Rules

You are an overlord: a cloud that owns the ground everyone else builds on. Your vassals hang on your arrows and on each other's. Collect enough of them, or reach your overlord's own goal, before anyone else.

The cards

Overlords have four arrows, power that can all help other attacks, income, an ability and a special goal. Nobody can attack an overlord.

Vassals have one incoming arrow and up to three outgoing ones. Power attacks (the second number, if any, can help another card's attack); resistance defends; income is the rent the card collects each turn. Alignments make attacks easier between alike cards and harder between opposed ones.

Exploits are one-shot cards in your hand. How many you hold is public; what they say is not.

The table

Your overlord sits in the middle of your own grid. A vassal you take hangs on a free arrow and faces away from its master. An arrow pointing at a card is blocked. When a vassal moves, its own vassals move with it; one that has no room takes another free arrow of its master, or falls into the uncontrolled area.

A turn

1. Income: each of your cards adds its income to its own rent.
2. Draw one card. A vassal joins the uncontrolled area; an exploit goes to your hand. Exploits that bring money, rearrange it, revive a destroyed card or show you a hand can be played at any time, even on someone else's turn or in the middle of their attack.
3. Two actions: attack, move rent between a card and its master or vassal, move a vassal, or hand a vassal to a rival who accepts it (for rent, or as a gift). Free at any time: drop a vassal, give rent or exploits to a rival, play an exploit. Or pass before doing anything and take 5.
4. Two free rent transfers, overlord abilities that work at the end of a turn, then the uncontrolled area is refilled and the next player goes.

Attacks

Pick a card of yours that has power and has not attacked this turn, and a target. Other cards of yours may help with their transferable power. The target number is:

• Control (a vassal that is uncontrolled or a rival's; you need a free arrow): power + help − the target's resistance.
• Neutralize (a rival's vassal): the same, +6. It goes back to the uncontrolled area.
• Destroy (any vassal): power + help − the target's power. A card without power needs an exploit, and then you roll against its resistance.

Alignments: +4 for each one attacker and target share, −4 for each opposed pair (reversed when destroying). Zealots oppose zealots. A rival's vassal defends with +10 right under its overlord, +5 one step lower, +2 two steps lower.

Then the bidding: the attacker pays rent from the attacking card or the overlord (+1 each); the defender from the target (+2 each) or its overlord (+1 each); anyone else from their overlord, for or against (1 each). Spent rent goes to the bank. When everybody passes, roll two dice: the target number or less succeeds, 11 and 12 always fail. Exploits that force success or failure are played after the roll.

Without dice (a table option, and always in realms): when everybody passes, a number of 7 or more succeeds and anything less fails. Exploits that force success or failure still get their say afterwards. What you cannot know is what the others will spend and what they hold.

A privileged attack (discard an exploit to make it so) keeps everyone but the attacker and the defender out, unless someone abolishes the privilege with an exploit or by discarding two.

Winning

Checked at the end of every turn; players who get there together share the win. Control this many cards, overlord included: 13 at two or three players, 12 at four, 10 at five, 9 at six, 8 at seven or eight. Or reach your overlord's own goal. After your third turn, controlling no vassal puts you out.

Realms

A realm plays the same cards and the same attack math in real time, for a season, with hundreds of lords, on a map of the Earth. A season's arc: three shielded days to take the commons around your seat; a first week of rent, draws and probes; a second where borders meet and alliances form; then everyone against the leader until the month's end closes the season by score. What changes from a table:

• Rent: every card earns its income each hour. Draws: a card every eight hours; vassals appear in the commons, exploits go to your hand.
• Influence replaces actions: one point every four hours, twelve at most; an attack costs three, moving a vassal one. A card that attacked or helped rests eight hours. Faster realms divide every wait by their speed.
• No dice: when an attack lands, a number of 7 or more succeeds. Until then, the attacker, the defender and both alliances bid; nobody else.
• The map: the Earth in hexes about 80 km wide; each cloud region fills outward from its datacenter town. You can attack commons vassals within reach of your seat or an ally's, or where one of your probes is reporting. Attacks and probes fly 10 minutes plus 3 per hex. A vassal you win holds the hex it stood on, and that hex extends your reach. Place cards appear at their landmarks and earn 2 more an hour held there. Every hex you hold (your seat and your vassals') yields by its terrain each hour: server farms 1 rent, dark data 1 data (the second currency), open spectrum a point of influence a day, legacy ruins now and then an exploit. Colonies grow your land without a card: send one to a free land hex in reach (20 data, 10 rent, 1 influence; three at most); it flies like an attack and then holds its hex. A rival in reach may raid it with a card: it falls when the card's power reaches its defence, 3 plus a point per 5 data you spend on it. Research upgrades your seat, a level at a time from a queue that runs while you are away (30 data and 6 hours times the level, three levels a track): relays shorten flights, uplinks widen your reach, vaults add rent, firewalls defend the vassals near your seat, berths take more colonies. Standing orders play while you are away: colonies on the terrain you name, research in the order you pick, fortification of a raided colony within a data budget, and defence bids for your attacked cards; the chronicle tells what they did.
• World events come and go in each cloud region, from hours to days, and the chronicle tells when they start: a data boom doubles dark data, a heatwave stops server farms, a cable cut slows flights in, an uprising seats a new AI lord, a landmark rush brings a place card to its landmark.
• Laws: each realm day, the lord holding the most hexes of a cloud region becomes its regent, and the law it chose rules the region that day: open borders (flights in take a quarter less), martial law (attacks on its cards cost one more influence) or a data tax (the regent takes a tenth of the dark data others mine there).
• Exploits that force a result are armed in advance: success fires only on an attack that would fail, failure only on one that would succeed. If you do not bid, your standing order spends a share of the target's own rent (it counts double).
• Protections: a newcomer shield (until you attack a rival), no attacks on lords with under a third of your cards, vacations (no attacks either way, no rent).
• One world, always on: a season is a calendar month, from the 1st at 00:00 UTC to the next. Holding the dominion count of cards crowns you once (a bonus); the month's end decides by score: ten per card, plus power, plus a bonus for your overlord's goal (scaled to a season). Then the next season begins, fresh.

Rulesets and options

• Classic rules: 10 alignments, the uncontrolled area refilled to 2.
• Second-edition rules: 9 alignments, the uncontrolled area refilled to 3.
• Technofeudal rules (every alignment): 11 alignments, the uncontrolled area refilled to 3.
• Options: a longer basic goal, hidden goals (everyone secretly picks an overlord's goal), the long game (no goals; score power + 1 per vassal once nothing is left to take), a turn limit, edicts (global cards, one per colour in force, enacted for an action), two teams (seats alternate; allies never attack each other, and one ally's goal wins for the whole team), no dice, and hidden overlords (each plays face down, its goal too, until a rival names it for an action; a wrong name is told only to the one who guessed).