How to play
Turf

First, squares stay with whoever holds them. Second, one player painted those two squares and took them — even though somebody already had them. Third, two players both painted them, so they turned to mud: neither of them gets the squares, and whoever held them before loses them too. Fourth, the player who already held them painted them again on the same round somebody came for them, and held them — the attacker's squares were spent on nothing. Those four outcomes are the whole game.

Cersei is holding two squares in the middle. Arya goes for them with the square card; Bran goes for them with the line. They've picked different shapes and different anchors, but the two of them overlap on exactly the squares Cersei had.

Arya keeps the two squares nobody contested; so does Bran. The two they both wanted are mud. And notice what happened to Cersei — she wasn't in the argument at all, and she lost both her squares to it. Mud strips whoever held the square before, which makes a collision the one way to take ground off somebody without having to hold it yourself.

A square's own owner doesn't count as one of the people fighting over it. So if you drop a shape on ground you already hold, and somebody comes for it that same round, you keep it and they get nothing. Same round, same square, no mud.

Cersei guessed she was about to be attacked and repainted her own two squares. Arya went for them. Cersei holds both — they wear a double rim on the reveal — Arya's other two squares still land, and the two she aimed at are spent on nothing: no mud, nothing changed hands, half her shape simply gone.

But a defence only sees off one attacker. Two of you going for the same square beats it, and the defender loses it along with everybody else:

Cersei defended again, but this time Arya and Bran both came for the same two squares. Three painters on one square is mud whoever they are — so Cersei loses the squares she was protecting, and neither attacker gets them either. Which is the balance of the whole rule: you can't be robbed by one person who guesses right, and you can't be safe from two.

Cersei's phone — she held

Arya's phone — she was blocked

Two phones from the same real round, on a count. A blocked square is never called mud on either screen: nothing churned and nothing moved, and sending Arya looking for a collision that didn't happen would be a lie about who stopped her. Note that Cersei's headline and her numbers disagree, and both are true — she held the square somebody came for, and still went backwards one elsewhere while she was busy holding it.

And it costs you to try. A shape spent defending four squares is a shape that didn't take any new ground — so guessing wrong is a whole turn thrown away, and guessing at all means picking four of the dozen-odd squares you hold and hoping. Defend the ones worth defending: a star, or the square in the middle of your block.

The board is counted every 3rd round, and what you're holding at that moment is banked — added to a total you keep for the rest of the game, whatever happens to the squares that earned it. Squares don't score on their own; they score at a count. Which means ground is worth what you can hold, and holding the same patch through three counts pays you for it three times.

A count is three things added together.

So where you paint matters as much as how much of it lands. These two players hold exactly eight squares each:

Eight squares apiece, four points apart. Keeping your paint together is worth roughly as much again as taking more of it.

Which tells you where to attack. A square out of the middle of somebody's block doesn't just take a square off them — it snaps the block in half:

One square, four points — where the same square taken off the end would have cost two. The cheapest attack in the game is a single square in the right place, and it's usually not the one that looks juiciest.

Two stars are on the board from the first shape, and a third appears two thirds of the way in — wherever it lands, including on top of paint somebody already has. They're worth three each, they're never close enough together for one card to cover two, and everybody can see them all game.

They exist because a bare grid gives you no reason to paint here rather than there. A star is that reason — and it's the one square on the board where going for what somebody else is obviously going for is worth the risk of mud. And a star pays at every count it survives, so one taken early and held is worth far more than its three points suggest.

With exactly two of you, a third painter joins: the Grey. It puts down one shape a round like everybody else, its squares are slate grey and marked G, and they score for nobody.

It's there because mud needs three. In a duel, two players going for the same square lose the same amount and nobody profits, so a pair quickly learns to keep out of each other's way — and the game quietly turns into two people painting separate corners. A third brush gives you something to run into, something to deny, and something to blame.

It plays a rule, not a whim, and the rule is on the TV: bare ground first, stars whenever it can reach one, and the biggest blocks once the board fills up. Being in front only matters to it as a tie-break — it won't hunt the leader, it just looks their way when it's otherwise indifferent. Both screens tell you which card it's holding before you commit; where it's putting that card is the part you have to work out.

