Beginner's Guide: Your First Match, Step by Step
Kongedraeber's rules aren't complicated once you've played one match, but that first match can feel like a lot at once — new zones, new named cards, a combat system that isn't quite poker and isn't quite anything else. This is the walkthrough we wish we'd had before our own first game.
Step 1: The Joust
Every match opens with The Joust, a standalone blackjack round with no Jokers in the deck. You're dealt 2 cards, you can Hit or Stand, and whoever gets closer to 21 without busting takes the first turn. If you both bust or tie, you simply replay it.
This isn't just a coin flip to skip past — going first is a genuine advantage, because the first player's deck contains the match's one Royal Bounty Hunter (Joker). The second player's deck has none at all. Don't stress about optimal blackjack strategy here; just know that winning The Joust is worth wanting.
Step 2: Setup — building your Kingdom
You're dealt 9 cards if you went first, 8 if you went second, and your hand is guaranteed to contain at least one Knight or Sovereign — if it somehow doesn't, it's automatically redrawn. From there, you manually place every face card in your hand: one to your Throne (the seat of power — you need a card here to Lay Siege at all), up to three into your Court (your reserve).
The most common beginner mistake here is overloading the Court and leaving the Throne for last. Don't — your last unplaced Knight or Sovereign is forced onto the Throne automatically if it's still empty, but you're better off deciding deliberately which face card leads rather than defaulting into it. If you're holding both a Knight and a Sovereign, put some thought into which you'd rather expose on the Throne immediately versus hold safer in Court.
You also get a single one-time Reroll during Setup — discard your whole hand and draw a fresh one, +1 card. If your opening hand is genuinely bad outside of your guaranteed face card, don't be afraid to use it. New players tend to hoard it out of caution and then never get a hand bad enough to justify it later.
Once both players finish Setup, you each draw a permanent face-down Cursed Seal — see The Cursed Seal for exactly what that restricts for the rest of your match.
Step 3: Draw and Main Phase
Each of your turns opens with a draw (plus 1 more per Lady you control — see The Lady). Then you enter Main Phase, where you can take any number of actions before choosing whether to Lay Siege.
Second most common mistake: rushing a Siege the instant you're able to instead of building your hand first. You are never required to Lay Siege on a given turn if you don't have a hand worth committing. Use Main Phase actions — Pair Discard to cycle dead cards, The Scout or The Chancellor to search for exactly what you need — before you commit anything to combat.
Step 4: Your first Siege
Laying Siege requires a face card on your own Throne. You privately commit 1–5 cards from your hand — they leave your hand immediately, hidden — and your opponent responds with up to that many cards of their own. Both hands reveal together and are compared as poker hands, from High Card up to Royal Flush.
Third common mistake: committing your whole hand to every Siege. You don't have to — committing fewer cards is a legitimate way to probe an opponent's Court strength without overcommitting your resources, especially early before you have a read on how aggressive they're playing.
Whoever loses (or ties) the Siege sends their Throne card to the Dungeon. The winner draws 2 cards as a reward; the loser draws 1 as consolation — so even losing a Siege isn't a total waste, it's a controlled cost.
What losing actually looks like
You lose the instant you have zero face cards left on both your Throne and in your Court — this is called The Kingdom Falls. Keep at least one spare face card in your Court as a backstop whenever you can; a Throne with no Court cushion behind it is one lost Siege away from the whole match ending.
Where to go next
Once the basic loop feels natural, The Royal Trials walk you through the more advanced mechanics — Upthrown, Assassination, Family Reunion, The Royal Gambit — one at a time on preset boards, with no live opponent required. When you're ready to think about hand-by-hand decisions more deeply, our Siege strategy post covers when to commit big and when to hold back.