The Emissary rules

Rules taken from the Isaludo solo collection. This game holds the core of the game For Northwood.

Components

• A standard 52-card deck without jokers.

Setup

Separate the 9s and 10s (kingdoms) and place these eight cards face down in a row (they're just placeholders; the value doesn't matter). Separate the twelve face cards. Shuffle the Kings and Queens together (rulers) and deal them face up from left to right, one on top of each kingdom.

Set the four Jacks aside in a stack; these cards represent you and your advisors. Shuffle the remaining 32 cards into a face-down deck.

Objective

In The Emissary, you are a young noble sent by your father to gather support from eight neighboring kingdoms. In each kingdom, you engage in a series of debates with their ruler. Using the right amount of force and deference, you must win exactly a certain number of debates per kingdom. Succeed and you may call upon the ruler for future support; fail even once and lose the game.

Gameplay

The core game loop consists of 1) visiting a kingdom and 2) playing out a series of debates in that kingdom against its ruler.

Choosing the kingdom to visit

Draw eight cards from the deck. Review the cards in your hand, then choose which kingdom to visit. Place your stack of advisors under that kingdom to mark that you're visiting. You must visit each kingdom once and only once per game.

The position of that kingdom along the line determines how many debates you must exactly win to get support from that ruler. The leftmost royal needs one win, the next two, and so on. You must win eight debates in the rightmost kingdom.

The ruler's suit represents their favorite topic; for this kingdom, this suit trumps all other topics of conversation.

Once you have chosen a kingdom to visit, you now play out the series of debates.

The Debates

Place the top card of the draw deck face-up into a discard pile. The ruler is now talking about a topic - you must respond! Play a single card from your hand in response. Playing a card follows standard trick-taking rules:

• You must play a card in your hand with the same suit (topic) as the ruler's card if you are able.
• If and only if you cannot follow suit, you may play any card.

You win the debate if either:

• You played a higher card of the same topic (suit), or
• The debate card isn't of the ruler's favorite topic and you responded with any card of their favorite topic. Way to go, you suckup.

Aces are low and have value 1. If you win the debate, place the card you played in a separate scoring pile. If you lose the debate, instead place your card in the discard pile as well. Keep engaging in debates until you run out of cards in your hand. Once your hand is empty, the number of cards in your scoring pile shows how many debates you have won for that kingdom.

Advisor Abilities

To help control the number of debates you win, each of your Jack advisors has a special ability you can activate, once per kingdom. Before the first debate or between any two debates, you may choose to activate advisor abilities by turning a face-up Jack face down. (Activate it before the ruler card is dealt; you can't use abilities 'in response').

It's up to you whether you want to use abilities earlier when you have more cards in hand, toward the end, or a mix of both. Resolve each ability fully before deciding to use another one.

The ability depends on the suit of the card used:

• Hearts (diplomacy) - Discard all cards in your hand that match the current kingdom's trump suit.
• Clubs (military) - Draw a card for each club in your hand.
• Spades (politics) - Swap the current ruler with the ruler of an unvisited kingdom. (This changes the trump suit for all debates of this kingdom moving forward, and also for that other kingdom when you visit it). This ability does nothing when you're visiting the final kingdom.
• Diamonds (commerce) - Draw two cards, then choose and discard two cards from your hand.

Hearts and clubs abilities change the number of cards in your hand, and therefore change the total number of debates you need to play in a kingdom. The target win number remains the same, however.

If you run out of cards in the draw pile, shuffle the discard pile and continue using it.

When you run out of cards in your hand, if you have won exactly the number of debates equal to the kingdom's number, congratulations! Add that ruler face up beneath your advisors. In future kingdoms, you may also turn a supporting king or queen face down to use their suit's ability. The only difference is that unlike Jacks whose abilities you can use once per kingdom, kings and queens are one-time-use abilities. They're still very useful in a pinch, though.

Shuffle all the cards in the discard, scoring pile, and draw deck together. Turn all spent Jacks back face up (not kings and queens), draw eight new cards, and choose the next kingdom to visit.

Ending the game

Continue visiting the kingdoms one by one, convincing (and leveraging) allies as needed. If you end any kingdom without winning the exact number of debates needed, you lose the game.

Note that the central kingdoms are slightly easier, with kingdom 1 and 8 being very hard to win. Grab support before attempting these, and approach them when you're dealt a favorable hand!

If you get support from all eight kingdoms, you win the game. Whether you win or lose, your score is the number of kingdoms won plus the number of supporting kings/queens with unused abilities, for a perfect score of 8+8=16 points.