Next up in this quick review series: the 2012 Spiel des Jahres Winner (German Game of the Year), Queen Games' Kingdom Builder.
+ Teachability: The most complicated rule in this game is the 'adjacency' rule and once you can get people's heads wrapped around that, everything else is straightforward.
+ Replayability through Variability: The permutation of boards, board orientations and scoring cards make each game unique.
+ Opportunity for Creative Play: The key to victory is mastery of the bonus tiles available. If you can learn to take advantage of them, ideally in creative combinations with each other, then you have a much better chance of success.
+ Simple Effective Iconography: The iconography on the reference tiles and bonus tiles makes it easy to remind people what the various tokens do in the game.
+ Artwork: The artwork is clear and easy for even my color-blind vision to differentiate.
- The Nomads Expansion: While the expansion does provide some neat additions to the game as well as extra tokens for a 5th player, the price point is set too high and feels like a bit of a money grab, likely to collect on the Spiel des Jahres win.
Darren Bezzant
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