-
Who's the more foolish? The fool or fool that plays after the fool?
United States
DURHAM
North Carolina
-
I met up with an old friend recently. We hung out together for a little while and it was fun seeing them again but he had to go quite suddenly and our reunion was over.
That name of that old friend was Kings and Things.
I first came across Kings and Things in college. I lived in a student house that was filled with other gamers. We played a few RPGs together but also quite a few board games and I picked up K&T one day and we played it a lot. A lot of late nights and laughter went into that game.
Then I moved to grad school and I met my wife-to-be there. I didn't play as much 3 or 4 player, but she also loved the game and we had many head-to-head battles. The silly characters and the sheer absurdity of Killer Penguins attacking Crawling Vines (with the appropriate art to match) drew her in.
After grad school, I moved to the U.S. and that meant leaving a lot of stuff behind. Boxes of games did not make the cut, but I left K&T with a couple - one of which was a long-time college friend. I thought of it as a loan at the time, that we would be back for it (and that copy of Samurai Swords too), but by now it has turned into a donation. So for a while, we were without Kings or Things, but we had other things (small t) on our minds, like settling into a new country, finding our way, settling down.
After a while though, we were settled and playing games again. Mostly it was card games - traditional (Cribbage) or otherwise (Shadowfist). I was heavily into Legends of the Five Rings but my wife was not and we had not yet found my way onto BGG. Suddenly, my wife expressed a hankering for Kings and Things so we hunted down a copy. Actually through the magic of eBay we ended up with TWO, one the one we knew (the West End Games version) and the other a German version (we traded the German one for something else). We played it and there was a certain happy nostalgia attached. But it took a long time to play still and time was shorter - more precious. More efficient games came to our notice. Less whimsical perhaps, less silly. But they fit into our day better and scratched that gaming itch. Kings and Things came out occasionally, but then went back on the shelf and the gaps between games grew longer.
The new edition from Z-Man Games brought it back onto my radar. The shortened game, combined with my personal quest to record a play on every game I owned, meant the reunion was on.
Bringing it out again, sorting through the pieces, looking at the silly pictures, all brought back some good memories. We played it and I relived some of my most glorious moments of rotten dice luck, as my critters swung and missed and her littlest Pygmy would hit. Plus I had the extra good fortune to discover sea on two sides of my home area, though no jungle for my Elephant's Graveyard.
My wife built her citadel first and I built mine the next turn, while attempting to harry her position and reduce her income. She was wise to my ploys though and threw out some well-placed counter-attacks. My flyers could not penetrate her net. The game was hers.
It was certainly much shorter. But was it satisfying? This shorter game was possible in the old version, that someone would build a citadel while no one else could and win. But in all the games we played, it never happened. The game was merely afoot when the citadels went onto the table.
The shorter game does change the way to approach it. You can't have some early game turtling, you need to be able to restrict your opponent from the off. Easy expansion cannot be allowed. We had not made that adjustment in our game and that left it lacking a worthy conclusion: I missed out on the linear expansion that my wife got due to the sea and so she won. Not a very compelling narrative. It remains to be seen how good it becomes when this is taken into account. My gut feeling says the journey will be better and more engaging but the end may still fall a little flat. Who has the best income? OK, you won. Hmmm.
It hasn't come back off the shelf again yet since its first showing in several years. But I think it will be sooner than that.
|
|
