Games Like Royals7

Four in a row is the easy part. Earning each square is the game.

Every cell on the board shows a number. To claim it you have to build that number out of the cards in your hand — and there is always more than one way. First to line up four wins: across, down, or along either diagonal.

THE MATH IS THE MOVE

Your hand is five cards, worth 1 to 6. A cell reading 96 does not want a 96 — it wants a 9 and a 6 glued together. A cell reading 30 will take 5 × 6, or 6 × 5, or 2 & 4 + 6. You get up to three cards and six operations:

The board reads strictly left to right — no order of operations, ever. 2 + 3 × 4 is 20 here, not 14. That one rule turns plain arithmetic into a puzzle about sequence: the cards you hold matter less than the order you spend them in.

TWO KINGDOMS, TWO RULESETS

ROYALS 7 — the open game. One to three cards, any operations you like, two-digit targets across a 6×6 grid. Every number on the board is yours to shape.

DECREE — the board dictates the math. Every column flies a banner: + − × ÷ ^. That is the only operation permitted in that column. Targets are single digits, and every move is exactly two cards — never one, never three. You do not choose the operation. You choose two cards and go hunting for the column that will accept them.

And once per match, you may issue an EDICT.

An Edict demolishes an entire column. Everything standing in it is destroyed, every column to its right slides one place left, and a freshly rolled column — new law, new targets — marches in at the far end. Pulling a column out makes its neighbours adjacent, which means the slide can complete a line of four that nobody ever actually played. Those lines count.

Demolish at your own peril: if the shift completes a line for both players at once, the victory goes to the player who did not call the Edict.

THE DECK NEVER RUNS OUT

Forty-eight cards, eight copies each of 1 through 6. Spend them and they leave your hand at once, but replacements only arrive at the start of your next turn — so a three-card play leaves you thin for a round. That is the real cost of a clever move.

Nothing is ever destroyed, though. When the last card leaves the deck, the discard pile is shuffled and becomes the deck again. You can always draw. You just cannot always draw well.

WAYS TO PLAY

CHOOSE YOUR BATTLEFIELD

Every printed number is reachable with the deck. There are no dead cells.

THE SUMS ARE NOT THE TEST

Select your cards and every cell you can currently claim lights up. Stuck? All results lists every number your hand can reach and flags the ones sitting on an open cell right now — click a row and the operations drop straight onto the play line.

The game will happily do the arithmetic. It will not tell you which square to take.

AT A GLANCE