Ivanhoe is a card game by Reiner Knizia for 2 to 5 players who have the role of a gentleman whose goal is to be the first to win 5 prestigious tournaments. To win these tournaments will have to get together the support of different men to fight our enemies. But beware, sometimes things can go wrong and what seemed an assured victory can turn around completely.

Card Types

The cards have different values and can be classified into several groups identified by colors. The colors represent the type of combat:

- Yellow Cards: clubs
- Red Letters: swords
- Green Cards: Melee (all these letters each have value 1)
- Blue Letters: axes
- Purple Letters: fair

Letters Ivanhoe

Besides these we have two very important groups of cards:

- White Letters: Letters of support are used as a sort of wildcard. Have different values but the cards with value 6 represent the “Maiden”. You can only have a letter of “Maiden” in the area of deployment. If a player leaves the tournament and has a “Maiden” displayed, you will lose the information about the color at that time is the tournament if you already have one.

- Letters of action: allow different actions during the game. These are letters that give different advantages during the tournament, serve as an example:

. Unhorse: the tournament changed from purple to red, blue or yellow as indicated by the player.
. Dodge: discard any card from the deployment of one of your opponents.
. Disgrace: each player must discard their deployment all letters of support.
. Stunned: With this card you can leave one of your opponents stunned and can only add a letter to be deployed on each shift.

Ivanhoe Item

Gameplay

8 cards are dealt to each player and leave the deck in the middle. Is chosen by lot who starts the game, other times it starts the tournament player who was the previous winner. The shift sequence is as follows:

1 – draw a card.
2 – play the cards.
3 – You leave or you decide to continue the tournament.

Begin drawing a card. There is no limit cards that the player can have on hand. The player starts the tournament decides what color compete, then the other players decide whether to enter the tournament or not. If you enter letters in the tournament to be played must be the color you have chosen the starting player (other than white or can be used if the action cards).

Each player can use as many cards as you wish. The Cards played must be visible and partially overlap to indicate the order in which they have left (important because of the advantages that allow certain action cards). You win this round the player with more value in the sum of its letters visible.

A player who has entered the tournament, you can leave any of their shifts (eg because you’ve run out of cards of that color or because they simply do not interest you that tournament), then you must discard the cards displayed in front of you and place them face up next to the discard pile.

When only two players remain in the tournament and one of them leaves, the other is the winner of it and the tab will be the same color. If the color is purple has won, you can choose the color you want. You can only have one file for each color.
The winner is the first player to collect all 5 pieces of different colors.

Conclusion

Mechanically simple but extremely entertaining. The grace of the game is given white letters and, above all, the action that can change completely the development of turn.
Although we have not played to two people, we believe that their ideal number are 4 to 5 people for more interesting turns.
There is, in our opinion, the best game of Knizia but it is a large and very complete card game.