Exploding Kittens

Plays: 4Px2.

The Game

Exploding Kittens was a wildly successful Kickstarter project. We are talking a USD 8.7M success here, no kidding. However I never read up much about it when it was hot. I only knew it was a simple and silly card game. I don't remember any of my regular boardgame kaki's owning it, and I never got to try it. Recently I received an extra copy of the game from Zee Zun. That was how I got to play this little slightly crazy game.

The stars of the show are, of course, the exploding kittens, like this one above. They are basically bombs. When you draw a bomb card, you are out of the game. When all but one player is left, he wins.

The game is simple. Everyone starts with a hand of cards. On your turn, you may play any number of cards. Once you are done, you must draw a card from the deck before ending your turn. There are many types of cards, and they can be used in various situations. The Defuse card lets you neutralise an exploding kitten. Instead of losing, you get to insert the exploding kitten back into the deck. There's a card which lets you peek at the next three cards in the deck. This can help you avoid being the next person to draw an exploding kitten. There's a card which allows you to skip drawing a card, and have someone else do it instead. There's a card which allows you to reshuffle the deck. There's a card which lets you rob a card from an opponent. There's a card which lets you cancel a card just played by another player. All these cards give you some control, reducing the likelihood of you drawing an exploding kitten and increasing the likelihood of others drawing it. However, overall this is still a luck-heavy game.

The Play

I played with my family. Younger daughter Chen Rui likes cats (and kittens) so she was keen to play. We made a mistake in our first game. The No card should not be able to cancel Defuse cards or exploding kittens. When Michelle tried to save herself with a Defuse card, Shee Yun played a No card to cancel the Defuse. Michelle was promptly eliminated. It was only afterwards that we learned our mistake.

There is plenty of interaction, because there are many offensive ("take that") cards. Who to play these cards on is a very human or social part of the game. It's about favouritism, it is about taking sides. It is about persuasion and negotiation, threatening and pleading. This is not a game about logical reasoning, impersonal calculations or careful strategising. This is a game about being childish, silly and petty. A game takes maybe 7 or 8 minutes. With 4 players, there are 3 exploding kittens in the deck. Regardless of how cleverly you play your cards, someone will still be drawing a card turn after turn, and sooner or later that card will be an exploding kitten and people will get blown up.

The Thoughts

Exploding Kittens is a silly and simple game. There is little depth. Don't let the "strategy" word in their marketing spiel mislead you. That's meant for the mass market, i.e. non gamers. This game is a party game and a filler. The cards make you feel you have some control, when in fact it's mostly luck. This is actually a good thing - making you feel you have control. The prime example is Love Letter. It's a lot of luck, but the game mechanisms sometimes make you feel you've pulled off a clever move.

Wir sind das Volk (We are the People)

Plays: 2Px1.

The Game

Wir sind das Volk tells the story of East and West Germany in the 45 years after World War II. Having suffered defeat, Germany was divided into East and West. East Germany was under the influence of USSR, while West Germany was under the influence of the Western Allies - USA, UK and France. Those 45 years were the Cold War years, a war of ideologies between democracy and communism. Germany was a key battleground. In this game, one player plays East Germany, and the other plays West Germany. You develop your respective nations, improve the living standards of your people, and try to outdo your opponent. This is not a game of direct conflict, but it can get very brutal despite being "just" an envy game. There are a few ways to win (and lose). If your people are unhappy and stage enough mass protests, you lose. If the East German economy completely collapses, it loses. The East Germans want to promote socialism. If the socialist movement reaches a critical mass, East Germany wins. On the other hand, if the movement completely fizzles out, West Germany wins. If the game ends without any of the above conditions being met, East Germany wins. It's not easy to survive till the end as East Germany.

The left side of the border is West Germany, and the right side is East Germany. The triangles are factories. The numbers pointing north are their production capacities. The base production capacity is 1. Each connected road increases the capacity by 1. The blue cubes are unrest. For every four unrest cubes in a province, you get a mass protest. Get four mass protests and you lose the game due to your government falling apart. The pink cubes are socialists. Only East Germany can have socialists. When East Germany gets mass protests, sometimes the fourth unrest cube gets replaced by a socialist. That means some people don't become unhappy. They just turn socialist. The mass protest is cancelled because technically you don't have four unrest cubes anymore. The number of socialists East Germany has available can be influenced by both players. If East Germany manages to get all socialists onto the board, it wins. If West Germany manages to remove all socialists from the board, it wins. The octagonal pieces are living standard tokens. You normally want to increase the living standard of your provinces as much as possible and and as equally as possible. A high living standard needs to be supported by a strong economy, i.e. the production capacities of your factories. So you need to build factories, build roads, then improve living standards.

