Kingdomino Board Game First Impressions
“Players lose you games, not tactics. There’s so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes.”
~ Brian Clough
In Kingdomino, you are a Lord seeking new lands in which to expand your kingdom. You must explore all the lands, wheat fields, lakes, and mountains in order to spot the best plots. But be careful as some other Lords also covet these lands…
Very simple game. You’re drafting tiles to build your Kingdom to create large areas of connected terrain types to score points, most points win.
Each player has a tile with a little cardboard building on it.
Tiles are laid out in ascending numerical order in 2 rows. Each player has a pawn on top of them in one row and you take turns moving your pawn onto a tile on the other row, then collecting the tile you moved your pawn from. (if that makes sense :))
When placing a tile in your Kingdom it must either connect to your building tile or have one square against another square in your Kingdom of the same terrain. It also needs to stay in a 5×5 grid.
Once all the tiles are taken, a new row is created and players repeat this process, moving their pawns to the other row.
After enough rounds that everyone has a full Kingdom the game ends. You score 1 point per tile in each connected region of terrain times the number of crowns in that region.
Most points win
Kingdomino Positives
Very simple to play and understand.
The mechanism with rotating lines of tiles that you pick from is great. You take a tile now at the same time choose the tile you’ll take next. Also at the same time think about where that tile puts you in turn order for the next round.
Quite tactical, planning a turn ahead, trying to work out what you need. You can also look at the upcoming tiles and see what other players are likely to take. (if you want) You also have to make sure you don’t leave gaps in your Kingdom as I did.
Kingdomino Negatives
Maybe a bit TOO light… Maybe…
Summary
A very nice, fun little game.
Jesta ThaRogue
