Five Towers — the rulebook
How towers grow, what each stone does, how turns resolve, and which win conditions are live in the app today.
Bag
27 stones
Three common figures, three rare, and just one Alchemist.
Opening hand
3 stones
Every player starts by drawing three stones from the shared bag.
Turn draw
2 or 3
Most turns draw two. Passing the whole turn draws three instead.
Win
Center or control
Reach the center after filling a tower, or own all five outer bases.
Claim a base first
Each of the five outer points is a tower base. Empty towers can be claimed from the outside ring only.
The board has five towers, each made of five rings that move inward toward a shared center. Ring 0 is the outer base; ring 4 is the last inner space before the center.
You can only build on your own towers, so the base matters most: whoever owns the base controls that tower for growth, and whoever owns all five bases wins by control.
If a stone is destroyed from a tower, every stone above it in the same tower also falls — lower rings support the entire inward stack.
Fill one tower completely, then place one more stone into the shared center.
Own every outer base at the same time. Tower height does not matter for this victory.
Choose a stone
Pick one stone from your hand to play. If you do not want to play any stone, you may skip the entire turn instead.
Place it legally
Claim an empty base, extend one of your own towers inward, or place into the center if you already have a full tower.
Resolve the effect
Most stones do something after placement. Farmers grant a bonus play, Warriors destroy adjacent stones, and so on.
Draw and pass
A normal turn draws 2. Skipping the whole turn draws 3. Each rare stone you played reduces the normal draw by 2.
The bag holds three common figures and three rare ones. Rare stones are stronger, but they tax your end-of-turn draw.
Farmer
Effect
After you place a Farmer, you may immediately play one more stone from your hand.
Why it matters
Farmers are tempo. They let you claim two spaces in one turn, set up a center threat faster, or chain into a stronger effect stone.
Fine print
The bonus placement follows all normal placement rules. If the bonus stone is rare, its draw penalty also applies.
Build a single tower through all five rings, then place one more stone in the center. That center move ends the game immediately.
If you own every base at the same time, the game ends instantly — through placement, destruction, or an Alchemist swap.
Do I win when I place the fifth stone in a tower?
No. Filling ring 4 only unlocks the center. You still need a separate legal placement into the center to win that way.
Can the Alchemist swap into the center?
No. The Alchemist only swaps with occupied board spaces. The empty center is not a swap target.
Why did a low-tower position suddenly end?
Usually because one player took the last remaining outer base and triggered the control-all-bases win.
Head-to-head today
The current app is built around two-player games: local, online, and vs CPU.
Both win paths are active
Reaching the center and owning all five bases both end the game immediately in the live app.
Capture & reclaim are not enabled
Building, destruction (Warrior / Assassin) and the cascade are live. Capturing an adjacent opponent tower — and reclaiming a captured one — is a planned gameplay step, not active in this build, so the board never shows a capture cue.