Kingdomino has rightfully earned its place among the year’s best games.
Kingdomino doesn’t make a striking first impression. It comes off as nothing more than a run-of-the-mill tile-laying game with an unassuming art style and simple mechanics. But you don’t take home the Spiel des Jahres, Germany’s coveted board game of the year award, by being run-of-the-mill. We named it one of the Best Board Games of 2017, too. After spending more time with it, playing several times at all player counts, I can say with confidence that Kingdomino has rightfully earned its place among the year’s best games.
The premise is simple: two to four players take turns choosing tiles (the game calls them dominoes) and adding them to your kingdom. Each domino has one or two different landscapes that, when placed next to other tiles of the same landscape, form a property. At the end of the game, each property is scored based on how big it is, multiplied by the number of crowns in it. For example, a forest property with six squares and two crowns is worth 12 points.
If it sounds simple, that’s because it is. The rulebook is three pages long, and it took me roughly five minutes to understand the game. Teaching the game was a breeze, even when I played with people who don’t play a lot of board games, and the short 15 to 20 minute playtime ensured that nobody ever got bored. The basic tile-laying mechanics are elementary and actually pretty unremarkable; they’re not something that hasn’t been done in other games. What makes Kingdomino stand apart--and a Spiel des Jahres winner--is how it handles turn order. Like all great board games, “simple” rules and gameplay systems like this hide lots of complex, satisfying decision-making and gamesmanship.
Each of the dominoes in the game are numbered one to 48, with tiles increasing in value. Before the start of the game, a number of tiles are removed randomly from the game depending on how many players there are - a standard board game tactic to ensure no one with a great memory can ever know exactly what tiles are left. The remaining dominoes are then shuffled and blindly drawn so that there are the same number of tiles available as there are players, and placed in a column in ascending order. The start player then claims one of the tiles, with the other players following. Once all the tiles are claimed, the next round’s set of tiles is revealed, and the player who claimed the top-most tile last round gets to choose first the next round.
This turns every single fast-playing round into a mindgame of maximizing the points you can earn right now, while still setting yourself up for future success. It’s tempting to grab the most valuable tile available in the round, but doing so may mean you go last next turn and force you to watch all the best tiles get snatched up before you can take an action. The result of this turn order mechanic is a careful balancing act, and why Kingdomino is such a great game.
Choosing your tile inevitably turns into a sort of mini-puzzle in your head and opens up surprisingly deep opportunities for subtly blocking your fellow players. Planning your next round while your previously-chosen tile is still on the table means that the other players can intuit what you’re planning to do and which tile you’re planning to grab - and it also means they can swipe that two-crown prairie from under you as you look on helplessly. There were several arguments around our table as one player begged another to not take a tile that would double the value of a property or force them to go last in the next round.
It’s a brilliant design that allows Kingdomino to grow in complexity as its players grow more experienced. In the beginning, it’s a fun and fast-paced kingdom building game where you strive to build your own personal high-scoring kingdom. But once players learn that the optimal path may be to block their opponent, Kingdomino’s strategic options blossom.
Another puzzle element to Kingdomino is actually placing the tiles into your kingdom. Again, the rules are simple, but limiting: you must match at least one landscape square on your tile to an existing tile, and you must never exceed a five-by-five grid. Combined, these two rules make building your kingdom an exercise in long-term planning, as you must be careful to always have an available move or you’re forced discard your tile--and potential points. The end result is usually a little mini-kingdom that’s both mathematically and aesthetically pleasing.
As rewarding as a well-planned kingdom can be, it can be a bit overwhelming trying to balance turn order with the layout of your tableau. Vying with other players in addition to the limited space for your tiles forces you to split your attention in a way that can be jarring after focusing too much on one element. This is tricky even in two player games because, at that count, players get two turns per round, meaning you must manage twice the number actions. It almost feels like segmenting your brain into fourths, which can lead to strong bouts of “analysis-paralysis”, the dreaded condition that afflicts those of us who are a bit on the slower side when it comes to decision making. Of course, this is nothing that a friendly or not-so-friendly time limit on turns can’t fix.
The rulebook includes a variant for two players called the Mighty Duel. In this mode, two players use all the dominoes rather than removing any, and their kingdoms are expanded to a seven-by-seven grid rather than the standard five-by-five. Despite being a variant, this is my favorite way to experience Kingdomino, mostly because the added space allows for more freedom in how you build your kingdom.
Kingdomino has much more meat on its bones than the small box size might suggest. I ended each game feeling like I had won or lost based on my decisions, despite the luck of the draw determining what tiles were available on any given turn. At the end of a game, it’s a lot of fun to look at everyone’s different kingdoms and reflect on notable plays. In one session, we spent most of the game stealing good tiles from each other, even to the detriment of our own kingdoms. We had a good laugh about it afterwards, and talked about what we would do differently the next game. It was the kind of satisfying feeling that made me understand why I got into board games in the first place.
The Verdict
Kingdomino could have been nothing more than a simple tile-laying game that does little to differentiate itself from the myriad other titles in the genre, but the brilliant turn order mechanics and puzzle-like kingdom building make it unique. It is highly recommend it to anyone after a surprisingly tense but easy-to-learn experience, despite the potential for analysis-paralysis.
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