Battle Line

About this board game

Battle Line is a two-player card game played in about 30 minutes, challenging opponents to win a battle by capturing flags with stronger card formations.

Across the battlefield, nine flags divide the two sides. Players place cards beside each flag, building three-card poker-style hands on their side. Formations include combinations such as a straight flush, three of a kind, a straight, and a flush, with the strongest formation winning the contested flag.

Victory comes through carefully choosing where to commit your cards and when to contest a flag. The first player to take five of the nine flags wins, but there is another route to victory: claiming three adjacent flags.

• Designed for exactly two players
• Approximately 30 minutes of play
• Nine flags create multiple points of conflict
• Three-card formations determine who wins each flag
• Tactics cards add another layer to the battle

Battle Line includes tactics cards, which were introduced with this design and later added to subsequent editions of Schotten Totten. Compared with Schotten Totten, it uses cards numbered from 1 to 10 rather than 1 to 9, gives each player a seven-card hand instead of six, and presents the rule that stones may only be claimed at the start of your turn as an advanced variant.

With its direct two-player confrontation and compact poker-inspired formations, Battle Line turns every card placement into a contest for position. It is a rethemed version of Schotten Totten, featuring different graphics and wooden flag pieces in place of boundary stone cards.