This is the starting setup. The board is mostly empty. Most provinces already have three unrest cubes. People are not happy. They have just lost a war and the country is in ruins. Of course everyone is grumpy. East and West Germany each have two factories. The mini map at the top right is Berlin. Berlin too is divided into East and West. On the main map Berlin is enclosed within the Brandenburg province of East Germany.

The game is divided into four rounds, each roughly representing a decade. A round is further divided into first and second halves. For each half, 7 cards are laid out on the table. Players take turns selecting a card to play. Once all 7 cards are used up, you deal a new set of 7 cards for the second half. At the end of a round, there is a complex procedure to go through, affecting many aspects of the game. You then move on to the next round. Each round (decade) has its own deck of cards. The cards are unique. Your story unfolds through them.

For each round, East Germany has a predetermined special card. It is placed on top, separate from the 7 normal cards (see photo above). On the East German player's turn, he always has the option of playing this special card instead of a normal card.

There are many different icons on the cards. When you play a card and decide to use it as an event, you execute what the icons specify. This is just one of the four ways you can use a card. The second thing you can do with a card is to spend the card value on building factories or roads. The third thing is improving living standards in up to three different provinces. Whenever the living standard improves, one unrest cube is removed. The fourth and last thing you can do with a card is to simply remove one unrest cube. This seems like a weak action, but sometimes it is necessary.

The drawings on these two cards are yellow, which means they benefit West Germany. Cards with drawings in red benefit East Germany. Cards with drawings in both red and yellow benefit both. If you play such a dual coloured card, you may omit one icon, usually one that would benefit your opponent. Even if a card's event benefits you greatly, you may not necessarily play it as an event. Sometimes you'd rather play it for building due to its high value.

In this photo above, the three horizontal tracks are for tracking prestige, Western currency and socialists. Many cards in the game affect these aspects, and they in turn affect what happens at the end of every round. Prestige determines player order. At the end of a round, it can affect construction, production and unrest in East Germany. Western currency is something which only East Germany needs. In history, East Germany lacked a stable currency, unlike West Germany which had the Deutschmark. The living standard of East Germany needs to be supported by having enough Western currency. Otherwise factories become rundown and roads rot. The socialist track determines how many socialists East Germany gets to add to or must remove from its pool at the end of every round. This is related to one of the victory conditions.

The vertical track is the procedure you need to go through at the end of a round. There is a lot to do and it can be rather daunting at first. I won't try to explain everything. I'll just cover the more crucial bits. One important event in recent German history is the construction of the Berlin Wall. In the game, one difficulty East Germany has to face is intellectuals fleeing to West Germany, due to better living conditions there, as well as oppression in the East. This causes further deterioration of the economy of East Germany. By building the wall, East Germany stems this flow of intellectuals. There is a cost though, both economically and in prestige. Whether to build the wall is something East Germany needs to consider carefully. During the round-end procedure, the consequences of having (or not having) built the wall take effect.

One other important thing you do at round-end is comparing living standards. This is a very core part of the game. First you compare the living standards internally among your own provinces. If there is a large enough gap, some of your people will be unhappy, and you get unrest cubes. Then you compare externally, between your provinces and adjacent opponent provinces. If your people are better off than your opponent's people, his people become unhappy. Unrest cubes added due to these comparisons can cause mass protests, and may even bring down a government.

This is the flight track, representing the severity of the exodus of intellectuals from East Germany. The row of icons above the track show all factors that affect the flight level. The higher the flight level, the more roads and factories East Germany needs to dismantle. That card at the bottom left has a flight icon in its top right corner. When such cards are played, they increase the flight level for the round.

There are many special rules related to the city of Berlin. West Berlin has no production capacity and you can't build a factory here. Its living standard tokens need to be provided by its supplier provinces. There are three such supplier provinces, corresponding to the three sectors of West Berlin - French, British and American. West Berlin is an important frontline to West Germany. It is adjacent to both East Berlin and Brandenburg, and if its living standard is high, it hurts both East Berlin and Brandenburg. However West Berliners are also a proud bunch. If they don't have the highest living standard in the whole of West Germany, they get upset. When they riot, they trigger an additional province to riot. West Germany needs to manage West Berlin carefully.

The two purple triangles are factories in Czechoslovakia, which can only be built by triggering specific events. They help the East German economy. This is just one example of the many special rules and exceptions in the game.

The Play

In history, East Germany suffered, while West Germany prospered. Since I was the one reading the rules and teaching the game, I thought I should play East Germany and let Allen play West Germany. However Jeff and Kareem who had played the game told me that it is actually easier to play East Germany. The East German player just needs to survive till the end, while the West German player is the one under time pressure to destroy East Germany before time runs out. So eventually I played West Germany, and Allen played East Germany.

In the early game we both focused on developing our nations - building factories and roads. We used cards mostly for construction, and not so much on events. When I picked cards to play, I prioritised picking those which Allen could otherwise use to hurt me badly. This was a defensive approach. I wonder whether others also tend to play this way.

