Citadels Rules

Citadels combines secret character drafting with city building. Each round you guess who holds which character while triggering powerful abilities.

8 character cards, ~54 district cards (yellow/blue/green/red regular + purple unique), gold tokens, crown token.

• 🗡️ 1 Assassin — Name a character; they skip their turn this round
• 🥷 2 Thief — Name a character; when called, take all their gold
• 🎩 3 Magician — Swap your hand with another player OR discard N cards and draw N
• 👑 4 King — Take the crown. +1 gold per yellow (noble) district
• ✝️ 5 Bishop — +1 gold per blue (religious) district. Cities immune to Warlord
• 💰 6 Merchant — +1 gold per green (trade) district. +1 extra gold
• 🛠️ 7 Architect — Draw 2 extra cards. Build up to 3 districts this turn
• ⚔️ 8 Warlord — +1 gold per red (military) district. Destroy one district (pay cost-1)

• Gather (once): take 2 gold OR draw 2 keep 1 (Library = keep all, Observatory = see 3)
• Build (≤1, Architect ≤3): pay cost, place from hand into your city. No duplicates
• Character Ability: 1 use per turn
• District Powers: Smithy (2 gold→3 cards), Laboratory (card→1 gold), Bell Tower (activate→threshold 7)

• Library / Observatory: draw modifiers
• Smithy / Laboratory: 1/turn resource swaps
• Graveyard: pay 1 gold to recover a destroyed district
• Great Wall / Keep: Warlord destroy cost +1 / cannot be destroyed
• School of Magic / Haunted City: wild color for 5-color bonus
• Dragon Gate / University: cost 6, +2 score
• Bell Tower: activate to drop end threshold 8→7

Highest score wins. Score = sum of built district costs + 5-color bonus (+3) + 8-district bonus (first finisher +4, others +2) + Dragon Gate/University +2 each.

• King (4) and Warlord (8) attract the most Assassin/Thief targeting.
• 8-district bonus is huge — push hard once you have 6-7.
• 5-color bonus (+3) is often worth grabbing a single purple district.