Game: Kings and Castles

Thread: Re: King's Bonus

Emile — 2008-09-09T19:47:16+00:00

John, you are correct. Steve Kendall confirmed that any leftover King's Bonus is retained as part of the array at the end of the turn.

Thread: Re: King's Bonus

trawlerman — 2008-09-05T12:25:49+00:00

I checked the rules this morning, because it's been several months since I've played.

To me, it's pretty clear.

Under "The turn sequence" heading (under section 4 - the sequence of play section), the first bullet reads:
"Draw extra counters equal to the King's bonus. These counters may be taken from the player's household or drawn from the bag..... These counters are now treated as part of that player's array."

So, as part of the player's array, at the end of the turn, if they are unused, they would stay in the array. At the end of your turn, if your array is less than 10 counters (I can't see why it wouldn't be), then draw back up to 10.

That's the way I read the rules and that's the way I now remember playing it.

Thread: Re: King's Bonus

Emile — 2008-02-25T19:46:22+00:00

Good question Wray. I just got a copy of this and this was my first question as well. Since it's been seven months since you asked, I'm going to assume that there is no answer forthcoming.

My initial instinct was to move whatever was left down to the array. But after thinking about it, I changed my mind. It seems more thematic to discard any unused King's Bonus back to the draw bag. The troops in the array are loyal to your family, but the King's Bonus are loyal to the King and so it seems they should disperse once the King has died (or moved on to another stage of life I guess). I decided to put them back in the bag instead of taking them off the board because they didn't die in battle. This also seems potentially more interesting for game play, since the player has to figure out how to use the troops, or else lose them or see them get redrawn by another player. Did you decide on something Wray?

Even though I haven't played this with other people yet, I'm thinking about a King's favor variant. It seems to me that the selection of the reigns is a bit anti-thematic, even with the variant proposed by the Ragnar Brothers. I'm wondering if there is a way to have a bid for the favor of the king before each turn, with some limitations and rules (ie, someone has to win it and the non-consecutive rule should be maintained).

Thread: King's Bonus

Wray — 2007-07-26T01:55:43+00:00

What happens to the counters in the King's Bonus that you do not use during your turn? Do they stay there just like the array? Are they discarded? Or are they moved down to the array?

Thanks, Wray

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hoffeur — 2007-07-02T19:36:24+00:00

Back of the game box

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Spielfreak — 2006-02-11T21:07:40+00:00

Counter sheet

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Sir Loin o Beef — 2005-03-23T21:08:08+00:00

Played at BROGfest '05

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soren_due — 2005-01-20T13:40:01+00:00

Thread: Session Report

BoardGameGeek — 2002-10-11T16:07:59+00:00

Players: Nige, Mark K, Mark G, Garry

This is the most recent game by the Ragnar Brothers, whose other claims to fame include History of the World and Sixteen Thirty Something. This game is based on the 400 years following the Norman invasion of England in 1066. The successive kings attempted to extend their influence at home and abroad. Players take turns trying to conquer as many regions as they can using their own and other players' forces. At the end of their turn, they then decide whether they control a sufficient proportion of the available land to tax the people - which generate victory points. However, throughout the game players can only tax the people on three occasions, so they need to pick the turns which are most advantageous to them.

Unfortunately, the game took considerably longer to play, on everyone's first time, than we anticipated. It was clear that we were going to be unable to finish so agreed to stop about half way through and call it a learning game. There are some good ideas in the game. Using opponents' forces to clear the way in regions so that you can then march in and clean up is quite novel. However, it does suffer from a fair bit of downtime if you've chosen to space your turns, which you decide upon at the beginning of the game, a long way apart. Still, I'd like to give it another go because we all thought it was pretty good.

Result: None

Ratings: Nige 7, Mark K 7, Mark G 7, Garry 7

Thread: Enjoyed it twice very much

BoardGameGeek — 2002-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Played this game twice, enjoyed it very much. Probably helps if you're a fan of (or at least familiar with) English medieval history.

One phenomenon of the game, absolutely not in the rules but present nonetheless in my experience, is that due to the non-renewable nature of your private host, plus the rule that only the highest-ranking piece of an attacking force remains as garrison, as the game (and therefore history) proceeds military campaigns tend to get fought more and more with mercenaries and archers rather than knights. This is, of course, exactly correct when you compare the campaigns of William the Conqueror and Richard the Lionheart with, say, Edward III or Henry V. Nothing in the rule mandates this arrangement, it's just an elegant corollary of usual gameplay.

