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Queen Games

Kingdom Builder

Regular price: €92,00
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Description

Strategy game for the whole family
Beginners to advanced players
High level of interaction
Easy to learn, For 2 to 4 players
Playing time: 45 minutes

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Customer Reviews

Really Shines With A VariantThis is an excellent, gateway abstract piece placement game. Easily taught in under two minutes, yet complex enough to get one thinking. The premise is simple. Each turn place three houses in terrain matching the card you have drawn. The two catches being that, you must place the three together and if you can place them adjacent to pieces you already have on the board, you must. Each game features a standard scoring that stays the same (for placing pieces adjacent to special spaces) and three ways to score that are randomly drawn from a deck of cards. In addition, the boards along with some special action tokens can be different each game, leading to a new game each time. With one expansion out already, the possibilities become endless without the rules becoming convoluted.The one drawback in the game is that it is very unforgiving at the beginning. Your first three turns can make or break your game. A bad initial placement can make it very difficult to recover. While experience can help you overcome this, there's no help for you if you receive a bad card draw. (Getting two or three of the same terrain in a row at the beginning can be a particularly bad situation). For this reason, we play with a minor variant. Each player starts with two cards instead of one, replenishing their hand each turn. This greatly reduces the luck factor and, in my opinion, greatly increases the enjoyment due to having more choice. Some argue this lengthens the game, however, in my experience the length of the game is far more dependent on the playing style of those at the table. When approached about this, the designer preferred to keep the game as it was and won the Spiel des Jahres so it's obviously a quality game as written. In my opinion, it truly shines with the variant. 4Addictive, amazing game with a lot of replay value!Like Dominion or Ticket To Ride, Kingdom Builder is a family-friendly gateway board game suitable for casual or experienced gamers. It is highly addictive, easy to learn (in about 5-10 minutes), and plays in an hour or less even with four players. Overall production value of the box, boards, and cards is extremely durable, pretty, and high.Each player begins with 40 wooden settlements (shaped like houses) that come in black, orange, blue, or natural wood. your goal is to complete all three victory conditions to the best of your ability by strategically placing your settlements to maximize your points while blocking your opponents. The game comes with ten victory condition cards of which you can pick or randomly choose three to use in each game. Examples are Fishermen (score 1 point for each settlement adjacent to water), Miners (score 1 point for each settlement adjacent to a mountain, or Lords (12 points for the largest settlement in each quadrant, 6 points for the next largest). You receive a terrain card at the beginning of the game that tells you which terrain type you must build 3 mandatory settlements on. Once you complete this, you discard your terrain card and draw a new one for your next turn's mandatory placement. Note that terrain cards are always kept secret until it you turn them face-up on your turn for the other players to see.The game board consists of four quadrants per game; you choose these from a variety of interlocking hexagonal map boards each featuring different terrain configurations and locations. Each map contains the following terrain types: desert, flower-fields, forest, grass (all open for your settlements), and two invalid terrain types: mountains and water. They also contain two or more locations: one or two castles (you score 3 points if you build a settlement next to one), and one or two of the following: barn, farm, harbor, oasis, oracle, stables, and tavern. You will place two location token on each of these (except the castles, but see Capitals rules, below for an exception). The first player to build a settlement adjacent to a location receives one token, which gives a movement and/or settlement placement bonus action each turn. For example, the paddock (stables) is easily the best one, as it allows you to move a preexisting settlement up to two hexes away in any direction and lets you bypass location, settlements, and impassable terrain (mountains, water). The harbor allows you to move one preexisting settlement onto a water hex (which may be useful for meeting other scoring conditions, but scores no points with the Fishermen victory card mentioned above). The oasis lets you place one settlement onto any desert hex you are already adjacent to, and the farm lets you do the same, only with grass. The others are slightly more complicated, so I won't go into them here, but you get the general idea. You want as many of these tokens as you can get, because you can use their bonus actions every turn either before or