West Germany has two provinces more than East Germany. Normally it is best to develop your provinces evenly. Due to having two more provinces, it takes more effort for West Germany to increase its living standard. However the West German provinces have more locations for factories and roads. As both nations improve their economies and living standards, East Germany will hit the ceiling more easily. It may run out of space to further improve and keep up with West Germany. This is dangerous.

In the early game, the economic growths of East and West Germany were on par. I was careless with West Berlin, resulting in some unrest which could have been avoided. The "Buy 1 Free 1" nature of West Berlin mass protests gave me some trouble. Allen specifically targeted that and kept me busy.

Allen rarely used the decade-specific East Germany card. East Germany was generally doing well enough, and those cards did not feel particularly powerful. As we played, I found a number of interesting bits in the game's card drafting mechanism. There are 7 normal cards per half round. At the start of a round, each player also draws 2 cards. On your turn you may play a card from your hand instead of picking one of the cards on the table. If both players only pick cards from the table, the half round will end with the 1st player having taken 4 actions, and the 2nd player having taken only 3. Another consideration is who gets to be 1st player in the second half. When moving into the second half, your turns alternate. Often you want your opponent to take the last action in the first half, so that you go first in the second half. Going first is usually better because you get first choice among the new set of 7 cards. You get to pick the most powerful card, or the card most damaging to you.

The two cards you hold in hand let you speed up or slow down the game. If you need more time, play both of them. If you want the round to end as soon as possible, don't play either of them. This needs to be balanced against how good the cards are. If you happen to be holding a card that is very good, you may not be able to resist playing it.

In my game with Allen, the high valued cards were always snatched up quickly, because we both wanted to build as much as possible. Allen never built the Berlin Wall. In the early game, East and West Germany were doing more or less equally well. In fact, my rioting West Berliners were probably making the would-be defectors think twice. So there was no pressing need for the wall. The economic impact of fleeing intellectuals was small.

Allen spent some effort on promoting socialism. I didn't do much to stop him. What we found was he probably should have spent more effort, and spent it earlier, for the socialist movement to be successful. The amount of effort he had put in was neither here nor there, so it only helped him somewhat in reducing mass protests. It wasn't a big enough push to convert East Germany to a socialist state.

At the end of Round 3 (of 4), a nasty event took both of us by surprise. Allen did not have enough Western currency to support his living standard. By that time, both of us had decent living standards. However for East Germany to sustain that, it needed Western currency. Allen was short on that, and as a result, all 10 of his factories became rundown. Being rundown meant losing the base production value of 1. Rundown factories had a base value of 0, and their production capacity fully depended on their road connections. Factories becoming rundown meant reduced production capacity, which in turn meant being unable to support living standards. Lower living standards meant unhappy people, which then meant mass protests. You can't build factories or roads in provinces with mass protests, and you need to spend effort to quell those protests before you can rebuild your economy. The shortage of Western currencies triggered a domino effect. Neither of us expected that huge an impact.

This was the end of Round 3. The East German factories (red) had been flipped to the rundown side, which features a broken gear.

The West German economy was stable now, and supported a decent living standard (see the octagons). There was now a big contrast with East Germany. West Berlin (top right corner) enjoyed a high living standard of four, making the people of East Berlin and Brandenburg green with envy. Look at how many socialists (pink cubes) there were in Brandenburg now.

By the end of Round 4, the implosion of the East German economy could not be stopped. There was still a shortage of Western currency. The already rundown factories could not be further reduced. Roads had to be dismantled. By the time we were done, there were no more roads in East Germany. The economy was truly finished. The revolution could not be contained, and East Germany fell.

The demise of the East German economy was sudden. We had underestimated how bad the shortage of Western currencies could be. From just reading the rules, one cannot truly feel the severity.

The Thoughts

Wir sind das Volk is a very flavourful game. The core mechanisms are not complex, but it does have many special rules and exceptions. It is not easy to learn or to teach. These special rules do add to the character of the game. They tell a compelling story and make the experience immersive. In the end I think they are worth the effort. Just don't try to play this with people new to the hobby. It will probably scare them off.

Playing the game gives you the same kind of pleasure as playing Twilight Struggle. You reenact history. Many historical events are simplified to a handful of parameters, like unrest, production capacity and living standards. However the game mechanisms do work, and they do make you feel you are pulling the levers. Your actions have consequences. Your strategy matters.

You can summarise the game as a pissing contest. Afterall it is about East and West Germany trying to outdo each other in achieving a high living standard. It's an envy game!

Playing the game reminded me of a German movie The Lives of Others, which I like a lot. It is a serious drama with mature themes. Certainly not meant for kids, and not your regular Hollywood blockbuster. Check it out!

