How to play Outflank
Outflank is an original world-conquest strategy game for two to six players. Forty-two lands across six realms are dealt out at the start, and you win either by holding twenty-six of them at the end of your turn or by being the last player left. Every battle is decided by dice, and every turn follows the same three steps: reinforce, attack, then move armies. Play against the computer at three difficulties, or against other people online from a single invite link.
How to play
- The map is dealt at the start — you begin holding lands all over it, with armies on each. There is no claiming phase.
- Reinforce: at the start of your turn you receive new armies, more if you hold more lands, plus a bonus for holding every land in a realm. Choose your lands to place them on.
- Attack: choose one of your lands, then a bordering land you do not hold. You need at least two armies to attack, because one always has to stay behind.
- The dice decide it. The attacker rolls up to three and the defender up to two; the highest are compared against each other, and the defender wins ties.
- Take a land and you must move armies into it, which is what stops you capturing ground you cannot hold.
- Capture at least one land in a turn and you draw a card. Three matching cards trade in for extra armies, and each trade is worth more than the last — so cards are what eventually end a long game.
- Move armies: once per turn you may move armies between two of your own lands, along a route you control the whole way. Then end your turn.
- A player is out when they lose their last land. Their cards leave the game with them.
Tips & strategy
- Hold a whole realm and you collect its bonus every single turn. Two small realms usually beat one sprawling one, because a realm is only worth holding if you can defend its borders.
- Count the borders before you commit. A realm with two ways in costs a fraction of what one with six costs to keep.
- Stack armies on the lands that touch someone else, not the ones behind your lines. A land in your interior can never be attacked.
- Take at least one land every turn, even a weak one — that is what earns the card, and cards compound.
- Attacking with three dice against two is much better than attacking with two against two. Build the stack first, then attack once, rather than nibbling.
- Watch who is close to the target. Everyone at the table loses if one player is allowed to walk to twenty-six lands unopposed.
Accessibility
Fully playable by touch, keyboard and screen reader. Who holds what is said in words and shown with a per-player shape, never by colour alone. Under the map is a row of just the lands that matter this turn, at full tap size, so the map is never the only way to play. With a keyboard the map is one tab stop: arrow keys move around it and the bracket keys step through a land’s borders. A "Full board" section lists all forty-two lands with their owner, armies and borders, so the whole position can be read without seeing the map, and the dice result is stated in words including that ties go to the defender.