TL;DR - Easy to learn, layers of strategy, excellent components, short play time, excellent replay value, perfect filler game between epic sessions for the heavy complexity gamers. Grab two! Kingdomino is a really entertaining light filler game that deservingly won the 2017 Spiel des Jahres award given to the best game of the year for casual players (dedicated hobby gamers look to the Kennerspiele des Jahres for the heavier games that appear to the more addicted). It is a great entryway to tabletop gaming in a small, teachable format. The components are of high quality - Blue Orange has done a marvelous job producing this game in a manner befitting such a high-caliber experience. The play is simple - you are building your kingdom by selecting one of three or four (depending on player count) available tiles representing one or two land types,and possibly a number of crowns. You draft the piece in turn order, but the piece you select also determines your draft order the following turn. The pieces are numbered on the back and laid out lowest to highest each turn before the draft - the player who selects the lowest numbered tile will select first the following round. When the tiles are all selected, you add them to your kingdom, keeping in mind that the maximum size for your kingdom is 5x5 and each tile is 2x1. How you place the tile is fairly simple as well - at least one of the two land types must be placed against an existing land of the same type or against your castle (effectively making your castle a wild tile). If you cannot place a specific tile, either because no matching land types exist, or it extends beyond the required 5x5 dimension, you discard the tile. When the draft pile has been exhausted, the players total their points by calculating the number of ordinal contiguous tiles of the same type and multiplying it by the number of crowns in that contiguous land mass. As you can see, crowns are critical to scoring, because even a 10 space forest has no points unless a crown exists on one of them! Adding further strategy is the land types vary significantly with the distribution of tiles and the crowns on those tiles - there are only 6 caverns, and five of them average 2 crowns - a well placed cave system can be a viable route to victory, whereas there are 26 fields but only 6 of them have crowns, and a single one at that. Looking at the attached completed game board picture: 1. Note that there's a castle piece located in the 4th row 4th column - there is no requirement that your castle end up in the center of your kingdom. 2. Scoring the completed board starting from the top right: A. A two square Lake scores zero points (no crowns) B. The Swamp that begins in row 3 covers 8 squares and there are 3 crowns total, scores 24 points. C. The Mountain range at the bottom left is two squares with four crowns for 8 points. D. The Wheat fields starting at row 1 column 2 has 4 squares with one crown for 4 points. E. The Pasture located on the bottom row scores zero points for two squares with no crowns. F. The single Mountain in row 1 scores 2 points for 2 crowns in a 1x1 plot. G. The Forest next door has zero value, as does the 2 square Lake below it, no crowns anywhere. H. Finally the Forest at the bottom right has two squares and two crowns for 4 points The final score for this board is: 42 points (a pretty strong score) on the power of a huge swamp with three crowns. Diagram of the completed picture for reference: L W W M F L S W W L S S S S L M S S X F M S P P F (L=Lake, P=Pasture, W=Wheat, M=Mountain, S=Swamp, G=Grassland, X=Castle) Final thoughts: I can cite nothing that I dislike about this game. It has definite replayability, and is asked for with some regularity at my home and on game day. GET A SECOND COPY and play 7x7 kingdoms, for even more challenge and a deeper level of strategy!
