Pharaoh
BGG rank
BGG #26,522
BGG rating
5.5

Pharaoh

2010

Rules assistance for Pharaoh

Plain-language explanations of turns, card effects and disputed situations, with official source references and saved question history.

  • 2–4 players
  • 15 min
  • Complexity 1.4/5

Rules assistant for Pharaoh

What would you like to know?

Answers come from the official rulebook, with the page to check.

Pharaoh is a board game released in 2010 for 2–4 players and 15 minutes per game. It was designed by Andrew Looney and its main mechanics are Roll / Spin and Move, Pattern Building, and Action Points.

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About the game

In Pharaoh, each player takes three Icehouse pieces of one color. The pieces start off the board and may enter the board edge closest to the player; the game board is a 5x5 grid with the corners removed. On a turn, roll the die and use the result as movement points: it takes 1/2/3 points to move a small/medium/large piece one square, and twice that for a diagonal move. Stacking is not allowed, but if you land on an enemy piece of the same size or smaller, it is removed from the board and needs to be moved back on. To win, a player must get all of his pieces in a row of three squares centered in the board. Also included in the 2012 edition of Treehouse, and Pyramid Arcade.

Designers

Publishers

  • (Web published)
  • Looney Labs

Questions and answers

Pharaoh supports 2–4 players according to the catalogue. This range comes from the publisher’s listed player count, so the game can be set up for any group size within it. Some setups, rules and scoring details may still vary by player count, so check your edition’s rulebook for the exact configuration.