Thread: User Review

derk — 2001-12-20T22:02:56+00:00

I've played this game a couple times now, and I really like some aspects of it. The idea is that only one person makes actual decisions on a given turn, but the pieces used are drawn from a bag randomly, so the pieces you're using may not even be yours. Obviously, the whole game is about using your opponents' pieces as inefficiently as possible within the rules' restrictions, while making the most of your pieces when you have them. It's difficult to play quickly because it's all about cranking through all the options and figuring out which is best for you right at this moment. Now what makes this whole thing fit together is that each player can use part of his court to fortify the troops he's using on a given turn, but those must be selected before drawing of the random pieces commences and those in your court aren't replaced for the entire game. Depending on the length of the game selected, each player is given a number of taxation counters, which allow you to score everyone, with your stuff going for double points. Here's my problem with the game: you need to play the long version in order to mitigate the luck of having someone pull a bunch of their own pieces during their turn and then use this fortunate occurance to score a ton of points. But the long game is likely too darn long for its dryness for most groups, weighing in at more than two hours in my experience with little to do between turns except pleading your case to your fellow players. Another issue is that this game is only good for the magic number of players, four, which means it'll have a whole lot of competition for table-time. The production is great, even if the colors they chose are hard to tell in less than perfect lighting (likely, these are colorblind friendly colors or they had a sale at the printers), the cloth board is a nice touch. I want to play this game a couple times more, but unfortunately it might be one of those that simply won't happen because the cons (length and dryness) outweigh the pros (neat central mechanism). This game would be good for a group of more serious gamers or perhaps ex-wargamers.

Thread: Session Report

gschloesser — 2001-11-06T20:03:44+00:00

I had the opportunity to play this fairly new Ragnar Brothers release a few weekends back while visiting my good friend Mark Jackson in Nashville. I enjoyed the game so much, that I immediately ordered a copy. I knew that our group would enjoy it, as it bears similarities to another Ragnar Brothers title, History of the World, as well as Avalon Hill's Britannia. The four British kings were Willerd, Steven, Keith and myself.

The game loosely (very loosely) recreates the militaristic history of England from William I through Richard III. OK ... perhaps it doesn't recreate anything, but it does use the time period and territory to tie-in a theme. It is no where near as historically close as Britannia or even History of the World, but at least there is a thematic element. This shouldn't be an obstacle unless you are looking for something which accurately portrays this historical time period. If you are, then don't give this game a second look. If, however, you are simply looking for an intriguing, challenging and decidedly different game to add to your repertoire, then give this one a closer look.

The components are typical of the Ragnar Brothers releases, cloth map; basic, rather bland counters and simple, yet efficient player aid cards. I did laminate the player aid cards in order to prevent wear and tear. The rule book is very clear with only one or two ambiguities. My main complain is the color scheme on the tokens. The player colors are green, blue, purple and a rather reddish-pinkish color. The enemy tokens are black, while the mercenaries are pink. This causes two problems. First, the pink mercenaries look almost identical to the reddish-pinkish player tokens. Second, the black and purple colors are also very similar; Willerd had constant problems with this latter color scheme throughout the entire game. Why in the world aren't these types of things noticed during playtesting? It would have been SO easy to use other color combinations to avoid such confusion. Oh, well ...

The game itself has some very interesting mechanics and twists which take awhile for players to adjust to:

1) Turn order. A full game involves 24 turns, with each player having 6 turns (in a 4 player game). Before the game begins, players alternate placing their markers onto the turn order chart, thereby indicating which turns they will be active. The only restriction is that no player can move twice in a row. Thus, a player has the option of spreading out his turns over the course of the game, or bulking them relatively close together at a certain point during the game. When one adds the further consideration that only certain 'kings' will have access to invasions of Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France, this choice of when to play is critical. Unfortunately, after two games, I still don't have a firm grasp on optimum strategies during this placement phase. It seems that experienced players may well have an edge in this department, so advice to new players should be given in order to avoid an unfair advantage.

2) Players also use troops of their opponents. This flies in the face of conventional game design and mechanics. Each turn, in addition to his own tokens, a player's force pool consists of tokens from most, if not all, of your opponents, as well as mercenaries and enemy forces. The mix is determined mostly at random, as tokens are grabbed from a common pool (a handy cloth bag is conveniently provided). At the conclusion of a turn, a player may move tokens from his own forces into the 'array', but the number of friendly troops available is limited to an initial supply of 12 tokens. Most players opt to spread these forces out over the course of their six turns. Since a player's 'array' consists of 10 forces, the bulk on any one turn will be determined randomly.

