Guards of Traitor's Toll

What is Guards of Traitor’s Toll

Guards of Traitor’s Toll is “a skirmish adventure game set in a fantasy city, written by Graham Davey.” It’s published by Grey For Now Games, the makers of Test of Honour and 02 Hundred Hours, and it came out at the end of March 2025.

You don’t play a warband here. You play the city guard. Traitor’s Toll is full of merchants, buskers, sorcerers and scholars, and hidden among them are pickpockets, thieves and smugglers. Your job is to patrol the streets, catch the wrongdoers, and keep the citizens from getting too rebellious.

It’s semi-cooperative. Each player runs a Guard Captain and a patrol of five guardsmen. You mostly aren’t fighting each other, but you are rivals: whoever makes the most arrests and earns the most gold wins. Push the city too hard and the people riot, and then everybody loses.

Grey For Now describes “a strong narrative, legacy element.” Your guards pick up skills and learn secrets that carry into later tasks and later games.

How it plays

Tokens from a bag. Activation is a token draw: one token per guard (two for captains), plus plot tokens and time tokens. Plot tokens draw a plot card, suspect tokens move suspects, and time tokens move the civilians, then end the turn.
Five stats, custom dice. Guards have Aim, Agility, Brawn, Wits and Heart, and a stat is how many dice you roll. The custom dice show swords, coins and feet. You usually want three or more swords. Coins unlock special abilities, and feet speed up movement.
Plots bring out suspects. A plot card might name “any barefoot civilian,” and that civilian becomes a suspect with their own stats and behaviour. Hidden Secret cards can make a plot harder, easier, or stranger.
Arrest, don’t kill. There are three kinds of attack: close strike, ranged strike, and seize. Seize is the one that takes a suspect alive. Kill someone who wasn’t violent and the guard who did it picks up personal discontent.
Discontent costs you. Unsolved plots and rough policing both add discontent. At the end it comes off your gold total, and too much of it sets off a riot that loses the game for everyone.
A crowded board. Civilians are identified on a 2d6 table with 35 options. The rules suggest at least 20 civilians, and 30 to 40 make for a busier part of town.

Goonhammer’s reviewer found a game ran “a full night’s gaming,” since missions end when their goals are met rather than after a set number of turns.

How to start

Get the Starter Set. $68 from Grey For Now. It has 36 multi-part 28mm plastic figures (24 Cityfolk and 12 City Guards), the 112-page rulebook with the city map and a linked story campaign, 108 cards, 8 custom dice, a D6, 108 counters and bases. The plastics come from Wargames Atlantic. Solo play is built into the core game.
Add Busy Streets for 3 or 4 players. The Busy Streets expansion ($51) adds 24 more figures plus the cards, dice and counters for a third and fourth player, along with sergeants, patrons and magic items.
Already have minis? The No-Minis Combo ($63) is the Starter Set and Busy Streets without the figures. The rulebook alone isn’t enough, since you need the cards, dice and counters.
Build a town. You’ll need buildings for a 3’ × 3’ table. The standard Patrol Duty mission calls for three to nine of them. Grey For Now also sells its own Traitor’s Toll terrain range.
Grab the free downloads. The Gameplay Overview, quick reference sheets, FAQ & Errata and optional rules are all free on the Grey For Now store.