them up to get a raid total. Subtract this total from the number of CT you have. If the result is positive gain that many VT. If the result is negative, lose that many VT.
- You may discard a fight card to cause a 1 of the 3 dice to be rerolled or to cause a roll to be reduced by 1.
- Discard all your CT.
- If you won, the player with the role of that enemy loses VT equal to the amount you gained.
6. Glory Phase
- If you are the current Hetman gain 1 VT.
- If you went on a successful raid last phase you may discard 1 victory card to gain 1 VT, 2 victory cards to gain 3 VT, 3 victory cards to gain 5 VT and so on.
- You may also play an enemy card of the same suit of the enemy card you
played in Raid Phase: Gain 3 VT for each such card played.
7. End Phase
- Discard an enemy card or reveal your hand to all players.
- Max 10 CT. Discard excess CT.
- Max Hand size is 4 cards. Discard excess cards.
The first player to accumulate 35 Victory Tokens wins the game.