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Who will win the title Hand of the King? Will it be Brian or Darcy?
In this video, we show you how to play Game of Thrones: Hand of the King card game.
Game of Thrones: Hand of the King is a card game for 2-4 players designed by Bruno Cathala and published by Fantasy Flight Games. It is a fast game lasting 15-30 minutes.
We play through it twice and share our thoughts on it afterwards.
We also chat a bit about the show since we are looking forward to watching the final season of Game of Thrones.
Throughout the video, Darcy is sipping on a glass of mulling spiced wine. She made it with the Seasonal alcohol infusion kit from InBooze.
How to Play Game of Thrones: Hand of the King
After shuffling the cards, lay the square character cards (they have the Hand of the King pin on the back) face up in a 6×6 grid. This grid creates King's Landing.
Place the house banners off to the side.
Deal 6 companion cards, face up, along one side of King's Landing.
On your turn, you look at where Varys is and can move him either up, down, left, or right. Declare which direction you are moving him and to which house.
Move Varys to the farthest character of that house in that row or column. Take all the cards of that house that were between Varys' original position and his final position.
The player with the most members of a particular house after their turn takes the house banner.
Alternate turns, continuing to move Varys until he can no longer be moved.
If you pick up the final member of a house, then you get to select a companion card and immediately do what it says.
If you and another player have the same number of characters from a house, neither of you controls the banner.
At the end of the game, the player who controls the most house banners is declared the winner.
Game of Thrones: Hand of the King Review
We think Game of Thrones: Hand of the King is a good option for a quick two player game. It's simple to teach, but the gameplay is strategic.
This makes it a good option to introduce to someone who loves Game of Thrones, but may not play a lot of strategy games.
We haven't played it with 3 or 4 players yet, so we are not sure if we have a preference on player count. It's small, which makes it great to take along, but the smaller cards are trickier to shuffle really well.
The game is different each time based on the order of the cards laid out in King's Landing and the 6 randomly drawn companion cards.
Get Game of Thrones: Hand of the King Get at your local board game store, Target, or on Amazon.
Have you ever played this game? Let us know!
More 2 Player Games You May Enjoy:
- Lost Cities Card Game Overview
- Hanamikoji Card Game Overview
- Patchwork Board Game Playthrough
- 7 Board Games for Couples to Play
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