Ironmask

Forty companies a side, every rank turned away from the enemy. You win by walking onto the other house's standard — and you find it by reading the field.

Your papers keep themselves. Every step a Corvel company takes, every strike it survives, narrows what it can possibly be, and the Dossier prints that band on the counter itself.

How it plays

The field

• Ten by ten. The two slate patches in the middle band are impassable and block sight down a rank.
• You deploy forty companies in your four home rows; Corvel does the same opposite.

Moving

• One square up, down, left or right. Never diagonally, never onto your own company.
• An Outrider runs any distance down an open rank or file and may strike at the end of the run.
• Charges and the Standard never move.
• No company may shuttle between the same two squares more than three times running.

Striking

• Move onto an enemy company to strike it. Both ranks are shown; the lower is removed, equals remove each other.
• A Charge destroys anything that strikes it except a Sapper, who lifts it.
• The Assassin loses to everything, but takes the Marshal if it strikes first.
• Walk onto the enemy Standard and the action is over.

The Dossier

• Every enemy counter carries the band your papers have narrowed it to. "5–10" means it has beaten enough to rule out the small ranks; "X?" means it has never moved and sits where a Charge would.
• Click any enemy counter to open its card: the full spread of ranks it could still be, what your selected company would do against it, and a space for your own pencil mark.
• The machine reads the field with the same papers. It cannot see a rank you have not shown it.

Keys

• Arrow keys move the cursor, Enter picks up and puts down, Escape lets go.
• D opens the Dossier, L the Ledger, J the Journal.

The action is over