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About This Game

Set the line, watch it hold

The King's Muster is an auto-battler of whole armies. You raise the companies, arm them in the Forge and set them on your side of the front, banners planted. Then your men fight the battle themselves. Each soldier picks his own foe, and a company holds or breaks on its courage, its rank and its formation: veterans stand where levies run. The enemy keeps a reserve of his own and knows how to feint. Give an order when you see the moment, or none at all, and find out whose line breaks first.

The throne is empty

King Osric died after the Long Winter and left no heir. The Regency Council sealed the Capital, and one by one the ten Marks of the kingdom fell away. You are the keeper of the King's Muster Roll, the last one still calling men to it. You start with a few dozen of them, each one his own pixel-art soldier, and you end with more than a thousand.

Their wall

Most of the campaign is fought at a wall, and you are on both sides of it. Pound it with cannon until it comes down, or put ladders against it and climb under the arrows. There are eight siege machines, from the ladder and the ram up to the trebuchet and the cannon. Push a ram up to the gate while their archers shoot down at it, and have your men ready for the moment it gives.

Your wall

In the defenses you are the one behind the wall, with boiling oil, a gate that has to hold, and not enough men. Nearly a hundred of the campaign's battles are fought this way, and some bring a night of their own: sappers digging under the wall, a traitor at the gate, a raid in the dark.

The Forge

The Forge turns recruits into soldiers. There are seven classes (infantry, archers, cavalry, axemen, slingers, pot-throwers and monks) and each one splits into specialists: pikes and shield walls, longbows and crossbows, lancers and horse archers, and pot-throwers with Greek fire. Every company has a name, and the ones that come home alive gain rank. A veteran company stands fast where raw levies would run.

The Muster Roll

Between battles you spend what the campaign pays on whatever the next Mark will need: more men, siege machines, supply, better captains. Eight formations, from the wedge to the shield wall and the schiltron, and three doctrines, shield, bow and horse, open up as you win the Marks back.

You choose how much of each battle you carry yourself. Command every banner by hand, or unlock a Captain who places companies for you and reinforcements that fill your lines from the reserve, and switch them on or off, battle by battle.

The campaign

Ten Marks, from the Meadow to the Capital, each with its own ground and its own enemy. 300 battles: 116 in the field, 88 sieges and 96 defenses. Each one sets its own goal, from 18 kinds: break them fast, keep your losses low, hold a banner's ground, climb the ladders first, get through the gate before half the time is gone, hold out wave after wave. Four difficulty levels, and an Iron campaign: one life, and a company cut down to the last man is gone for good.

There is no diplomacy and no empire to run. The kingdom's map is a road of battles, Mark by Mark, with the Muster Roll between them. The King's Muster is single-player.

Conquest

A roguelite mode that opens halfway through the campaign, in Mark 5, with Heat 1 to 3, and opens all the way in Mark 9. Nine battles on one Mark's map, three companies to start, and a deck you draft as you go. Relics bend the rules, Heat 1 to 10 turns up the enemy, and the daily run is the same for everyone.

Your own fields and castles

The map editor builds a field, a castle or a whole siege out of the game's own pieces. Fight it in the sandbox with any armies you like, up to 2,000 men, or set two hosts on each other and watch who breaks first. Mouse and keyboard, or full controller support.

After launch

Steam Workshop for the fields and castles you build, and mod support, come in updates after launch, and your campaign save keeps working across them. The King's Muster is built so that new scenarios, with their own maps, armies and campaigns, can be built on it. They will come later as DLC. The kingdom you see here stays at the heart of it.