Cardinal's Guards

A Solitary Confinement game for the piecepack

The year is 1626, and France is under the control of Cardinal Richelieu. The King and Queen are weak, and there is no love lost between the King’s musketeers and the Cardinal’s guards. In a castle in Normandy, four musketeers have just broken out of solitary confinement. The castle is well garrisoned, with a full company of the Cardinal’s guards, but the musketeers are determined to locate evidence of the Cardinal’s treachery against the King, that they know is somewhere within the castle. They form a plan; each musketeer will search a different set of particular halls and chambers, and then attempt to escape from the castle while defeating as many guards as possible. Hopefully the musketeer with the evidence will reach the King. The task ahead won’t be easy, but there is hope, and the musketeers have knowledge of a secret network of underground passages beneath the castle that the guards are unaware of.

In Cardinal’s Guards, the player moves the musketeers around the castle, defeating or luring guards, while searching various chambers, before trying to escape.

• The musketeers are represented by the four pawns.
• The coins represent the guards.
• The tiles represent castle chambers.
• The dice are used to keep track of the chambers searched.

The player’s score at the end of the game is based upon the number of chambers searched, the number of guards defeated, and the number of musketeers who escape.