after your mandatory settlement placement. The more settlements you can move and/or place each turn, the more points you can score, and the faster you can end the game. Note that you can only get a token once from each location, so it's less of an issue in a 2-player game, but with 3 or more players and only 2 of each location token available, someone can get really hurt.The first player to run out of settlements initiates the end game (the other players each get one last turn). All points are tallied up at the end of the game. Scoring is often remarkably close, so you never want to assume you've won. The game is deceptively simple yet incredibly sophisticated, and has a lot of replay value. There's a reason it won the 2012 game of the year award. The designer, Donald X. Vaccarino, also created Dominion, another game of the year award winner.Sounds simple, right? Well, you can't just build on any old terrain matching your card if you have preexisting settlements built on or adjacent to the terrain on your terrain card. You must build on the terrain specified on your card if you can, thus connecting your settlements. Usually, this is a bad idea that cheats you out scoring points or getting other bonuses. You generally want to minimize how many settlements you must build in any one area. So building in a terrain type that has the smallest number of hexes is almost always a good strategy because then if you draw that terrain type again (very likely), you can select a different set of that same terrain on another part of the game board. The reason to be in different areas on the board is to 1) fulfill victory card conditions (like building next to cities, or along water, or next to mountains, or in a straight line, etc.), or 2) to get next to one of the cool location tokens that give you special powers on your turn. Once you understand the game board, you'll begin to see why playing the game requires a lot of clever strategizing.VARIANT HOUSE RULES: Some folks knock this game for its bad luck factor. You may keep drawing terrain cards you don't want or need, or never draw the ones you do. There are two easy house rule fixes to this: 1) Each player draws two terrain cards on their turn and must keep one. The other is discarded to the bottom of the deck (but both cards are still kept secret from the other players), or 2) If you draw the same type of terrain card as your last turn and don't want it, you may reveal and discard it and draw a new one. You may keep doing this until you draw a terrain card that is different from your last one. A tougher variant on this house rule would be that you must keep the second card instead, no matter if it the same (and in this case, you would not reveal the card to the other players until your next turn). Using either of these house rules is guaranteed to fix the bad luck issue that seems to be one of the main criticisms of this otherwise excellent game.There is a Kingdom Builder Nomads Expansion 1 Board Game expansion. It adds 40 red settlements so you can expand the game to five players, 3 new victory cards (that let you score points in-game instead of at the end), new location tokens, and new terrain maps. See my review for details.You can also order two exclusive mini-expansions from BGG. The first is called Kingdom Builder: Capitals. It gives you two new Capital city tokens that fit over two of the preexisting castles on the maps. The rules for them say that you use one capital if you are playing with either the Oracle (stonehenge) or Harbor (warship) objectives, or you use both capitals if you both objectives are in play. Unlike regular castles which only score you 3 points for the first settlement built adjacent, capitals are worth 3 points for the first settlement and 1 point for each additional settlement built within two hexes of the capital (including the first one, as the capital bonus points are scored separately after the castle bonus is determined). I've played a lot of games with the capitals and like them a lot, so much that I miss them when they aren't in play (much like stables). Of course, you could always substitute a penny or some other object for the official capital markers.The second BGG exclusive is Kingdom Builder: Caves. It gives you two Cave tokens that you can place on any two mountain hexes to create a tunnel from one area to another. Again, you can use pennies or some other token to represent the caves. 5Good gameSimple game with lots of variations to enable each game to be distinct from the ones played before. I read the rules one night and watched a few videos on the internet about the rules, and then played with the family the next day. When actually sitting down to play the game, it is effortless and manageable, as the game is targeting kids of 8-years old and older to play. Though the rules are simple, I tend to think counting points can be difficult with a two or three of the tradesmen cards for a younger child to figure out on his/her own.A game between two players can last around 20-30 minutes, so very fast and can keep the younger child's attention to play the game. Games with two players should have players with nearly the same points at the end of the game, but with three or four players