How to play Kronions in five minutes

If you’ve played Oh Hell, Wizard, or Up and Down the River, you basically already know Kronions. We’ll still walk you through it, because the paradox cards are worth the extra two minutes.

The setup

A Kronions game is a series of rounds. Round 1 everyone gets 1 card, round 2 everyone gets 2, and so on until you hit the cap for your player count. At the start of each round:

Everyone gets the same number of cards.
One extra card flips face-up — that’s the trump suit for the round.
The player to the dealer’s left bids first. The dealer leads the first trick.

The deck is 52 standard cards across four suits — Chrono ⏳, Nova ✦, Void ◈, Flux ⚡ — ranked 1–13. Plus six paradox cards. We’ll get there.

Bidding

Each player bids a whole number from 0 up to the hand size. Your bid is how many tricks you’ll win exactly. Over or under, doesn’t matter — zero points.

There is one twist: the dealer can’t bid a number that makes the total equal the hand size. So if it’s a 5-card round and the other three players bid 1 + 2 + 1 = 4, the dealer cannot bid 1. They bid 0, 2, 3, 4, or 5. This rule guarantees somebody, somewhere, is wrong.

Playing tricks

The dealer leads the first trick. Going clockwise, each player plays a card. If you have a card of the led suit, you must play it. Otherwise, you can play anything — trump, off-suit, paradox.

The trick winner is decided like this:

A Future paradox wins the trick (first one played wins if there are multiple).
Otherwise, the highest trump card wins.
Otherwise, the highest card of the led suit wins.
A Past paradox always loses.

The trick winner leads the next one.

Paradox cards: the whole point

There are six paradox cards in the deck. When you play one, you look the table in the eye and declare it:

🔮 Future — beats anything. Wins the trick. Think of it as an unbeatable super-trump.
🕳️ Past — loses to everything. Useful when you’re trying to get rid of a trick you don’t want.

Paradox cards don’t follow suit — you can play one any time. They don’t establish the led suit either, so if you lead a paradox, the next player is free to play whatever they want.

A tiny example

Four players, 3-card round. Trump is Nova. Leads go around.

You lead the 10 of Nova. P2 plays the 7 of Nova (must follow; no choice). P3 plays a paradox and declares it Future. P4 plays the 2 of Flux (no Nova; dumps the worst card).

P3 wins the trick. The 10 of trump was winning until the Future paradox showed up and rewrote the outcome. P2’s 7 of Nova was forced by the follow-suit rule — painful.

Later that round, P4 plays their paradox on a trick where they need to lose, declares it Past, and effectively throws the trick. That’s a great paradox play.

Scoring

At the end of each round:

Tricks won = bid → 10 + bid points.
Otherwise → 0 points.

Bidding 0 and making it is worth 10. Bidding 5 and making it is worth 15. Missing a 5-bid by one trick is worth 0. No partial credit, no sympathy.

Highest total score after the last round wins. That’s the whole thing.

Now go play

Kronions plays in your browser. Share a code with 1–5 friends, type your names, deal. First round is a one-card round and it’s always chaos. By round 4 you’ll be plotting paradox plays two tricks in advance.