Kingsburg Review

Here’s a wee poem I wrote:

Kingsburg, Kingsburg, roll your dice
Play it nasty, Play it nice
Play it once? No, play it twice
Kingsburg, Kingsburg, egg fried rice

Yes, I was eating egg fried rice on the night I first played Kingsburg. It was a birthday present from Ryan. The game, not the egg fried rice. I didn’t ask for rice for my birthday. I’m not an animal.

Kingsburg is another game published by Fantasy Flight, another release from the massive fun-organ of that board game behemoth. It’s designed by two strapping lads called Andrea Chiarvesio and Luca Iennaco, and two more polite young men you couldn’t hope to meet. (I haven’t met them, but I hope to someday.)

Here’s how it works.

The board is covered in illustrations of the King and his advisers. 18 of them in total. Each adviser gives the player some kind of benefit – goods, military strength, and so on. Each game year sees players employing advisers, growing their cities, and preparing to defend their city when war comes each winter.

So how do you employ advisers? You roll dice.

Here are some people. Put dice on their heads.

“Dice?!” the hardcore boardgamer screamed. “You want me to roll a die?! Me?! A thinker?! A man of logic and brilliance?! You want me to roll a die like I’m a 9 year old boy playing “Move Stevie Sausage Into The Frying Pan By Rolling Dice For Hours: The Board Game?”"

The room fell silent. The hardcore boardgamer grabbed the dice from the table. His hand, covered in sores and calluses from poking chits out of cardboard sheets, now contained the offending cubes. He screamed at them, his eyes bulging from their sockets, bloodshot from multiple sessions of Race For The Galaxy the night before.

“Dice?! Wooden creatures of fate and filth! I cast ye out!” He threw them across the room in fury.

They landed. All four dice showed a 6.

The hardcore boardgamer fell to his knees.

“In casting ye, I rolled ye.” He put a gun to his head, his tears flowing now. “And I rolled ye well.”

The bang shook the room. The spray of blood covered the gaming table. The game’s unsleeved cards didn’t stand a chance.

Yes, you roll dice. Let’s say I roll three dice. I roll a 5, a 4 and a 1. The dice allow me to employ some advisers. So I can employ adviser number 5, number 4 and number 1. Or, I can add dice together and employ number 9 and number 1 if that suits me better. Or 4 and 6 (5+1). Or adviser 10 (5+4+1).

Don’t look at me like that. It’s not complicated. I’ll go through it again.

I roll a 6 on all three dice. I can employ adviser 12(6+6) and 6. I can employ adviser 18 (The King). And that’s really all I can do. You get it?

Once an adviser is employed, no-one else can employ him* and get those benefits he provides. So there’s a little bit of interaction in there with players blocking out advisers who can provide their opponents with stuff they need.

The game’s all about building your city to score points, and defending your city from the winter attacks. To build you need goods and cash. To defend your city you need soldiers. Every player gets some soldiers from the King when it comes time to fight, but you’ll be wanting to bolster your defences. You should place your dice on military men to do this. Some advisers even let you have a peek ahead at the enemies you’re going to face, so that you can better prepare. (Worryingly, the Queen seems to know an awful lot about every impending attack. NEVER TRUST A QUEEN.) A failed attempt to force off the enemies will have you knee-deep in shit. Your buildings might be destroyed, you might lose victory points, lose your trousers, all in all it’s a disaster.

Five years of development and survival and the game gets called. The player with the best score wins.

That’s it?

That’s it.

I love you.

Kingsburg is an absolute pleasure to play. On those nights when you don’t feel like playing something that makes you want to disembowel your friends, Kingsburg is the game to pull out. It’s a sunny, summery game. With its beautiful illustrations and colourful dice, it’s a big explosion of happiness on your table.

Richard happily playing Kingsburg, distracted momentarily from thoughts of man's inevitable extinction.

The game flows beautifully too. There’s hardly any downtime. Everyone rolls at the same time, and from then on you’re either choosing your advisers or watching the other players like a hawk, hoping that they don’t shut your options down.

Dice, though. That means that word comes into play again, right? That word I call “The Other L-Word.” Yes, luck is a factor, but doesn’t play as big a part as you would think. Your success or otherwise in Kingsburg will usually be down to the choices you’ve made, which buildings you construct, and which advisers you decide to spread your dice across.

(In the game I almost always choose the Church route. I build the religious buildings. I do this not because I’m at all religious, but because you get a bonus when defending against demons. And it’s always good, in games and in real life, to keep your shit correct when demons are around. Consider this a warning.)

Kingsburg’s a beautiful little game. It’s easy to teach, plays fast, and combines the satisfaction of dice-rolling with the thinky-dinky decision-making of a worker placement Eurogame. My group loves it because it’s light and fun and has a clever mechanic that keeps you interested from start to finish.

And because Kenny, one of our group, is apparently IN it.

One of the esteemed advisers.

One of the esteemed Kennys.

*There’s actually a device that lets you place dice on an adviser who is already taken, but we won’t make the explanation any more complicated than is necessary, OKAY?