The King is Dead: Second Edition

Product Information

If there is a tie for most Followers, the faction with the next most regions gains importance, and the tied player with the most Followers of that faction becomes ruler. If there is still a tie, the tied player who last played an action card loses - indecisiveness is a poor trait in a leader. Invasion After the building of your court you will now draw followers from the bag until each of the eight regions are occupied by four of them, this includes the cubes placed for each of the home regions. The remaining cubes will now form a common pool on the board. Once an Action Card has been played, it is placed face up in front of that player and cannot be used for the rest of the game. This means that each player can only take 8 actions over the course of the game. T

The game continues proceeding with power struggles being carried out until one of the game conditions are met, and that is all the rules for The King is Dead. Final Thoughts Some rounds you might not play any cards, other rounds you might play multiple cards. Which is where passing comes in. The set up casts the English, Welsh and Scottish against each other to decide who will rule the land after the death of the King. Their are five unique actions among the eight cards, with three having a similar ability one being a duplicate. he next Action Card a player uses should be placed directly on top of the previous one. The top card should always be visible, but players may not look through the others: it is up to them to remember which actions have been taken.

The region cards are shuffled and laid face up in the positions from one to eight marked on the board. That is the entire board set up, and so far we are looking good on the ease of play aspect, the last thing to mention here is that whoever set up the game will be taking the first turn. Playing the game The King is Dead can host up to four players and due to the game's eight action rule, play is fastand intuitive. The King is Dead plays in roughly 30 to 50 minutes, making it a great game to slot in on your evenings. The Designer The King is Dead feels like the love child between two brilliant games in Santorini and Hanamikoji. Two games I adore for their simple rulesets, and their tense push-and-pull gameplay. The King is Dead is a deeper board game than both of those two, while still maintaining a paper-thin ruleset.

A nearly perfect game, now presented at its most beautiful. The struggles of Medieval power feel palpable – and entirely within your control. King Arthur is dead and Britain stands divided in today's Let's play, as we look at The King is Dead. The box for The King is Dead is one of these hinge open affairs that Osprey Games seem to use when ever they can. If you have the new prints of London, or Escape the Aliens in Outer Space you'll know what I mean. Open the flap and you'll find a smallish board, a load of wooden cubes and draw bag, some cards, and some of the flimsiest punch board on God's green earth. Punching the relatively few tokens out of that wafer thin monstrosity gave me nightmares. The game ends when all eight regions have successfully had their battles resolved or three areas are resolved as ties with a French Invasion. In the first scenario, the winner is the player with the most cubes of the faction that was successful in the most regions. In the second scenario, players are crowned King (or Queen) if they can unite the nations against the French by having the most sets of all three colours. Æthel-go! Example Power Struggle: Phil, Jo and Laura are playing. Phil passes, then Jo passes. If Laura were to pass, the power struggle would end immediately, even though no cards have been played. Laura plays instead, and the power struggle continues.The game can end in two ways - if three regions become unstable then the French invade. In that case the player with the most sets of cubes in front of them (yellow, blue and red) wins. If all 8 power struggles are resolved then the nation with the most controlled regions is crowned. Then the player with the most cubes of that colour wins the game. However, what makes The King is Dead even closer is the multiple end game scenarios. While we’ve focused on the winner of the warring factions. There’s also the sneaky French. Whenever there’s a tie in a skirmish (i.e. the same number of cubes from each faction) then the French win the battle. If the French ever win three battles, the game ends. At the end of eight rounds the player with the most cubes of the nation in control of the UK wins. Although if there are four draws for control the Saxons win those territories and then the player with most complete sets of all three nations wins. He's Getting Better... Set in the dark ages, players in The King is Dead will be attempting to unify Britain and be claimed its ruler! The game can take up to four players with a playing time of 30-45 minutes, and boasts an impressive 10 minute learning time - so let's see if it lives up to this. The Components