The Old King's Crown

Backed this on the strength of the art alone, which I’ll admit isn’t usually how I decide what to fund, but the art is what grabbed my attention in the first place, it’s amazing, and it’s even better in person than any preview image suggested. Easily one of the best-looking games on my shelf.

Something of a contradiction, really: a lane battler with an unusual amount of stuff going on that nevertheless decides its battles in an extremely simple way, each side playing one card blindly to a region and hoping they’ve chosen correctly. It’s a game of intuition more than deduction, and I’m willing to explore it further, though I wish it gave me more room to react rather than just anticipate. Closer to a bluffing game wearing a battler’s clothes, more about reading your opponent’s tendencies over several rounds than reacting to visible information.

First play felt a bit laborious. There are a lot of phases and it’s not a great rulebook, we managed but it didn’t flow too well, and questing, one of the core actions, ended up not really feeling like questing at all. It took us a full session before things started clicking and the blind-reveal mechanic stopped feeling arbitrary and started feeling like actual mind games.

That’s my real hesitation with it. Beautiful game, but early plays feel almost arbitrary, you’re putting out cards more or less randomly until you’ve built up a read on how your specific opponent thinks, and I’m not sure everyone’s going to stick around long enough to get there. My more patient regular is completely sold on it. My more impatient one still isn’t sure there’s a game under the artwork.

Three stars for now, mostly because I think it needs more plays than most games to prove itself, and I haven’t logged enough yet to say for certain it’s there.