And it is not above the rules. Paint the square the Grey is painting and you both get mud; paint over its ground on a later round and it's yours. In a duel, the Grey is usually the biggest single holding on the board — which makes taking a bite out of it the safest four squares available, because it can't take them back on purpose.

Arya is on five squares, Bran on five, and the Grey is sitting on seven of the board and one of the stars. Neither player can win by tidying their own corner: the points are in the grey.

A reveal, with everything marked

The This round column is each player's round in a handful of characters. Arya's reads +1 · 2 blocked · 1 to mud: she played the four-square line straight across the middle, two of it ran into Cersei defending and were spent on nothing, one collided with Bran's line and churned, and exactly one square changed hands to her. Cersei's reads −3 · held 2 — she gained nothing whatever, lost three squares elsewhere, and still had the best-defended block on the board. Blocked and mud are counted apart on purpose: a blocked square never churned and never moved, and sending somebody looking for a collision that didn't happen is a lie about who stopped them. A green number on its own always flatters you — once the board fills, a shape that lands perfectly is often still a net loss.

The rest of the table is the whole game in columns: a column per round, holding what each player's board was worth at the end of it. The counting rounds are tinted, because those are the only ones that actually paid, and the Banked coin on the right is exactly those tinted cells added up — 26 and 27 make Arya's 53. The round that has just landed counts itself up from the one before, so what you watch on a reveal is everybody's number moving; on a counting round the coins are then paid a beat later, which is the only moment in the game where points stop being provisional.

Whoever has banked the most when the last count pays wins. The counts land every 3rd round — after 6 rounds that's 2 payouts, after 12 it's 4 — and the last round of the game is always one of them.

Two players who bank the same total are separated by ground: what their board was worth at the end of every round, added up — the Ground column on the last screen. Since a tie on the bank means they were level at every count, that comes down precisely to the rounds in between, which is the fairest thing left to ask: who was holding more of the board while nothing was being counted. Level on that too and they genuinely share a place.

So the round to think hardest about is the one that pays. Nothing on the board is safe: the leader's block can be cut, their star can be taken, and four squares in the right place the round before a count can move more than four points. What is safe is everything already banked — which is why taking a square off somebody is worth most when you do it early enough to cost them a payout, and worth nothing at all the round after the last one.

The TV keeps the whole thing on one table: a column per round of the game, all of them from the very first screen, with the counting rounds tinted and ticked as they pay. Nothing is hidden and nothing has to be remembered — the schedule, everybody's history and the arithmetic behind every total are the same picture. Your phone carries the short version under the grid: your two coins, and the same track of rounds and payouts.

The last screen doesn't draw the grid. The board you won on is a picture of one moment, and it doesn't explain the totals above it — the reveal a tap earlier showed you the same grid with everything that happened to it marked on. Its place goes to three awards, picked from a much longer list of things the table has no column for: who took the most squares off other people, who defended best, who kept collecting stars, who was quickest to lock in, whose whole shape kept disappearing into the mud. Every one shows the number it was won on, and an award nobody earned is never handed out — a quiet game gives out three real ones rather than filling the shelf. You'll see a different three next game.

The last screen of the night

Five players, six rounds, two counts. Every coin on the right is the two tinted cells on its row added up — Eddard's 16 and 26 make 42, and the line under his name prints exactly that. Where two players finish level on the bank, the winner is decided on ground: every round's board value added up, which is the column beside the coins and the only place the tie-break shows its working. Then the three awards, for the things the table has no column for — Cersei saw two attacks off, Daenerys climbed two places after the first count, and Eddard took both stars.

1. Everyone plays every round, at the same time.
2. Same three shapes for the whole table — the square is the decision.
3. Two people on one square makes mud, and mud belongs to nobody.
4. Repaint a square you hold and you keep it — against one attacker, not two.
5. You may paint over anyone, anywhere, right up to the last round.
6. Keep your squares touching — your biggest patch counts twice.
7. ★ squares are worth three; the third one turns up late.
8. Most points when the last round lands wins.