Set Up

This section covers how to set up a game when playing with physical cards. If you are playing online (via web.sanguosha.com or QSanGuoSha), these steps will be automated by the platform.

After roles are assigned, players select their character cards. The King reveals their role card and chooses their character first, followed by the other players.

The player with the king role card selects their character first. The king will be able to choose from all of the king choices that the group has available to them and also receives two randomly picked non-king choices from the character deck. Here are many of the King choices.

Each of the remaining players is dealt five character cards face down (if there are not enough character cards for each player to have this many choices, deal each of the remaining players three character cards instead). Each player looks at the character cards that they were dealt, places one face down to use for the game, and places their non-selected choices back in the character deck. After each of the remaining players has made a selection, all of the character cards are flipped face up for everybody to see.

Health Cards

Health cards are distributed to each of the characters. If there are more than four players, the king receives a health card with one more unit of health than printed on their character card.

Hand Cards:

Starting with the King and moving clockwise, each player receives four cards from the deck.