review

Knights of the table squares

Queendomino

Remain a royal single or marry for a royal couple?

Game of the Year 2017 in Germany has been, as we know, Kingdomino; Dominoes not in black & white, but featuring several colorful landscape tiles which need to be puzzled together forming areas for the optimum yield of victory points. Quickly understood, quickly played and yet - or even because of that - a long-lasting and entertaining pleasure for all; and in a game of two even featuring enhanced tactical depth based on the same simple rules concept. To avoid having the King becoming a sad and lonely one, all on his own, there now is also Queendomino: for use as a stand-alone game with more variety or for combination of both games to a royal couple, even playable for up to eight princes and princesses! This (first) sequel includes - besides the Queen, a Dragon, 32 building tiles, 15 towers and lots of coins - also 22 small Knight figurines, with which you can train your motor skills, by the way.

The purpose of those knights is primarily the collecting of taxes in your own kingdom, that is, the acquisition of coins. After you have placed a new „Domino“ tile, you may place one or even two of your knights on it. This placement yields a number of coins equal to the size of this or those two current landscape areas. Coins in turn yield additional points at the end of the game, and during the game you need them to acquire/buy buildings. As a basis for the use of such building tiles, a new, seventh color is introduced to the game, red. Buildings come in 18 versions and in this way enhance the tactical options in manifold ways; for instance, you are rewarded with the presence of the Queen if you construct sturdy, vertical towers, but only for viewing purposes, especially as the domino tiles again come with many lovingly-cutely designed graphic details that wait to be discovered.
The Queen, on the one hand, officiates as a “Shopping Queen”, offering a reduction of one coin for each future building acquisition and, on the other hand, serves as an additional crown in your own biggest landscape area.

Other buildings give you additional knights, or a potential for higher income or victory points for this and/or that. A disadvantage of some of the building effects, however, is that they might be thought to be not attr4active enough and thus become shelf warmers, clogging up the offering. This is caused by the fact that, contrary to what is usual in other games, the “cheapest” building does not go back into stock from the display at the end of the round but remains in place. Especially the 14 landscape type buildings are not favorites for taking, at least in the first half of the game, as they score “only” two points for your own, unconnected areas of a certain landscape type - as a possible counter agent for a clogged-up building offer I recommend to provide those 14 landscape type buildings with two additional permanent points on the one hand and, on the other hand, to shuffle half of them into the bottom of the draw pile.

However, it is not mandatory or compelling to equip your own kingdom with buildings, it is still possible to win in the “classic, standard” way, Especially in case when the other players compete intensively for various buildings it can be more rewarding to restrict yourself to the “banal” acquisition of crowns, inasmuch as “domino” tiles with red building squares come with higher numbers on the back, so that you are or remain in a better position for turn order without buildings. However, nobody is spared the “scoring tangle” in the final scoring - there are double the amount of lines to fill in on the scoring block then there are in Kingdomino.

Furthermore, the Dragon can be hired once per round, to remove a building tile from the display - burning down the house! This destruction however comes with a price, one coin or 1/3 of a victory point in the end, so that, at least in a multiplayer game, there is a bit of hesitation over this investment option, especially as one can hope that someone else will feed the dragon. In a game for two players, which - due to the bigger kingdoms and the extended tactical options - take a good hour to play, the Dragon option works very well. The only player who cannot bribe the Dragon is the current host of the Queen, maybe because she is afraid of the Dragon; the game mechanics, however, give the reason for this as providing other players with a chance to construct towers in order to motivate the Queen to a change of location.

In case of five or more players, you simply use the „domino“ tiles from both Kingdomino and Queendomino. With this combination, even games with seven or eight players seem possible; however, there seems to be such a big downtime that the rules recommend a team version for such a number of players. But you can also use all tiles in a game with three and four players; in this case, your kingdom can have a maximum size of seven x seven cases, the same size as in a game for two players. And, again as in a game for two, bigger kingdoms can lead to more intensive efforts in counting and calculating: How much can I score with this “domino” tile, how much with that one? How many crowns might appear in this color/landscape till the end of the game? Can I keep my Knights in reserve or should I use them instantly? Do I now buy a building expensively or will I maybe get it cheaper at the end of the round? And so on and so on .... the playful lightness of the game is somewhat diminished in favor of pondering orgies.

And already, this year, the (big) Jack is ready to follow King and Queen - the Giants from the most current expansion promise even more interaction due to the option to destroy crowns in landscape areas of other players as well as new challenges due to the option to score bonus points from constructing landscape according to task cards. Maybe all three together will, as the „Ace“, trump the world of tile placement games.

Harald Schatzl

Images (c) Henk Rolleman

Players: 2-4/8

Age: 8+

Time: 30+

Designer: Bruno Cathala

Artist: Cyril Bouquet, Jens Wiese

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Pegasus Spiele 2017

Web: www.pegasus.de

Genre: Tile placement

Users: For families

Special: 2 players

Version: de

Rules: de en es fr it jp kr nl pt ru

In-game text: no

Comments:

Again many cute graphic details

Stand-alone game or for combination with Kingdomino

The combination is a time-intensive puzzle for three and four

Extra star for the two-player game

Compares to:

Kingdomino

Other editions:

Blue Orange (de en es fr it pt ru), Ten Days Games (jp), Blackrock Games (fr), Happy Baobab (kr), White Goblin Games (nl)

My rating: 5

Harald Schatzl:

Queendomino is expansion as well as a stand-alone variant for the Spiel of (Last) Year 2017, the slightly tactical tile placement and puzzle game Kingdomino - and confirms a bit the cliché that women are more complicated than men. As a stand-alone, it has a few more rules and remains a game suitable for nearly all players; in a game for two or in combination with Kingdomino, brooders and ponderers are catered for, too, albeit at the price of losing the playful lightness.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0