Crowns is an abstract strategy board game, like chess, go, or stratego. Crowns is what you’d get if you tried to cram a wargame into a chess board.
Players select their starting pieces from 3 tiers of units and sets up behind a divider. After both players have set up, the divider is removed and the game is played with perfect information.
The goal of the game is to capture the opponent's crown -- a piece analogous to the king in chess, but unable to capture.
Each player selects 8 bottom-tier units, 4 mid-tier units, and 1 top-tier unit, for a total of 14 pieces including the crown. All pieces have movement limitations and most have special rules including shooting and continuing to move after capturing.
Crowns is played on a 9x9 grid; each player has 3 home rows and there are three rows of no-man's-land. It has a historical military theme: units include archers, cavalry and men-at-arms.