Play Conquista online

Deal the map out, roll the dice and take every territory on the board.

Playing Conquista online

Conquista is the longest game in the house and the only one that is not played with a deck of cards: it is played on a map, with dice and territory cards. It seats 2 to 6, and the more people at the table, the fewer armies each one starts with.

The map is chosen before the game starts, and all twelve of them are playable: Spain (52 territories, one per province), Westeros (43, from the Wall to Dorne), World (42), North America (30), Europe (25), Asia (24), the Americas (21), Africa (21), the Mediterranean (21), Oceania (19), Iberia (19) and the Canaries (14, the only one built for a table of two to four). The map changes the game more than any other rule: in the Canaries almost every border is a sea crossing and nowhere is safe, on the world board you can spend six turns quietly stacking Oceania, and on Westeros three single territories - the Wall, the Neck and the Prince’s Pass - are the only way into a third of the board.

A two-player game on the Canaries runs about twenty minutes; a five-player game on the world board can take an afternoon. The turn clock is the longest on the site, and the table plays a random legal move for you if it runs out, so a long game does not stall because somebody went to get a drink.

What gets settled before the deal

Three things. First the map, which is the decision that changes the game most: all twelve are always available, though the small ones cannot seat a big table (the Canaries go up to 4 players, and the Americas, Africa, Oceania, the Mediterranean and Iberia to 5). If the room fills past what the chosen map holds, the game opens on the smallest map everybody fits on instead of dealing an impossible table.

Second, the opening deployment: automatic, which scatters your starting armies over your own territories and begins straight away, or by hand, where everyone places three at a time in turn. By hand takes a few more minutes to start and lets you draw the opening fronts yourselves, which is half the game.

Third, what card sets are worth: escalating (every set handed in at the table is worth more than the last) or fixed. Escalating values are what eventually prise a stalemate open; fixed values let a long game stay long. At a public table there is no host deciding this: everyone votes and each button shows the tally.

Your first game

Everything is played by touching the map: you place armies by tapping one of your territories, attack by tapping yours and then a neighbour, and regroup with the same two taps plus a slider. You can zoom and drag the board, which you will want on a phone for the 42-territory map.

The table will not let you make an illegal move: only the territories you can act on right now are marked, and the server re-checks everything on its own anyway. The dice are rolled by the server, never by your browser.

What people forget in their first game: you only draw a card if you took something, the garrison army left behind cannot attack, and regrouping ends your turn the moment you do it. Holding five cards forces you to hand in a set before you can place anything.

How to start a game

1. Create a room from this page and share the code on screen with whoever is playing.
2. Everyone opens House Of Decks, enters that code and takes a seat at the table.
3. Once there are between 2 and 6 of you, the host deals and the game begins.
4. If you would rather not organise anything, drop into Quick Play and play with whoever is waiting.

Deck: A map, dice and one territory card per territory · Players: 2 to 6 players

Full rules for Conquista