PopCats Fighter

Street Fighter: The Card Game - With Cats!. It's on Kickstarter now if you are interested.

boardgaming in photos: Hanabi, Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation

16 Jun 2018. Playing Hanabi with the children - the cooperative card game where you don't get to see your own cards but get to see everyone else's cards instead.

It had been a while since we last played, and at one point when Chen Rui drew a card, she forgot that she was not supposed to look at it. We didn't want to start all over again, so we just asked her to shuffle that card back into the draw deck, and draw again.

We had completed the greens, but made no progress in blue at all. This was a little unusual.

Chen Rui was the one who suggested to arrange the tokens this way. The tokens with the clock face are clue tokens. Each time you give a clue, you flip one over. Each time you discard a card, you flip one back to the available side. Normally I just arrange these tokens in two rows of four. This way of surrounding the fuse stack is a neat way of doing it.

30 Jun 2018. While waiting for Allen to arrive, Han and I had two quick games of Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. Gandalf getting killed so early is bad news for the good guys. He's the strongest on the team. And no, he doesn't get to resurrect as Gandalf the White, unless you play the variant rules. However, things aren't looking good for the bad guys either. They only have 6 pieces to the good guys' 7 pieces on the board. If the good guys can achieve a one-for-one exchange of pieces, they will have an advantage. It will be much easier for Frodo to sneak through to Mordor.

Clans of Caledonia

Plays: 3Px1.

The Game

Caledonia is the what the Romans called the area of Scotland. I had to look this up. In Clans of Caledonia, you play competing clans, each developing its own farming and manufacturing industry. This is a development game and a resource production and conversion game. Eventually you convert all your efforts to victory points. It has a strong spatial element, and a little bit of supply and demand mechanism. It's a medium weight strategy game, leaning towards the heavier side.

The game board is made up of four large pieces. They are double sided so there quite many combinations you can play with. There are rivers and lakes dividing the land into sections. During the game you want to have settlements in many sections, because there is an end-game scoring for settlements. You will need to attain certain levels of technology to be able to expand your settlements across rivers and lakes.

The five shields on the left side of this scoring board represent the five rounds in the game. These shields are randomly set up before the game starts, and each shield specifies a round-specific scoring. E.g. every two processed goods scores 3 points. The square tiles at the centre are the contracts. These are refilled at the start of every round. You may claim a contract and then later fulfill it by supplying the goods required. The contract indicates the rewards. The most common rewards are imported goods - cotton, sugar cane, tobacco and hops. These are worth points at game end. Normally you can only hold one contract. You need to fulfill it before claiming a new one.

This is the market board, which shows the prices of the locally produced goods. If anyone buys such goods (from the bank), the price goes up. If anyone sells, the price drops. To buy or sell, you need to use merchants - those cubes. Used merchants are placed here to indicate which goods you have bought or sold. Within the same round, you cannot buy something you've sold earlier, and you cannot sell something you've bought earlier. Merchants are returned to your hand at the end of the round.

The two tiles are a starting resource tile and a clan tile. They are set up randomly, and you draft them before the game starts. The unique ability of the Campbell clan is they build factories for processed goods at a discount. The more of the same factory type you build, the bigger the discount.

This is your player board. These columns of pieces are your production facilities. You needs to spend money to build them, i.e. place them on the main board. The first column is sheep farms, they produce wool every round. The second column is cattle farms, which produce milk. Both these farms can produce mutton or beef too, but you need to slaughter your animals, and thus have to remove the farms from the map. No more wool or milk next round. The third column is cheese factories. Each converts one milk to one cheese every round. The fifth column is grain fields. Each produces two grains per round. The fourth column is bakeries, which convert grain to bread, and the sixth column is breweries, which convert grain to beer. The two rightmost columns are your workers - woodcutters and miners respectively. When you build a woodcutter's hut or a mine, it makes money for you every round. Regular factories must be built on plains, while woodcutter's huts must be built in forests, and mines on mountains.

The cubes along the bottom row are merchants. You can spend money to train more, i.e. move them off the board to become available for use. The helm piece indicates your shipping technology. You need to improve this tech if you want to expand your settlements across rivers and lakes. The two small tiles at the bottom right are techs you can spend money to improve too. They increase the income from woodcutters and miners.

This player reference card lists all the actions you can do. Every round the players take turns performing one action at a time, until everyone passes. Many actions cost money. As your funds dry up for the round, you will soon run out of actions you can do, and will be forced to pass.

Random ports are set up at the four corners of the map before the game starts. Ports give single-use bonuses if you connect to them. You connect to a port by building right next to it, or near enough such that your shipping tech is high enough to connect your building with it. Once you use a port bonus, you place your marker on the port to indicate so, like in this photo. The bonus of this particular port is a simple $10 income.

This port at the bottom right lets you swap two of your production facilities with something else (except grain fields).

