Each player has a cannon piece in their supply. To use your cannon, you must first build a foundry. The foundry is depicted on the front of the foundry tiles. It costs 1 lumber and 1 ore to build.
After you have built the foundry, turn the tile over and place your cannon adjacent to one or your knights. Now you have promoted this knight to cannoneer. The cannon and the knight form a “cannoneer” unit and are moved together. The cannon gives the knight 1 additional strength point. For example, a mighty knight with a cannon becomes a cannoneer with a strength of 4.
If it gives you a tactical advantage during the game, you may remove the cannon from one of your knights and place it adjacent to another one of your knights, thus promoting that knight to cannoneer. However, this transfer costs you 1 lumber.
Horse and Cavalryman
Each player has 1 horse piece in their supply. To use your horse, you must first build a horse farm. The horse farm is depicted on the front of the horse farm tiles, together with its building costs: 1 lumber and 1 grain.
After you have built the horse farm, turn the tile over and place your horse adjacent to one or your knights. Now you have promoted this knight to cavalry. The horse and the knight form a “cavalry” unit and are moved together. You may move an active cavalry unit to any unoccupied intersection of the game board. This can be very helpful if, for example, you want to break a standoff between a conqueror and the surrounding knights.
After moving your cavalry to an intersection adjacent to one of your roads, you may leave it on that intersection. If none of your roads is adjacent to that intersection, you must immediately return your cavalry to the intersection it came from. As a consequence, deactivating your cavalry and moving him to an intersection not connected to one of your roads only makes sense if it allows you to defeat a conqueror, either alone or together with other players’ knights.
Like the cannon, you can also move your horse from one of your knights to another one of your knights. Moving the horse costs 1 grain.
Some strategists may like the idea of equipping a knight with a horse and a cannon, thus making it some kind of overpowering “mounted cannoneer.” However, you are not allowed to place both playing pieces adjacent to a knight. This being said, it’s also hard to imagine a knight on a horse holding a cannon in his arms and firing it in all directions …
In my next blog post, I’ll tell you what you can do with the wine tokens and amber tokens placed on the game board.
