Abstract · 2018

War Chest

Coins are units and actions, one action per turn and six markers: control more bases than your rival before they place all of theirs.

2–4 players
30–60 min
2.4 / 5 · Light

Set up the game

0 of 7 steps

Tick each step as you complete it.

1Lay out the board. With two players you only use the central area: the darker edge tiles stay in the box. With four you use the whole board, because each team starts from its own area at either end.
Central area for two
Full four-player board
2Pick a faction and take its bag, its royal coin and its six control markers. Put two coins of each of your four unit types into the bag, plus the royal coin: nine coins in total. The rest of those units' coins become your supply, in piles next to their cards.
Nine coins in the bag
3Draw your first three coins and look at them without showing them. That is your opening hand. From now on you draw three at the start of each round, not one per turn: what you decide is how to spend them and in which order.
The bag and its nine coins
4Put one control marker on each of your two starting bases; every other base is neutral. With four players each team places three markers and shares the team's eight: the bases belong to both players, not to one.
Starting bases for two
5Keep the supply visible, each pile of coins next to its unit card, and set aside an area for your discard pile. The discard pile is what refills your bag when it runs out; the supply never goes back into the bag on its own, only through recruiting.
Cards and supply
6Flip the initiative marker. Whoever matches the face-up side takes it and opens the round. Initiative is not permanent: it can be claimed once per round by discarding a coin face-down.
Initiative marker
7You win by placing your last control marker. With two players that is six markers each; with four it is eight shared by each team. Remember that a base is only controlled by a unit standing on it and an action of control: there are no points to add up at the end.
The bases you need to control

What it is about

War Chest plays like an abstract: there are no dice and combat has no luck. What you have is a bag of coins and a hex board. Every coin does two jobs at once, because the unit it represents can be on the board and the action it allows can be in your hand. That double life is the whole game.

The round is always the same: draw three coins, take one action per turn and alternate until both hands are empty. When the bag runs out it is recycled from the discards. That is why the composition of the bag matters as much as your position on the board: the coins you add and the ones you leave out decide what you can do in the rounds ahead.

The bases are the clock. With two players each side has six control markers; with four, each team shares eight. There is no scoring and no tie-break: as soon as someone places the last one, the game is over. Everything else — moving, attacking, recruiting, claiming initiative — exists to make that moment arrive before it does for your rival.

BGG page Official rulebook

Source note

This guide follows the standard two-player game and the action order used by War Chest Online. The team variant has its own expansion toggle in this same guide; the unit draft is explained in the FAQ.

EN rulebook (AEG, 2018) + War Chest Online · Reviewed: 25 Oct 2026