Legends of the Three Kingdoms

The wars of the Three Kingdoms
LTK
OriginChina
TypeStrategy
Players2–10
Age range12+:varies
Cards108
Playcounterclockwise
Playing time20-40 minutes
Chancemedium
Websitehttp://www.sanguosha.com/ (Official website)
http://www.3platform.com/3gs/ (Servers) http://www.sanguosha.us/ (Official website in US)
Legends of the Three Kingdoms (LTK)
Traditional Chinese三國殺
Simplified Chinese三国杀
Literal meaningThree Kingdoms Kill
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinSānguóshā
An LTK Game

Legends of the Three Kingdoms[1] (simplified Chinese: 三国杀; traditional Chinese: 三國殺; literally Three Kingdoms Kill), or sometimes Sanguosha, LTK for short, is a Chinese card game based on the Three Kingdoms period of China and the semi-fictional 14th century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (ROTK) by Luo Guanzhong. The rules of the basic LTK are almost identical to the rules of the older Italian card game Bang!. LTK was released by YOKA games (游卡桌游) on January 1, 2008, and has been followed to date by a total of seven official expansion sets, an online version LTK Online, as well as a children's version LTK Q Version. There are self-created cards by players, but these are mostly unofficial.

LTK initially began with a strong following in China since the entire game is in Chinese. Sales of LTK totaled 20 million yuan in 2009, and 100 million yuan in 2010.[2] However the game has begun to reach an international audience after players began translating the game into the English language and posting these translations on blogs and forums. Site visit statistics from one of these blogs showed that readers outside of Mainland China come primarily from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Malaysia, and New Zealand.[3]

  1. ^ LTK Official English Edition in Taobao
  2. ^ "UC Berkeley takes novel approach to card game".
  3. ^ "Who in the world plays SanGuoSha?".