Kacper Ryx i Król Żebraków

About this board game

Kacper Ryx i Król Żebraków is a picaresque board game for 2–5 players, with games lasting about 120 minutes. Set in sixteenth-century Cracow, it casts players as gang leaders competing to become the King of Beggars, ruler of the city’s underworld.

Players earn influence points, representing respect, by completing tasks on objective cards drawn at the start of each turn. Many objectives call for capturing taverns, which serve as bases of operation and help players take control of districts across Renaissance Cracow.

Each turn unfolds through four distinct phases:

• Income: receive income.
• Action: carry out your available actions.
• Objective: work toward the task on your objective card.
• Investigation: advance the unfolding investigation.

Time and investigation begin at opposite ends of a shared track. As time passes and new crimes committed by the players are revealed, the markers move toward one another. When they meet, the game ends, and the player with the most influence becomes the new King of Beggars.

Kacper Ryx i Król Żebraków includes a dedicated two-player variant with different rules. The map is reduced to six districts, while the time-investigation track and influence track are not used. Instead, players race to complete four explicit objectives from a separate duel deck, claiming completed cards and replacing them with new ones; the first player to collect four objective cards wins.

Based on the novel series about the sixteenth-century Cracow detective Kacper Ryx by Polish writer Mariusz Wollny, the game offers a shorter two-player experience alongside its 3–5 player format.