Constructing buildings is expensive. You not only have to pay for the building itself, you also need to pay for the land. The land price is shown on the map. Hexes with many terrain types are expensive, because you can build anything on them. Hexes with just one terrain type are cheap.

The main flow in the game is building production facilities, producing goods, converting goods, and eventually fulfilling contracts, thus gaining imported goods which are worth points at game end. There is also a cycle of generating income to fuel your production. You spend money on woodcutter's huts and mines so that you can make more money in the future. During the game there are ways to score points. The round-specific scoring can give many points and is something you want to plan for. At game end, in addition to the imported goods, there are two other major ways of scoring. Firstly, you compete in the number of contracts fulfilled. The player who does best scores the most, and others score less. Secondly, you compete in the number of settlements you have. A settlement is a group of connected buildings. Rivers and lakes break up settlements, so if a connected group is split by a river, that group is considered two separate settlements.

One interesting aspect of this settlement competition is the sheep farms and cattle farms. When one such farm is removed because you decide to slaughter the animals for meat, it may cause a settlement to break into two. For game end scoring purposes, this can be a good thing. It is possible to specifically plan for such a thing.

The Play

Allen and Han. Han was in town, and we had planned to meet up to play together well ahead of time. He brought the game and taught us to play.

During game setup everyone gets to start two settlements. Right from the get go you need to think about your board positioning. This greatly affects the rest of your game. Will you have space to expand? Are you near ports? What are the terrain types and land costs nearby? Will you get hemmed in by your opponents? And so on and so forth. There is a rule in the game which allows you to trade at lucrative prices whenever you build next to an opponent. This is an incentive for players to build near one another, and results in competition and tension. I played white, Han was blue and Allen red.

I (white) pretty much ignored my settlement in the lower left. At this point I had three settlements. One at the lower left, and two in the group at the lower right. That group was split by a river, so this was two settlements, one on each side of that river. Allen (red) had four settlements now. He had two groups of buildings, and both were divided by rivers, so each group was actually two settlements. Han (blue) had the most - 5 settlements. By this point he had not only expanded across rivers, he had also expanded across lakes. He was also first to have reached a port - the one at the top right.

Han's strategy was to make money first. He very quickly deployed all his woodcutters and miners. These two columns on his player board were now empty. Also he had upgraded their techs so every one of them earned a higher amount of money. More money means more things you can do. Han was the most successful in expanding his business empire across the map.

I (white) was the weakest in expansion on the map. I could not hope to compete in the number of settlements. Only Allen could compete with Han. However I did work hard on the contracts, completing them early, and completing them as frequently as I could. I became #1 in contracts and secured my lead till the end. The competition for space on the map was intense. We all needed space to build our farms and factories. Our buildings needed specific terrain types. There was the competition for number of settlements hovering over us (well, maybe not me). So there was a constant pressure to fight for land.

The round-specific scoring affected how we played. Points didn't come easy, and we needed to make every bit count. In our game, the Round 4 scoring was 3pts for every two processed goods. To make the most of that, Han stockpiled a lot of processed goods, saving them till scoring and only using them in the next round. I had considered that, but I wanted to complete my contract quickly so that I could get a new one. Claiming contracts costed money from Round 3 onwards, so I wanted to claim them early. I was also worried someone else might take what I wanted.

The scoring track looks busy and confusing, but is actually not complicated. The main scoring markers are the three round ones at positions 25, 20 and 18. The three hex-shaped markers at 9, 8, 4 are just markers to keep count of each player's number of settlements. This is just for the convenience of seeing where you stand in the settlements competition. The grey, green and brown markers are the total numbers of cotton, sugar cane and tobacco the players have collected from contracts. The total number needs to be tracked because at game end, these three imported goods score points based on scarcity. The goods type with the lowest count is worth 5pts each, the one with the medium count is worth 4pts each, and the one with the highest count is only worth 3pts each. Before you claim a contract, you need to evaluate how many points it is potentially worth based on what imported goods it gives. You also need to consider whether you will affect the imported goods value when you complete the contract.

That pad on the right is the scoring pad. It lists all the things you score for at game end. Unused goods and cash are worth points.

My board situation did not look good and I had expected to do poorly. However our final scores were not too far apart, and I managed second place, due to the contracts. Han was the clear winner. Neither Allen nor I could beat his money kingdom. Being cash-rich meant he had plenty of options and he could do more than us. Allen was actually quite rich too, because his clan power let him sell milk without merchants and at the best price.

The Thoughts

The goods production, goods processing and eventual conversion to points in Clans of Caledonia are not particularly notable. We see this in many Eurogames. The spatial competition is something I find interesting. Many Eurogames abstract away the map play. I like the player interaction in the spatial aspect of the game. The money-first strategy seems to be very powerful. I can't think of any reason not to follow it, which is a problem if I am right. It would mean the strategy is one-dimensional. I wonder whether players who have played more will all tend to take this approach. Perhaps it is not a matter of whether to pursue this general approach, but a question of how far to pursue it. Like in Dominion, the key is deciding when to stop building your engine and actually start using your engine to earn victory points. Money is your tool and more money makes you more powerful, but it is still just a means to earn points. Your ultimate objective is points.