The challenge is to use the forces of your opponents to clear the way for your own forces so that you may personally seize and control the more valuable territories. Although you are forced to utilize your opponent's forces, ultimately you wish to leave as few of them on the map as possible. A common tactic is to use their forces to defeat enemy tokens in a region, then have the enemy counter-attack and eliminate your opponent's tokens. The ability to accomplish this, however, is predicated on the counter mix available in your array.

Although this aspect of the game is radically different and presents unique challenges, it can also prove troublesome. The random nature of the drawing of tokens each turn does present the possibility that a player may be unlucky in the draw and have few of his own tokens at his disposal during the course of the game. Odds probably should equal out over the course of a 24 turn game, but it is possible that a player may be put at a strong disadvantage. I guess the ultimate challenge is to best utilize the forces you have at your disposal, no matter what the fates lay in your lap.

3) Attacking. This aspect of the game takes awhile ... quite awhile ... to get your brain wrapped around. There are several preconditions which dictate where and how you can attack:

a) Enemy present. If a country has ANY regions occupied by enemy forces, players MUST attack these common enemy before attacking each other. Any player may use ANY territory within that country as the launching pad for such an assault, provided the territory is not occupied by the enemy. Thus, you can actually begin your assault from a territory occupied by an opponent! You see, all players are allies in ousting the despicable enemy.

This rule can be used to a player's advantage as a player can expand his holdings in a country, yet leave one or two territories occupied by enemy forces. This forces that player's opponents to oust the enemy before turning their attentions to the player.

b) Enemy NOT present. When enemy are NOT present in a country, players are free to attack each other. However, if you desire to use your own forces in an attack, such attacks must be launched from an adjacent territory you currently control. If you do not control any territories in that country, you must first land at the country's port and battle for that territory. Then, you are free to continue your assaults from there. If you are using an opponent's armies to attack, the attack must come from a territory controlled by that player. Otherwise, the port must first be assaulted as described above.

If you desire to use enemy tokens in the attack, they spring up in rebellion in the territory marked with a banner and expand from there.

c) Where one can attack. Each turn, the active player represents the king for that time period. The turn order chart lists the country that the active player, if he opts to attack, MUST use his own troops (known as 'royal' troops). He cannot use these 'royal' troops in campaigns in any other country on that turn. However, he is free to use any of his other forces in either the country listed OR in ONE and ONLY ONE other country. These restrictions make the initial decisions on when to take your turns vital ones.

4) Taxing. Although a player has six turns, he can only opt to 'score' and take victory points on three of those turns. Which three is left to the player's discretion. Players score 1, 2 or 3 points per territory, dependent upon the actual territory they occupy. When a player opts to 'tax', he scores double for his territories, but every other player also scores for the territories they occupy. Again, the decision on when to tax is a key one. Often, it may appear advantageous for a player to tax, but the result would also give one or more opponents a substantial amount of points. I try to tax only when the victory point spread between me and my opponents is considerable.

As you can well guess, keeping these rules and restrictions straight is not an easy task. Confusion is quite common, and one must keep a careful eye that everyone is adhering to these rules.

Attacking itself is quite easy, with no dice being rolled or charts consulted. Players must simply place more forces into an area than their opponent. Combat is resolved by removing ALL tokens, enemy and friendly, except the strongest friendly troop. Since troops come in three basic strengths ... archers (1), men at arms (2) and knights (3) ... deciding how best to utilize these troops for expansion, together with any mercenaries you have at your disposal ... is a vital key to your ultimate success or failure.

As mentioned, the game lasts 24 turns, with each player having six turns. Turns are usually relatively quick and an entire game clocks in between 2 - 3 hours. This is much faster than a typical game of Britannia or History of the World and seems to settle in between the two in terms of strategy. There is a lot to think about in this game, with many key decisions to be made throughout. Admittedly, the unique mechanics make it a bit more difficult to grasp, but the effort is well worthwhile. It's a shame that the old Avalon Hill is not around any longer as this one would have fit extremely well in its repertoire.

In my first game a few weeks back, I had placed the majority of my 'turn order' tokens in the first half of the game. I shot way ahead on victory points, but my opponents conspired to eliminate most of my forces from the map during the final half of the game. Thus, my lead eventually evaporated and victory was not to be mine. Keith followed a similar tactic in this game and seemed destined to suffer the same fate.

