Khan of Khans
Designed by: Reiner Knizia
Khan of Khans is a simple card-flipping game of minimal decisions. The story is that we are seeking to be the greatest khan in the fantasy world of Glorantha. How we go about it is simple: herding cows.
The board’s only purpose is to show you where several decks of cards are placed. Each deck is shuffled and players are given their own khan – with a special power – and three empty corals (of the cattle kind, not the reef). The game begins with the oldest player choosing a card to flip, and then plays clockwise around the table with everyone doing likewise.
Most of the cards are cattle, with values of 20 (common) 50 (rarer) and 100 (only one or two in each deck). If you flip one of these, you simply keep them in front of you: in some future turn, you can choose to coral them instead of flipping a card: place all your cattle cards into one of your corals, they are now safe!
While your cattle are unprotected, they can be stolen or scared away. Flipping a Waha’s Blessing card allows players to steal uncoraled cattle from each other. A couple cards are bad for you when you flip them: Stampede card means your highest-value cattle card runs off, Enemy Magic scares off all your cattle. Fortunately a Tribal Champion card protects against Enemy Magic (discard the champion instead).
This continues until the cards run out. You only have three opportunities to coral the entire game, so timing is critical. Once they’re used up, you can still flip cards on your turn, but they’ll remain unprotected. The only other thing to factor in are the special abilities, which mix the game up a bit.
Sam says
It’s simple, card-flipping fun, with a helping of Take That. I wouldn’t place Khan of Khans up there with designer Reiner Knizia’s greatest hits – or even his moderate hits – because unless you can count cards the predominant takeaway is one of the game kind of happening to you rather you exerting any kind of control over it. But it only takes 15 minutes, is full of little surprises, and utilising your special powers is what can – sometimes – help swing things your way. An okay game, if you want something light enough to not really matter, but there are many better.
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Take That!
Enough to go around!
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Fidget Factor!
It's very fast-moving.
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Brain Burn!
You can almost play this with no brain at all.
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Again Again!
It's fast, it's silly. It's also a little rote, but the game isn't pitched as a dense challenge: it's meant to be a frippery.
