Legends of the Three Kingdoms
Chinese card game based on the Three Kingdoms period of China and the semi-fictional novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (ROTK)
Legends of the Three Kingdoms (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. 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.
Relevance to history
The cards and characters of LTK are all related to the ancient history of China, the most telling of which are the characters and their abilities. Each character is given an ability in the game which usually mirrors the historical character's personality, actions, strength/weakness, cause of death, and historical events in which the character was involved, etc.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as chinese card game based on the Three Kingdoms period of China and the semi-fictional novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (ROTK). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1049371. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2008, 2009 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Legends of the Three Kingdoms” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.