The King is Dead (2nd Edition) by Peer Sylvester
The King is Dead is one of the most elegant games I’ve ever played – not in its looks (although it’s respectable on that front too) but in the gameplay design. It is an exquisitely crafted game where every mechanism interlocks so tightly that each action you make has rippling ramifications throughout the rest of the game… even when you choose to do nothing! And to add a little spice to the mix, the implications of these choices are not fully clear until the very end. Did that one cube you move win you the game? Or hand victory to your opponent? You’ll probably only find out when it’s too late to do anything!
The King is Dead is an area-control game. Three factions – The English, Scots and Welsh – are battling for power in medieval Britain. However, you as the player do not play as any of these three factions. Instead, you are a king-maker trying to influence the balance of power so that your chosen faction takes over the country. Or, if it turns out your choice is not doing so well, you could shift allegiance and start gaining influence with the faction that is!
Each turn, you play a card that determines how many of the faction’s cubes you get to move and to where. Once you’ve done that, you remove a cube from the board and add it to you court where it becomes the ‘influence’ that determines which faction you’re aligned with.
In other words, if you want the Welsh (Reds) to win, you should add Welsh cubes to the map and remove any of the others into your court… but the more non-Welsh cubes you remove, the more influence you then have with the non-Welsh factions so you need to take more Welsh cubes off the board so that your influence with Wales is stronger… but by removing Welsh cubes from the board, you’re weakening Wale’s position! It’s a nightmare!
And that in a nutshell is The King is Dead – a constant push and pull between trying to cement your influence on and off the board at the same time.
There are a few more nuances to the game, such as the fact each player has the same set of cards (in the standard game mode) so you need to remember what abilities your opponent has left to play. Also, because you only have 8 turns, 8 cards, 8 regions to fight over and 8 new influence cubes, the game-space is so confined that if reinforces the importance of each decision.
I don’t really have any issues with The King is Dead. The one weakness – which is purely personal – is that the theme doesn’t quite come alive for me. I don’t really feel like a king-maker and the game never really feels as epic as the wars that inspired it. However, if you see it as the intricate puzzle it is, as opposed to a narrative game, it is very fulfilling. A simple set of rules on top of complex decision-making – delicious!
Words by Marcos
BGG link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/319966/king-dead-second-edition
