Post by Gilvan Blight on Mar 5, 2007 10:27:53 GMT -5
Quickly: a good value game, quick lots of strategy but easy to learn.
Summary: another Fantasy Flight small box game. In this one players each play rulers in a Kingdom building up the land and placing castles in the most advantageous places. This is done by building the land on an empty grid. Each player is given a set of castles ranked 1 through 4. The number of which decrease as the numbers go up. So 4 1s, 3 2s etc. The number of 1 tiles changes depending on the number of players. A pool of land tiles is created face down and each player draws one and keeps it. Each turn players do 1 of 3 things. They either play a castle, draw and play a tile or play the tile they drew at the begining of the game. Going around the table the players fill in the grid. The land tiles contain either resources numbered 1 through 6, hazards numbered -1 to -6 or special tiles. Play continues until the board is filled and then scoring occurs. The board is scored in rows and columns. You start with one row, you totall all of the hazards and resources and apply any special cards (Mines double everything, Dragons cancel the Resources, Mountains split the row of column). You then timest his but the total number of castles built. You then move on to the next row, then all of the columns so that each castls score twice, once for the row it's in and once for the column. Players then receive there number 1 castles back and the board is cleared. This is done for 3 rounds. The person with the highest total at the end wins. Trust me is sounds a lot more confusing then it is.
The Good: this is a fun game. I immediately took a liking to it and still feel that way. Simple to learn after only about 2 minutes but complex enough to keep you coming back. A few twists make this really intersting. The main being that you don't get your level 2-4 castles back once used. This means you end up gambling that there won't be a better chance to use them, or you end up saving them up for the last round which may have the worst 'layout'. The addion of the special tiles really adds some amusing screw your neighbour while being careful to not screw yourself aspects to the game. I think this one could have been released as a big box game. Make a bigger grid, add in 2 more players. Add in some more special tiles, and some varient rules (play with tiles face up, draw a hand of tiles, add a gold castle, that double other castles in its rows etc). The price. This is one of the better, actually thus far the second best Fantasy Flight silverline game I have played, at $20CDN or less.
The Bad: Not the most complex game out there. It's not nearly as compelling as a lot of other games in my collection. Which means this one will go on the Between games/Start or End of the night list. I wouldn't set up Kingdoms night for example. It's fun but no where near as engaging as many big box games. Perhaps if it had some of the additions suggested above.
The Ugly: why all the annoying money. The points in this game vary wildly. One round you could be loosing 13 points, the next gaining 130. The game comes with these cardboard coins in various denominations that are just annoying to use and make change with. Of course this was very easy to fix by grabbing a pen and paper. The only reason I can see for including this annoying system is so the game was 'playable' out of the box so you don't need anything else. I'm tempted to steal the coins for some other game or rpg.
Overall: definately worth the discounted price. I would have prefered a bit more of everything in this one (except for the dumb money counters). It's a rather good distraction that's easy to teach, easy to learn and involves just enough strategy to keep it interesting. Just make sure you grab a calculator, pen and paper as the points will be flying, both up and down.
Summary: another Fantasy Flight small box game. In this one players each play rulers in a Kingdom building up the land and placing castles in the most advantageous places. This is done by building the land on an empty grid. Each player is given a set of castles ranked 1 through 4. The number of which decrease as the numbers go up. So 4 1s, 3 2s etc. The number of 1 tiles changes depending on the number of players. A pool of land tiles is created face down and each player draws one and keeps it. Each turn players do 1 of 3 things. They either play a castle, draw and play a tile or play the tile they drew at the begining of the game. Going around the table the players fill in the grid. The land tiles contain either resources numbered 1 through 6, hazards numbered -1 to -6 or special tiles. Play continues until the board is filled and then scoring occurs. The board is scored in rows and columns. You start with one row, you totall all of the hazards and resources and apply any special cards (Mines double everything, Dragons cancel the Resources, Mountains split the row of column). You then timest his but the total number of castles built. You then move on to the next row, then all of the columns so that each castls score twice, once for the row it's in and once for the column. Players then receive there number 1 castles back and the board is cleared. This is done for 3 rounds. The person with the highest total at the end wins. Trust me is sounds a lot more confusing then it is.
The Good: this is a fun game. I immediately took a liking to it and still feel that way. Simple to learn after only about 2 minutes but complex enough to keep you coming back. A few twists make this really intersting. The main being that you don't get your level 2-4 castles back once used. This means you end up gambling that there won't be a better chance to use them, or you end up saving them up for the last round which may have the worst 'layout'. The addion of the special tiles really adds some amusing screw your neighbour while being careful to not screw yourself aspects to the game. I think this one could have been released as a big box game. Make a bigger grid, add in 2 more players. Add in some more special tiles, and some varient rules (play with tiles face up, draw a hand of tiles, add a gold castle, that double other castles in its rows etc). The price. This is one of the better, actually thus far the second best Fantasy Flight silverline game I have played, at $20CDN or less.
The Bad: Not the most complex game out there. It's not nearly as compelling as a lot of other games in my collection. Which means this one will go on the Between games/Start or End of the night list. I wouldn't set up Kingdoms night for example. It's fun but no where near as engaging as many big box games. Perhaps if it had some of the additions suggested above.
The Ugly: why all the annoying money. The points in this game vary wildly. One round you could be loosing 13 points, the next gaining 130. The game comes with these cardboard coins in various denominations that are just annoying to use and make change with. Of course this was very easy to fix by grabbing a pen and paper. The only reason I can see for including this annoying system is so the game was 'playable' out of the box so you don't need anything else. I'm tempted to steal the coins for some other game or rpg.
Overall: definately worth the discounted price. I would have prefered a bit more of everything in this one (except for the dumb money counters). It's a rather good distraction that's easy to teach, easy to learn and involves just enough strategy to keep it interesting. Just make sure you grab a calculator, pen and paper as the points will be flying, both up and down.