Citadels Cover Art

In Citadels, the players attempt to build a collection of districts worth from one to eight points. In the round where someone has built the eight district, the game is over (after that round ends), and the player with the highest total value wins. However, to facilitate the process (and make the game interesting), players sequentially choose a character from a rapidly dwindling pool of eight each turn. The characters give players special abilities for the turn.

You start the game with a hand of cards.  These are the district cards.  The cards have a color, a point value, and sometimes special abilities.  Unless otherwise noted, the point value is the amount of gold required to build that district.  There are also character cards.  The character cards have a turn order and special ability assigned to it.

For the very first round of the game, everyone must agree on which player will “go first.”  After the initial round, whoever chooses the King character will go first in the next round.

At the beginning of each round a random character card is discarded face down and the remaining cards are given to the first player.  The first player chooses a character and passes the remaining cards to the next player (and so on).  Once everyone has a character, the remaining characters are discarded and play begins with character #1, the assassin.  If no chose the assassin, play moves on to player #2, the thief (and so on).  For your turn, you can preform you special ability (such as assassinate a character or steal gold from a character), build a district, and collect gold or draw more district cards.

Citadels is a fun, fast playing card game that a wide variety of people can enjoy.  There is just enough randomness involved to make it interesting, but you will win or lose based on strategy (and sometimes memory).  If you enjoy backstabbing style strategy games, you are going to love this one.