However, being discounted was to be his saving grace. Steven, Willerd and I were all in positions of strength and had several scoring opportunities remaining. Thus, we each exerted great efforts in eliminating each other's troops and ignoring Keith. Suddenly, as the game began to approach its conclusion, we all realized that Keith, although having no 'tax' opportunities remaining, was still gaining a steady supply of victory points on each of our taxations. We did manage to eliminate several of his troops during the final few turns, but it wasn't enough to overcome his lead. Another interesting fact is that Keith did not control the valuable city of London during most of the game, so that city is not essential to victory.

Scores:

Turn 12 (midway point): Steven 43, Keith 42, Willerd 32, Greg 28
Finals: Keith 129, Greg 115, Willerd 115, Steven 98

Ratings: Steven 8.5, Keith 8, Greg 8, Willerd 7

Thread: Session Report

gschloesser — 2001-10-07T06:40:03+00:00

This is the latest release from the Ragnar Brothers, the folks who brought us the incredibly popular History of the World game. You can certainly see their handiwork here, as the game plays similar to its predecessor. It also has some elements of Britannia, as well as a touch of Civilization (in the resolution of conflicts .. no dice rolling).

I won't attempt to explain the game in detail as I'm trying to brief with my discussion of each game (well, as brief as I can be, anyway!). The key elements of the game, however, seem to be:

1) The planning of when you will take your turns ... not just for the current turn, but for the entire game! You see, there are 24 turns in the game, and each player will move six times. At the beginning of the game, each player plans when he will take his six turns. I'm quite certain that this selection process is extremely critical, but it seems that it would take several plays before one can develop a clear sense of the best strategy.

2) You do not only maneuver your own troops, but opponents' troops as well. On each of your six turns, you randomly draw tokens from a bag to form your force pool. You will undoubtedly draw many of your opponents' troops. You do have some control as you begin the game with a reserve comprised of your own troops and can assign some of these troops to your force pool each turn. Still, the randomness regarding the troops comprising your force pool is a major factor and forces you to carefully plan each turn and radically adjust your plans accordingly.

Essentially, you score after three of your six turns based on the regions and cities you control with your own troops. You decide which turns are most advantageous in which to tax (score). You generally must use foreign troops to clear areas of stronger foes, deplete the strength of the leaders, and clear the way for your own forces. It is, indeed, a tricky dilemma as you are often awarding points to your opponents in your efforts to increase your holdings.

The combat system is fairly basic: attack an area with at least one more strength point that the defenders. You will automatically be successful, but only the strongest troop of your force will survive the combat, the rest being eliminated and returned to the 'bag' at the conclusion of your turn. Deciding where to attack, however, is a bit more complicated, as the game system imposes limits on countries which can be attacked on a given turn. Most of these restrictions deal with the current king (represented by whose turn it is) and the presence or absence of 'enemies' in the countries.

This game is tough to play well. I constantly had the feeling that I was missing an abundance of opportunities. I really didn't get a handle on some of the subtleties and nuances of the game system until very late in the game. Further, I had bunched 4 of my 6 turns into the first half of the game. This enabled me to strike out to a large lead, but I was quickly butchered by my opponents. Not being able to get fresh troops onto the board during most of the second half of the game crippled me and my lead evaporated. Lesson to be learned.

Although I wasn't enraptured by the vanilla combat system, I found the game to be quite stimulating and challenging. There appears to be great depth here, worth exploring over and over again. I really can't wait till my next playing.

As mentioned, I struck out to an early lead, but saw it quickly evaporate in the second half of the game. Mark developed a nice board position and seemed ready to make a huge leap in points, but Ted and Craig sensed this and viciously attacked his possessions. Ted seemed to have the best positioning to win, but the wily Craig managed to grab a few choice territories late in the game and grab the narrowest of victories.

Finals: Craig 130, Ted 129, Greg 106, Mark 103

Ratings: Craig 8, Greg 7.5, Ted 7, Mark 6

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2001-08-20T17:50:36+00:00

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2001-08-20T17:50:29+00:00

Thread: User Review

BoardGameGeek — 2000-10-11T14:55:16+00:00

After seeing an intriguing review of this new Ragnar Brothers (History of the World) game on Consimworld, I decided to splurge and pick it up. It cost 18 pounds sterling but ended up costing me about $40 total for bank fees and postage.

The game recalls HOTW and Britannia, the two previous RB efforts, but with one glaring change -- no dice. The play is very simple, with just 9 pages of carefully-written rules. By this I mean that despite substantial imagination on my part I could not come up with a question that was not directly answerable by a look at the rules. We'll see what my inventive group has to say.

