Pharaoh's Legion

Pharaoh's Legion is a 65-second scramble for clay soldiers. Walk into them and they fall in behind you, marching in your exact footsteps. Walk them home and they turn into points. Nobody is ever knocked out. The only thing you can lose is soldiers, and you lose them to a well-timed slash through your line.

Recruit, march, bank

Loose clay soldiers stand all over the court. Come within about a metre and a half of one and it joins the back of your line. The court is topped up as people take them, so there are always more to find.

Your vault is the ring in your colour on the rim, a few steps behind where you start. Step inside it and your whole line banks at once. The more you bring in together, the more each soldier is worth:

• 1 to 3 soldiers: 100 points each
• 4 to 7: 150 each
• 8 or more: 200 each

So three soldiers bank for 300, four for 600, and eight for 1,600. A soldier still marching behind you at the buzzer is worth only 50. Your score is your banked points plus those, and a tie goes to whoever recruited the most soldiers over the round, stolen ones included.

Everyone can see the number over your head: how many soldiers you have marching. A long line is good news for you and a target for everyone else.

Q, Dash Cut

A short, fast lunge, ready again every 2.5 seconds. Only a dash cuts. Walking into a line does nothing. When a dash passes within about a metre and a half of a rival's soldier, it cuts the line at the soldier it comes closest to: that soldier and everyone behind come away. You keep the first three. The rest scatter, dizzy for about two seconds, and then anyone can recruit them.

A dash that passes nearer the commander than any of their soldiers is only a bump. One dash cuts each rival's line once at most, but it can cut two rivals if it crosses both lines.

E, Rally Horn

For 2.2 seconds your line coils to a little over half its length, glows turquoise and can't be cut. A dash that strikes it glances off with a flash. The horn recharges in 8 seconds, far slower than the dash, so a patient rival can wait it out.

How the big scores happen

• Bank at the thresholds. Four soldiers banked together pay the same as six banked in pairs, and eight at once pay 1,600 where two fours pay 1,200. Count before you walk home.
• Bank before the buzzer. A banked soldier is worth at least 100, one still marching at the end only 50.
• Cut just behind the head. The nearer the commander you strike, the more of the line comes away, but too near and it is a bump that wastes the dash.
• Cross a line side-on. Chasing one from behind only clips the last soldier or two.
• Follow up your own cut. The scattered soldiers wake about two seconds later where they landed, and whoever is standing among them gets them.
• Sound the horn when a rival lines up on you, and head for home while it lasts.
• The dash is your quickest way to move when no line is in reach. Use it to get home, or to reach a cluster of loose soldiers first.
• A three-soldier steal turns a line of one into four, which is the step from 100 a soldier to 150.

Court size

The court has a radius of 17 metres at 2 players and grows by a metre and a half per player, to 38 metres at 16. Loose soldiers are kept at 8 plus 3 per player: 14 at 2 players and 56 at 16. The vaults are spaced evenly round the rim, and a solid altar in the middle has to be walked round.