I like the clan powers. Without them I think the clans will feel rather bland. They drive players to play in different ways, and different combinations of clans in a game will result in a different experience. You want to make good use of your clan power, and you also need to understand your opponents' clan powers. Knowing how they will play is useful. The clan powers bring personality to the game.

I find there is a good mix of tactical and strategic decisions in the game. The strategic aspects include making use of your clan power, reaching out to ports, building many settlements and completing many contracts. Amidst working towards these longer term objectives, you encounter many decisions that are tactical in nature. You watch what contracts your opponents are holding, what goods they are holding, where they might be competing with you on the map, what the round-specific scoring criterion is. You analyse the situation and pick the most efficient move. There will be opportunities and threats you need to react to, e.g. someone encroaching on "your" land. There is plenty to keep you busy, and this is one of the strengths of the game.

Unicornus Knights

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

One of the designers of Unicornus Knights is Seiji Kanai of Love Letter fame. The other designer Kuro is also well known in Japan. Unicornus Knights is a very different animal from Love Letter. It is a mid-weight cooperative game, with some role-playing elements. It has a medieval fantasy setting. The Kingdom has been invaded by the evil Empire. The King is dead, and the capital captured. The Imperial army is terrorising the realm. The sole survivor of the dynasty is the Princess. She is determined to avenge her family and reclaim the throne. She will march to the capital and kick the smug Emperor out, and she will stop at nothing. You are generals of the Kingdom, and your job is to help the Princess reclaim the Kingdom. This must be done within 10 rounds, before the Empire solidifies its power.

All this sounds fine and dandy and patriotic. When we played, it turned out to be a hilarious exercise of playing nanny to our impetuous (to put it nicely) Princess. The Princess is a non-player character (NPC) and acts based on clearly defined rules. You have little control over her. She charges towards the capital, disregarding dangers and ignoring advice. When she runs out of supplies, she gathers more on the spot, and starts off again once she has enough. As generals loyal to the Kingdom, you have to make sure she doesn't get herself killed. If this happens you lose. It is okay to get yourself killed though. You'll just switch to play a different Kingdom general next round. Try not to die, because you'd lose your allies, armies and supplies. It is usually bad to die.

This is our dear Princess. We all call her Siao Za Bo behind her back, which in Hokkien means Crazy Woman.

This is the Princess's character card. The 5 inside the heart is life points. If she takes her 5th injury, she dies. The 6 inside the shield is her command ability. It determines the army size she can lead.

This is how a game is set up - capital at the far right, and Princess at the far left. Kingdom generals (i.e. the players) are along the left edge, near where the Princess is. Most tiles are guarded by Empire generals. Every Empire general has his own character card. We put these along the edges of the map, near the respective on-map characters, so that it's easy to refer. There are Empire armies all over the place, some led by Empire generals, some not.

In our game there were four of us playing. If we count the Princess as well, that was five of us against about twelve generals and dozens of armies. It looked daunting. At first I thought that since the Princess would make a bee-line for the capital, we could just focus on defeating the Empire generals and armies along her path. We could ignore those further away from the path, and save precious time and resources. However there was a catch. We would eventually need to defeat the Emperor who was stubbornly guarding the capital. His strength was determined by the number of Empire generals still on the board. If we only defeated a few of them, his strength would be still very high, and it would be very difficult to beat him.

The structure of a round is simple. The Kingdom generals (i.e the players) take actions, then the Princess acts, and then the Empire generals and armies act. As Kingdom generals, you only have 5 action types, and they are all simple. The number of actions you get depends on the number of players. The two most basic actions are raising troops and gathering resources. You can only raise troops in cities, towns and villages, and the number of soldiers you can raise per action depends on the population density. You can gather resources anywhere, but it is only efficient if you do it at resource-rich locations, i.e. cities, towns, villages. The relationship between soldiers and resources is a very core part of the game. When your army marches one space, every soldier consumes one resource. If you are leading a huge army, it will eat a lot. You need to have a lot of resources to get it to march long distances. This is a logistical problem you need to think about and plan for all the time. Don't keep a large army when you don't need it. You'll just have more mouths to feed. However when you need to fight a tough enemy, you need to make sure you have enough fighters and enough food for them too.

Marching and attacking are the same action. When you try to march into an enemy-occupied space, you will attack him. If you defeat him, you march in. If you fail to completely defeat him, you stay put.

In addition to the number of soldiers in your army, the cost of marching also depends on terrain. Some terrain types are easy to march into, and some are harder. In this photo, the road space with the green -1 icon means you pay one resource fewer, whereas the forest spaces with the red +1 icons means you pay one extra resource.