What drew me to the game was its promise of simple, fun mechanics with a meaningful historical theme. The game upon examination seems to bear this out. The map has several countries -- England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and a chunk of France -- and lists a bunch of English kings along the edges. Each player will get to "be" six kings -- thus, the order of play is player-determined at the beginning of the game. Ideally you don't want to let the same player get away with being William I, Henry V, AND the Lionheart. The object of the game is to amass the most money (== VP; it's not spent on anything) through taxation. Each player gets three "tax" markers, which you can play at the end of your turn. So you're going to get a total of six turns, up to three of which can be "scoring" turns. But everyone taxes when a tax marker is played, not just you, so you have to be careful that playing your tax marker won't benefit someone else more than it does you. Most areas are worth a single gold piece, but several are worth two and London is worth three.

The map starts out covered with "enemy" units -- units that are not aligned with any player. Each player further has a "household" and an "array." Your household contains a bunch of your units, and your array contains a random selection -- it could include your units, others' units, enemy units, mercenaries, or castles. Your array has ten "slots", meaning that you can use up to ten units during your turn, plus a bonus number depending on how good your king is (if you're William I, you get four bonus units -- if you're Edward II, the fruity guy in the Braveheart movie, you get one). The trick is that you can take units out of your household before randomly drawing your array's units for the turn. So if you really want to be assured of having a strong force, you can pull (for example) three knights out of your household's starting four, and then draw the remaining seven units of your array from the bag. However, you never get household units back, so you'll never have that security again.

Attacks are simple. Knights are worth 3 points, spearmen 2, and archers 1. You attack by taking units from your array and putting them in an area where they are just sufficient to overcome the enemy. Then the defending unit and all attackers but one (who stays to hold the space) die. Mercenaries can add a lot of strength but cannot hold spaces, so if your array is full of mercenaries you may be able to take a few strongly held spaces but not a lot of territory. Castles can be built from the array after all attacks are done, and they range in strength from 1 to 3 points. The benefit of castles is that they alone can be placed in addition to another occupying unit. Thus the only way to get an area's defense strength above 3 is to plunk a castle there. I suspect getting a knight and 3-point castle into London will be a worthwhile goal.

Another bit of historical flavor comes from the kings' areas of interest. Henry V can only use Royal (that is, his own) units in France. So if you wanted to take some areas in England this turn, tough. You can use other players' units to fight off enemies or one another in England if you like, but of course that only benefits you to the extent that it weakens others. Furthermore, if a country has any enemy units in it, the players cannot attack one another -- they have to get rid of the enemies first before they can turn on their fellow Englishmen. So, if you are Henry V and you successfully took over France as a previous king, and the other players let you alone, you're going to be a bit hosed. So you hope to draw a lot of enemy units from the bag and hit other players with them.

****

Awhile ago I posted a preview of a game I'd just gotten from England, I had a chance to play last week.

THE GOOD:

Plays in under 2 hours with 4 people. Interesting historical theme -- highly abstract game, yet is inseparable with theme (as I suspected). Best rules I've ever read; there were no questions that could not be answered in them. No dice cuts down on play time a lot.

A central element of the game is luck management -- since you will get six turns, and your household has only 12 guys in it, drawing down your household early can leave you praying later in the game. So you need to decide exactly when it is worth it to call up your household knights. Good decisions there. Also, the game's mechanisms strongly encourage you to use up your whole array each turn if possible, which means that sometimes you have a tough choice between emptying your array of other people's units (thus giving them territory on the board, but freeing slots for better pieces on your next turn), and keeping them there to avoid boosting a potential competitor but also limiting your own scoring next turn.

THE BAD:
Has drag potential with "think-y" players. Once you have your array set, moves are often obvious (but I'll reserve judgment on that until I've played a couple more times). Bad array draws can lead to total hosing in that you can't do ANYTHING on a turn, although this often happens to people who don't try as hard as they can to empty out their arrays every turn. The gameplay IS pretty dry.

THE UGLY:

The components work surprisingly well, given that the player colors are magenta, dark blue, light blue, and green. The very lightly-toned cloth map makes it surprisingly easy to contrast even those "close" colors (as well as Enemy units which are black).

OVERALL:

I would say that it is a pretty good game, and one I wouldn't mind playing again, but I doubt I would call for it much after a few plays. Worth a look if its price comes down on the secondary market -- $40 inc. shipping and fees is too much. Nonetheless, it is a standout example of a good solid abstract game with a good, intertwined theme, and of course the rules are a study in how to write game rules.