Kingdoms

Despite the grand name suggesting an epic sweep, Kingdoms is a quick-moving and fairly abstract game for 2-4 players. But as one might expect, between competing kingdoms there is much malevolent feistiness!

The board is a 6×6 grid that the players will fill with tiles and castles over each of the three rounds: on your turn, you can either add a tile (from a face-down stack, or the secret tile you’re dealt at the start of the round) or one of your own castles.  You begin the game with several castles that stand to – hopefully – score you points. Each castle will score the value of the completed row and column it sits in, and it might be the face value (1 Castles) or double, triple or even quadruple the value, using your special (x2, x3 and x4) castles. One catch is that only your x1 castles will return at the end of a round – the others are one-use-only. The other, more substantial, catch is, that though some tiles score points (up to six) others score negative points, so your x4 castle might well end up costing you dear if you place it poorly.

Mixed into the points tiles are some special tiles that further muddy the waters – the Mountains effectively divide the row and column they are on into two, the Gold doubles everything (including the negative points!) on a row and column, and the Dragon cancels all good tiles and leaves behind the rubbish ones. After the third round, the player with the most points is the winner.