Let's talk about the combat mechanism. It is a little unusual. This here is an Empire general. The 5 in the heart icon is life points. You need to deal this much damage to defeat this general. The 6 in the shield icon is the combat strength of the general. The shield icon means a different thing when it appears on the Princess card and the Kingdom general cards. For Empire generals, total combat strength is general's combat strength (i.e. shield icon) plus army combat strength (number of soldiers in the army). When you fight an Empire general, you need to allocate a number of dice equal to his total combat strength. Let's say this general above is leading 3 soldiers. You will need 9 dice in total. If you are able to roll 11 dice, you must assign 9 of them. You apply the results of these 9 dice. Naturally, since you have 2 surplus, you would have discarded 2 dice with unfavourable results. Now let's say you are only able to roll 7 dice, you would be 2 dice short. The Empire general would deal 2 points of damage to you, because of this shortage. This is even before you apply the results of those 7 dice you have rolled. The Empire general does not roll dice. Only you do.

This above is a Kingdom general. The heart icon works the same way as Empire generals. Take this much damage and you die. The shield icon means something else. For Kingdom generals it means your army size limit. The number of dice you get to roll during battle depends on the number of soldiers in your army. So this guy here normally gets to roll at most 5 dice, because that's the highest number of soldiers he can lead. There are some cards and character abilities which allow Kingdom generals to roll more dice. That little table on the right defines how well a character fights. The left half is for when he attacks, and the right half for when he defends. When attacking, Urgan deals damage on 5's and 6's, and takes damage on 1's and 2's. That's just average. However on defense, he deals damage on 3's to 6's, and only takes damage on 1's. So he's a very good defender. It is better to lure enemies to attack him.

Another one of your action types is drawing a support card. These are special abilities cards, and many are quite handy.

The last action type is sending stuff. You send one or more of your soldiers to a nearby comrade or the Princess, and he (or they) may bring resources along, up to 10 resources per person. This is an important action type. You often need to help your teammates out. It is also a means to manage the Princess. Send her troops to slow her down, or send her resources to speed her up. Send her troops to protect her and help her fight. It is easy to get stuck in the countryside with insufficient resources to allow your army to march. Gathering resources yourself in such situations is inefficient. It is better to ask your friends in nearby cities to gather resources and then send them to you.

After the Kingdom generals (i.e. the players) complete their turns, the Princess takes hers. She only cares about advancing towards the capital, and she takes the shortest path. Only if two paths have the same distance, you get to decide for her. She only stops to gather resources when she is unable to march. Once she gathers enough (or one of you gives her enough), she resumes her journey.

Once the Princess is done, the Empire generals and armies act. Empire generals have different behaviours. Most of them stay where they are, and only attack when you or the Princess is standing right next to them. Empire armies behave like this too. They ignore you unless you approach them. Some Empire generals are defensive. These strictly stand their ground, and won't budge even when you walk right up to them. If you want to defeat them, you have to be the one starting the fight. Only a few Empire generals are aggressive. The moment you or the Princess comes within a certain distance, they are triggered and start moving towards the nearest Kingdom character.

One important aspect in the game is the Fate cards. The first time any Empire general is approached by a Kingdom general, a Fate card is drawn to possibly establish some story between them. Special rules may come into play, affecting their behaviours.

If the Princess manages to enter the capital within 10 rounds, you win. If she dies, or is late, you lose.

The Play

We did a 4-player game. Ivan had played this before. Allen, Tim and I were new. The game comes with quite a few Kingdom generals, so you have plenty of variety. There are even four versions of the Princess. You can pick a style you like. They give different benefits. There are many Empire generals too, but every game most of them will be on the board, so the variety is less. Right off the bat we could already analyse the board situation and plan what to do, based on the locations of all the characters on both sides. We discussed how to make the best of our character abilities, and who to play what role. Ivan's character enjoyed a benefit when near the Princess, so he was in charge of staying close to her and protecting her. Allen's character was a support character. Since he was near Ivan, his role was to support Ivan by sending him troops and resources. Tim's character was a fighter, so he was our strike force.

Tim's character was the girl on the left in the foreground. When the game started, she had no army (no round soldier tokens beneath her). She must either recruit or have another Kingdom general send her troops. That lady with a huge black hat to the right was an Empire general, a necromancer. She summoned zombies in empty spaces on her tile every round, so if we wanted to defeat her, we must strike at her directly and swiftly, else the zombies would keep coming and drown us.

This area was tough - so many Empire armies.

The blurred old guy at the centre is Ivan's character. He had now entered the desert to fight a monster. The monster was strong, but thankfully didn't have any army. Allen's character, a young lady, is at the far left. She was now recruiting and gathering resources.

Tim's character had now defeated the necromancer. The zombies here would be attacking him, but at least there wouldn't be new zombies being generated by the necromancer anymore.