will cause the game to be more disruptive to best laid plans and force players to be a lot more flexible.I had no complaints about the quality of the game itself. The boards and the chits are made of heavy-duty paper products and the cards themselves are typical thickness of cards used on other games. It seems it will hold up to use some normal wear-and-tear. 4Awesome gameI was semi-hesitant to purchase this game as it seems to have some pretty mixed reviews. I had watched videos, looked at reviews, and yet was still uncertain. Then it came on sale during Prime Day and I purchased it. I do not regret my decision at all.My wife and I play board games quite frequently and I have to say this is probably my favorite board game we've ever purchased. I don't care what other people say, this is a strategy game. I do have to admit, sometimes you get screwed over with drawing the same bad terrain cards and just get stuck, but that just makes your first placement piece that much more important.Each time you play it is like a totally new game. New rules, new board, new strategy. So far I've only played the game about ~ 10-15 times, but I am still not bored of it, and still look forward to getting to play it.If you like strategy games that are semi-relaxed, this one is for you! 5Simple and Easy to Learn, with Plenty of Depth to ExploreAt first this game seems too simple in that you draw a card and place pieces on the terrain on the card and there's not a lot of thinking involved in that and you've no way to mitigate the luck of the draw. But then as you play you realize the depth involved in this simplicity.Each game will be different based on the tiles used and what effects they may have, giving you extra abilities or options on your turn in addition to placing pieces based on the card you draw. And each game is different due to the different win conditions - some games you may be trying to cluster your pieces all in one area while other games you're branching out as much as possible; some games you're trying to get as close to mountains or water as possible and others you don't care about terrain and just want to make a nice straight line. Even if the tiles stay the same, with the different win conditions every game will be very different, and I like that.It's still a pretty simple game, which makes it a good game to introduce to new players or for playing with kids, but it's got enough tactics and strategy to keep adults and seasoned players interested. Definitely a game worth owning! 4Good game with a lot of replayability. Every game you play has a very different strategyWhat To Love:The game itself is pretty simple to learn. What I like about it is you start by choosing 4 out of 8 board pieces to make up your game. The boards are different in that they offer different "special abilities" to players. Additionally, you chose 3 out of 10 scoring cards each game. These determine how much gold (victory points) are earned and will radically affect what kind of strategy you implement while playing.Actual Gameplay:This offers a lot of replayability and can make for very different games. The game itseld does requite a lot of finese and subtle strategy in terms of where to place your settlements. Particularly because you need to weigh gaining special abilities, with points, blocking opponents, are trapping yourself in a large area that you need to populate before you can move on.Cons:All that being said, I don't "love" the game. I enjoy it but there are many games that I enjoy far more (King of Tokyo, Pandemic, Forbidden Island, Puerto Rico, etc. I don't object when others want to play. One caveat I would offer is that in the beginning, it's always better to go for the special abilities that include getting extra settlements early in the game over points. Otherwise you'll fall behind other players and never recover and possibly won't even get to use all your pieces before the game ends. 4Great family strategy game!Kingdom Builder is one of those games that hits the sweet spot with very simple rules, but has a surprising amount of depth.At it's core you are drawing one of five terrain types and then placing your pieces on the corresponding terrain tiles. That may not sound all that exciting, but there are several twists that make the game interesting.1. There are 8 different board pieces of which you use 4 to make up the board for each game.2. Each of the 8 board pieces has a special ability that allows you to place pieces in different ways. One lets you place pieces in water, another allows you to place an extra piece on a desert tile, etc...3. There are 10 different cards that determine how you earn gold (victory points) of which you play 3 each game. One gives you points for being next to mountains, another for most pieces on 1 horizontal line, etc...The different board pieces and cards that determine victory points keep the game fun and interesting. Each time you play, you are playing a different game!This one has been a hit in my house! My wife and I love it, and we've even been able to teach our 5 year old son the basics of how it is played! 