A Royal Will (board game preview)

0:00 this week's episode of brains on games is a preview of a party game with the science fiction theme welcome to brains on games i'm dr brian mcdonald in this episode we're going to preview a game that's probably available to order by the time you watch this video but it's a science fiction party game called a royal will this beautiful game was sent to me not too long ago by the folks at mega mint games and it's a game that you can play in only 15 minutes because most of the play is happening simultaneously it's a game for between two and six players that i think plays best at larger play counts and it's listed on the box as suitable for people age 14 and up but i think the younger kids could probably figure it out but it is a game for age 14 and above the idea of a royal will is that the royal family the galactic royal family has passed away and the players are trying to take advantage of the situation to grab as many coins from the inheritance as they can and it really is a race to be the first to get to 10 coins let's take a look at a royal will you've got these great big cards and each player is going to be dealt out two of these things and they've got some some fun artwork on here let's see hopefully you'll be able to see this on the camera you've got like different characters that you're

1:30 going to be playing with in this game and each player is only going to get two of these at the start of the turn you are going to first make sure that the assets are replenished meaning that if somebody in a previous turn has earned a couple of these coins then you replace those depending on the number of players that's going to determine how many starting coins are in the assets in the two-player game and we we usually play two-player games i will say this game plays better with larger numbers of people but in a two-player game you start with five coins and then each player is going to have two of these currents i've pulled out three here so you're starting with just a pair of cards and you're strategically deciding you've got two ways that you can use them and you're just deciding which one you're going to use in which way the two important pieces of information at the bottom besides the great artwork here at the top is this is the coin value that you hope to get from the assets and this is the action that you can take or ability that you're going to be able to use on your turn each player is going to start by placing one of their cards face down so if i played this face down this is the card that i'm using as the coin value so whatever ability they have doesn't matter when they're face down like this it's just the coin value so in this case i'm expecting or hoping that i'm going to be able to get three coins from the five that are here in the middle of the table the second card is the one that you're

3:01 going to use to to use its ability or its action and in this case the executor of the will gets to swap two of the coin cards so i can trade cards with the other player if i expect that there's going to be some advantage to doing that you can see well maybe you can see here i don't know if you can read it on my little camera but the heirs action makes him immune to those things so you couldn't steal the errors current using the swapping action of the executor the advisor has a pretty fun ability he gets to predict whether the will will be won or if it will go bust now what that means well first of all you get this little hex token here that says one on one side and bust on the other so you make your bet before everybody reveals their coin cards and the will is one if the total number of coins requested is equal to or less than the coins that are here in the middle of the table and it goes bust if the players request too many coins so if i had played this as my coin i'm asking for four that means the other player can only ask for one or else the thing is going to go bust if it goes bust then the player who asked for the most money the greediest player so if i had played this is my coin card and the will went bust i'd have to put two coins into the assets in the middle of the table and now it's suddenly building up and that is really it you're just playing you're strategically deciding which

4:31 are you which card of your two is going to be placed face down and which is going to be placed face up and and it continues until one player has 10 coins and it doesn't take long to get to that point because because they're uh you know you've got five here in the middle you might be asking you might be winning four in a single turn so the game can end in about 15 minutes you've got these little tokens i pulled one out you've got these little tokens if you want to play best three of five or best two of three or what have you these tokens can keep track of how many games each player has won and that can allow the game to go a little bit longer but we're talking about a game that has fun art and interesting little combinations but it's simple however even though we had a lot of fun playing this game especially at larger player counts this is a super sneaky math game you don't really think about the fact that you're doing these calculations but you are thinking about probability what current do i think this person is going to have face down how many coins is that person going to ask for can i afford to give up two coins am i far enough ahead to allow that to happen and and be the greedy one so you're thinking about probability and you're doing those adding and subtracting to figure out okay well there's only if i if i ask for three coins from the assets then there's only going to be two left what are the odds that the other player is going to ask for two or less maybe i don't want to be the greedy one and i'll play my other card instead plus you've got a number of different abilities that give you lots of little combinations that you can try and we

6:03 just had a lot of fun it was a lot of laughs playing this game it's simple but there is a lot of math involved it's math that you don't think about like like i said that's why i think it's kind of a sneaky math game and that is a royal will in a nutshell it's a super sneaky math game that plays very quickly even with a large number of players thanks so much to the folks over at mega mint games for sending this game along it should be available to order in retail by the time you watch this video and if you have comments about this game or questions you can leave them below this video or you can email me at bryant at brainsongames.ca brainzonegames.c is the website that's where future episodes will go and the previous ones are up there already brains on games is the twitter handle and the facebook page and the instagram feed so we're all over the place and if you enjoyed this video and you want to be notified of future ones you can head on over to youtube and click that subscribe button thanks for joining me and hopefully i'll see you next time you