King & Assassins Digital First Impressions

King & Assassins is a player vs player game, the townsfolk with hidden assassins vs the King with his guards.

Will the King make it to the castle or will the assassins get to him first?

One player controls a vile king and his knightly lackeys who try to force their way into the castle through a mob of wrathful citizens. The other player controls the mob itself and – more importantly – three assassins who hide among the crowd hoping to kill or stop the ruler long enough for the people to deal with him using their bare fists. The king has only so much time before he is overpowered by his own subjects but using guile and swords of his guards he may be able to eliminate the assassins and hopefully escape into the safety of his palace.

King & Assassins Gameplay

This is a playthrough of the tutorial and full game playing as both sides in the digital version of the game.

In short, one player controls the King walking through a Town trying to get into a castle at the other end while defending him with guards. The other player controls the townsfolk, some of which are hidden assassins trying to kill him.

Theme

A decent theme really. The story is that the King is ‘vile’ so it makes sense that everyone would want him dead. Even those that wouldn’t actually kill him themselves would mull around and distract the guards with their movement.

The reason you only have so much time to get to the castle is explained. The King is worried about getting ‘overwhelmed’ by the locals if he takes too long.

Components & Artwork

I like the look of the art on the board, showing the town. The original game came with standees that look OK and are perfectly fine for a game like this.

The deluxe edition comes with miniatures and all the different villager sculpts look really nice.

King & Assassins Summary

Positives

It’s a good tactical 2 player game and more importantly, it’s asynchronous. This gives it something different to put it above games like the GIPF series for 2 player games as far as I’m concerned.

The turn cards you draw each round are great. They show a differing number of action points for the King, the Guards and the Townsfolk each round. This means that while you can plan your future turns, you can never do it exactly.

On top of varying action points, you’re positioning to protect the King with guards while moving forward as much as you can each round. Meanwhile, the Townsfolk are trying to position themselves to pull the guards out of position.

Having the townsfolk more manoeuvrable while the Guards can shove and arrest people gives each player more to think about.

It’s a good digital game, presented really well.

Negatives

However, the digital game misses physical components. In a game like this, I’m missing out on reaching out and picking things up.

While I like that movement points are highlighted on the board, it was an effort to pull up the cheat sheet to show the action costs making it hard to plan turns.

Summary

I do enjoy actually playing the game but it’s not fun enough to play as a video game. It’s never going to be near the top of my list and I don’t sit at a PC to play a chess style game, unfortunately.

Also, the game looks too big for a ‘filler’ 2 player game and I don’t play 2 player board games anyway…

So as fun as it is, I’m not sure when I’d play it?

Jesta ThaRogue