5Great for beginners and more advanced playersThe first thing that strikes the eye is 8 considerable boards, referred to as lands covered with hexagonal net. Each of them shows a different arrangement of various areas. The boards have been made of thick cardboard and make a very good aesthetic impression.Another important element of the game are a well-made wooden houses called settlements. There are a total of 4 different color sets of 40. There are also 25 cards corresponding to the five types of terrain possible to populate the area,10 builder cards, 28 special points tokens and 8 cards with shortcut rules.The aim of the game is to build a kingdom by realizing the goals set by the builders cards. Before each game 3 cards are drawn, defining criteria for victory.Playing very well in almost every age group of different board game playing experience. Gameplay for 2 players is slightly less intense because there is more space for putting settlement houses. More strategy is needed in 3 or 4 players games when the space is smaller and you need to hurry to take the most important parts of the board.Summing up the Kingdom Builder is worth awards it received. It is the perfect family title, but also advanced players will find something interesting in the game. 5Good game, gets more fun the more you playFirst, a bit about me so you know where this review is coming from: I would consider myself a moderately avid player of so-called European-style board games. I've been playing them for about five years. I tend to like shorter, simpler games that emphasize fun over intense strategization. My favorite game is Dominion; my least favorite is Diplomacy.This is a well-designed game that seems simple at first, but aquires more complexity as you get better at playing it. The rules are simple: you draw a type of land, and you must build three settlements on that type of land, adjacent to any existing settlements if possible. Where the game gets more interesting (and more fun) is through the use of special action tiles that you get for building next to certain special areas. These actions typically allow you to build another settlement in a different type of land or move one of your existing settlements away from the cluster of adjacent settlements you've been building. As you acquire these action tiles, it's increasingly fun to try to figure out your best move. While at first there is usually an obvious best move to make, your options multiply exponentially with each new action tile.As with this creator's previos game, Dominion, this game is meant to be different each time you play it. This is achieved through randomized win conditions and a randomized map. In one game, you may score points by having the most settlements in one cluster. In another, it may be just the opposite, motivating you to separate your settlements as much as possible. The random map allows for different action tiles to be in play each game, although there are only like eight possibilities, and the special powers are similar enough that I don't think it changes the gameplay all that much.I played it twice with my friends the night we bought it, and I think the consensus was that it was fun but a little too simple for us to really dig our teeth into (keep in mind that many of my friends are more serious gamers than I am). After playing a couple more times, however, everyone has found more to love. Once you get a feel for the differnt actions and how they might affect the different scoring conditions, you learn that there is a lot to consider with each turn. It's fun to think through your options and watch your friends try other strategies.My favorite thing about the game is that the scoring is rarely so obvious that you can keep track of it to a certainty during the game. I really hate playing games where each player takes ten minutes running calculations before making a move. Because there are three different win conditions in every game, you will find players making intuitive but still gut-based decisions on where to place a settlement, which keeps things loose and quick.My least favorite thing about the game is there is too little interactions between players. You're mostly just building your kingdom (as the title suggests) and rarely do you get the opportunity to mess with anyone else's. I would say there are even fewer backstabbing opportunities in this game than in something light like Ticket to Ride. There are no attack actions, and even with four players, the board doesn't get full enough that you're encroaching on each other's territory very often.All in all, a solid game. I haven't checked out the expansions yet, but if they offer more opportunity for interacting with other players, it could be a truly great addition to my collection. 4Solid game. I use a variation to the very ...Solid game. I use a variation to the very first turn. Instead of starting with one card, each player gets two. On their first turn, the player decides which land to play, and at the end of the turn player decides to keep the 2nd card, or discard and draw another. All other gameplay proceeds the same. We find that this adds a strategy choice in the beginning and also evens out a "bad" draw in the beginning.The game is sometimes on sale on amazon so wait around unless you have to buy it now. 5

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