Kingdom Death pt.2

In my last post, I sat down with my friend Andrew to talk a little bit about Kingdom Death. But I didn’t really say anything about our own experiences playing it.

This has got to be one of the hardest games we have ever played as a group. Andrew, our friend Scott and I sat down to play a new game the other day and it was a very bitter sweet game. We had all created our new characters and were ready to go out for the first hunt. Everything is determined by rolling a 10 sided dice, and my rolls were on fire! Making critical hit after critical hit on our enemies. But Kingdom Death is a very fickle game. You can be rolling like crazy and the game will find a way to get back at you. My first character took a bad hit and I had to roll to see if he’d live. Unfortunately, i couldn’t roll well enough to save him.

This happened to me two more times that night. As good as my rolls were, I just couldn’t keep anyone alive. We ended our game after the first nemesis fight against the monstrous Butcher.

The Butcher

We barely made it out. Battered and not in good shape, our characters immediately encountered the Kingsman. A knight who took one look at our civilization, and decided to kill half of our people. We had two choices, sit back and take it, or fight back. We ended it there that night. Still debating over the two choices. Or, to just start over.

Check out Kingdom Death for yourself at their website.

Or what others are saying at the Kingdom Death reddit!

My Top 5 Board Games

These are the games that I absolutely love breaking out to play with my friends. The games that we just have to play, as long as we don’t have any new ones to play.

5. Forbidden Desert: A Co-Op game where you and your friends are stuck in a dessert, and have to find the missing pieces to a machine that will fly you home to safety. The big problem? The dessert is constantly changing the board, and your water is constantly getting lower. There is a water carrier class, but if the person who gets randomly assigned this class is a butt, then don’t expect to win this game.

4. The Resistance: A game for 5 or more players. You are a member of the resistance against an oppressive corporate government. Although a few of your members are spies for said government trying to screw up all of your plans. It’s a game full of lies and deceit. A great party game!

3. Ticket To Ride: As I stated in my last post, I LOVE this game. It’s just a great game to pick up and play.

2. Pandemic: A world were diseases threaten to extinguish all life, you and your friends rush to find a cure. Pandemic is a great game to break out to stop, well…a break out.

1.Now, this is a board game version of probably the most nerdy table top program out there. Dungeons and Dragons. I absolutely love D&D, and since this is a blog about tabletop games, it really shouldn’t be surprising that D&D would show up eventually. What’s nice about this game is that you don’t have to worry about creating a character or about who is going to be the GM (Game Master.) The game takes care of all of that for you, and walks you through a very player friendly gauntlet of enemies. If you have ever been curious about D&D, I totally recommend checking out one of the many board games they’ve released.

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Mage Knight, The Game I Just Can’t Understand.

Some games are relatively easy to pick up and play. Some examples would be Coup, or The Game from past posts. Then there are those games that take a little more time to figure out. One of our favorite games to play is Eclipse. It’s a bit more complicated of a game, having to do with war and economics in the setting of deep space. But then, there’s Mage Knight.

Mage Knight is part RPG, part deck building, and part traditional board game. You have to keep up with the army and spells you build up throughout the game. The shape of the map constantly changes. Each time the map changes you have to figure out what resources are now available to you, and how to correctly interact with the villages you run into. With so much going on, it’s a little daunting to pick up and attempt. The rule book is even split into two different parts. Each one is twenty pages long! Not the kind of game you just dive into.

Mage Knight is one of those rare board games that allows you to shun friends and play by yourself. Although thats no fun. My friends and I have tried playing this game on three different occasions. Each time we set it up, open the rule books, spend the next thirty minutes figuring it out, then we put it away.

Today I decided to give it another shot, and play the solo run through. Even looking up a few youtube videos to walkthrough it for me. However, even with the help of youtube, I just couldn’t get it.

Hopefully, one of these days we will figure things out.