On the right, that angry bald guy with a red background is an aggressive type Empire general. He had been triggered and was heading towards Tim's character. My character is the blurred bearded dwarf in the foreground. I planned to move nearer to the bald guy to lure him towards me. I was strong in defense.

The Princess was moving slowly, and was still wandering in the desert on the left. All four of us had plunged in and were pushing the front line.

Having a pint with Her Highness.

That's Allen's character Annelie at the top right. When she approached the Empire general Chancellor Kostov, the Fate card drawn was Love At First Sight. If Annelie could reach Kostov, he would be immediately defeated by love, and become an ally. No need to fight at all, which would save soldiers and resources. So this was nice. From this point till the end of the game, all of us couldn't stop making fun of Kostov for being a perverted lolicon. Must be because of his ridiculous hair.

Ivan and Allen pushed towards the top left. Tim and I pushed the middle path, staying ahead of the Princess. I was now standing between angry bald guy and the Princess, waiting for him to throw his army at my well-prepared defenses.

There are cards and events which change how the Princess behaves. Some may cause her to head in a different direction, towards a specific character. This can be good and bad. Good if it helps to keep her from trouble. Bad if it delays her too much from reclaiming the throne. Some support cards let players move the Princess. These are precious and are very powerful when used at the right time.

When Allen's character (top right) approached the Empire general at the bottom left, the Fate card he drew happened to be "Love at First Sight" again! Now these three were in an "it's complicated" relationship. A love triangle! What drama! Maybe it was because Allen's character was badly injured. She had taken 3 damage and would die upon the next damage. So, old or young, men fell for her because who could bear to hurt this delicate flower?

We entered the last phase of the game. Tim's character was already in the capital tile slapping around those armies protecting the Emperor. The Princess was on the right, only a few steps away from the capital tile. That guy in dark armour on the right was an unusual one. He was not an Empire general, and did not contribute to the Emperor's strength. We did not need to defeat him to weaken the Emperor. However, if we defeated him, we could use him as a powerful weapon to defeat the Emperor. In our particular game, since we had been successful in defeating (and seducing) the Empire generals, there was no need to fight this dark knight. We ignored him. Those two Empire generals on the far left were twins. If we defeated one of them but not the other, at the end of the round, the defeated twin would resurrect. These twins were a pain in the neck. These are examples of unique stories and characteristics of the generals in the game.

Tim's character continued to terrorise the capital, preparing for the final attack.

The Princess was previously on the right side and preparing to enter the capital tile. However something unexpected happened. The Princess' fate was linked to one of the remaining Empire generals. If she met up with him, he would renounce the Empire and follow her instead. So now she was heading in a completely different direction. Other than playing nanny, protector and supplier, we also had to play secretary to Her Highness, scheduling appointments for her.

Eventually it was Tim's character who defeated the Emperor, and allowed the Princess to march into the capital amidst ecstatic cheering from the crowd. Peace returned to the Kingdom. Earlier in the game Tim's character defeated the robot girl Empire general, who then became an ally. The robot girl had a single-use ability, which converted all die rolls to kills, but only for one battle. Tim saved this till the final battle against the Emperor, and won a decisive victory. He didn't even need to roll the dice.

The Princess reclaimed the throne, and to our pleasant surprise, none of us got killed in the process. Yay us!

The Thoughts

I had a great time with Unicornus Knights. We had a fun bunch of players, and also a number of funny incidents, made possible by how the game works. I see the game as a puzzle which the players need to collaborate to solve. From the beginning, you already need to analyse the game setup and decide how you want to play. Depending on how your strategy pans out, you may need to adjust your plans. It feels like a puzzle because the Empire generals and armies set up on the board don't move about much. Their actions are all calculable. Seen as a mathematical exercise, the game doesn't seem all that sexy. However the Fate cards and Support cards will throw in some surprises and opportunities. There is much character in the game. Both Empire generals and Kingdom generals make you feel you can imagine their backstories easily. They feel alive. Empire generals are not just generic pawns to defeat. Kingdom generals are not just abstract powers you can use as a player. The Fate cards inject stories and twists to the game. They certainly injected a twisted love story in our game.

There are two aspects of the design I admire. Firstly, the army and resources dilemma. It is a simple but clever mechanism that succinctly represents a very real logistical problem. The second aspect is the battle mechanism. It took a while to understand, but once I grasped it, I found it very nifty.

Variability comes from the random game setup, the Kingdom generals, and the Princess version (there are four to choose from). Most of the Empire generals are in play every game, so by your second game you should have seen all of them. You will also have seen most of the Fate cards after the first two games. If replayability is defined as how long it takes for you to see all content, then this is a 4 - 5 play game. The true replayability is more than that, because difference in setup and the Fate cards drawn will create difference experiences and different stories.