How to Play Crownfall: A Complete Beginner’s Guide | Playgridia

2026-08-10

Crownfall is a free, browser-played war game about taking a map one border at a time — and it settles every battle with a shared deck of cards rather than dice. This guide covers a first match end to end: the setup, the three beats of a turn, what every action does, how a battle is actually worked out, and all three ways a match can end.

What you are playing, in one paragraph

You are a marshal, not a king. Two to four marshals share one board, and the map is dealt at setup, so everybody begins with the same amount of ground and there is no opening land grab to lose. Every holding you are dealt opens with a single Spearline unit. On your turn you raise troops, fight for as many borders as you like, and move one column. You win by holding the crowns, by claiming three of the decrees posted where the whole table can read them, or by being the last marshal standing. Empty seats fill with Easy, Medium or Hard bots.

Setting up a room: five boards and a banner

The board. Heartland is the default and the one to learn on: 18 territories across five regions, drawn in portrait so it fits a phone screen whole with no panning. The other four are real geography and deliberately bigger than the screen, so you drag across them — Europe (30 territories, islands and a mountain spine with two passes), North America (28, a western mountain wall and grassland in the middle that cannot be defended), Asia (34, one impassable wall with only two gates) and Anatolia & the Mediterranean (30, where every sea crossing costs you strength).

Match length. Classic uses the board's own round cap — 16 rounds on Heartland, 20 on Europe, North America and the Mediterranean, 24 on Asia. Quick shortens that by 40%.

Your banner. Lion, falcon, boar or stag: colour and emblem only, since every marshal plays exactly the same rulebook.

A turn is three beats: Muster, Clash, March

Every turn runs in the same fixed order, and the last beat ends it for you.

The host: three arms instead of one number

A territory here does not hold "seven armies". It holds a host of three arms, counted separately, and they beat one another in a ring.

Spearline stops Outriders, Outriders ride down Hammers, Hammers smash Spearline. Whichever arm you commit most of is your leading arm for that fight, and winning that matchup is worth 2 extra Might. Nine Spearline genuinely lose to six Hammers: what your army is made of is a position you built, and it can be beaten.

Muster: where your troops come from

Your Levy arrives every turn and is always Spearline — villagers with spears. It is 2 plus your territory count divided by four, with a floor of 3, so a marshal beaten down to two provinces still fields a real turn while the leader's income grows more slowly than their map does.

Everything better than a spear comes from regions, and each region breeds its own arm: on Heartland, Frostmark pays Hammers and the Ring pays Outriders. Hold a region's Seat — its one named, keep-bearing territory — and it pays one of that arm every turn. Hold the region in full and it pays three instead, and unlocks its Edict: Ride Ahead (any march this turn may cross two territories), Undermine (the defender's Ground is cancelled even without Hammers), Second Levy (2 more Spearline at once), Longboats (one assault ignores the sea-lane penalty), or Call the Banners, which draws a card face up and keeps it for your next clash — the only way to know your card before you commit.

Pick an arm in the dock, then tap your own ground to place it, one at a time, five at a time or all of it. The receipt button breaks the total down line by line.

The clash: one card each, and no dice anywhere

Tap one of your own stacks, then tap a rival neighbour, and the assault bar opens. You set the charge arm by arm — you decide who rides out, not merely how many — and both sides' Might is shown before you commit.

Might adds up like this. Each side totals its units by their attack or defence value. The defender adds Ground: 1 if the garrison is dug in at four weighted units, where Spearline counts double, and 2 more for a keep — unless your charge contains a Hammer, which cancels that bonus outright. The attacker pays 2 for crossing a sea lane. Whichever leading arm wins the ring adds 2. Then both sides draw one card from the shared deck and add its value.

The higher total wins. The loser takes one casualty plus one more for every two points of margin, capped at six, so a real advantage overruns a small garrison instead of grinding it down. A win by two or less costs the winner a unit too. On a tie both sides lose one and the assault may continue. Empty the garrison and the ground falls and your survivors ride in; lose, and your charge is thrown back to where it started. There is no blitz button: one clash is one card each, and the bar stays open afterwards with fresh numbers, so grinding a border is one tap per exchange.

Reading the Field Deck

Both marshals draw from one shared deck of 30 cards built from 17 faces, without replacement. The order is secret; what remains in it is public, posted where anybody can read it. Values run from 0 to 4. Eight cards carry a Spearline sigil, eight Outriders and eight Hammers, and a card whose sigil matches your leading arm is worth 2 more.

This is where the game rewards attention. Only three cards in the whole deck are worth 4 — Shieldwall, Full Gallop and The Breach, one per sigil — so once the last of them has turned over, every marshal knows the biggest swing left is a 3. "I only lose if they draw a four with a matching sigil" is a sentence you can check against the deck panel before committing, which is a promise dice could never make. Four Fate cards bend the exchange rather than adding to it: The Fog cancels both matchup bonuses, The Standard doubles yours, The Rout costs the loser one extra unit, and Broken Ground doubles the defender's Ground. When the last card is drawn the season turns and a fresh deck is shuffled.

Three ways to win

Crowns. Five crowns sit on every board. Hold three at the start of your turn and you win, which means surviving a full round while holding them. A two-player duel needs all five, because five crowns split between two marshals is already 3–2.

Decrees. Three stand posted on the Ferman Track at all times, public and shared, and the first marshal to satisfy one claims it — at most one per turn. They ask for concrete things: hold both ends of a pass, wear more than one crown, field six Outriders in a single host, hold ground in four different regions, win three clashes in one turn. A claim pays a mark, an immediate muster of three units of a fitting arm, and a standing perk for the rest of the match. Claim three marks and the match is yours.

Conquest. Be the last marshal standing. If the round cap arrives first, the match is scored instead: 1 point per territory, 3 per crown, 4 per decree and 2 per region Seat held. Armies are worth nothing, so a doom-stack in one corner can never out-score a marshal who spread.

For a first match take Heartland, add two bots, and do three things: keep Spearline at home so your borders are dug in, put a Hammer in any charge aimed at a keep, and read the deck panel before the assault that matters. Play Crownfall free in your browser — no download and no account needed to start.

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