Barbarian Kingdoms Review: King Me

0:15 Hey everybody, I'm Tom Vassel and today we're taking a look at a game called Barbarian Kingdoms, [clears throat] which is a game in which you are in the fifth century and you're controlling a historic kingdom that's in Europe and fighting against the other kingdoms. Now, this sounds like, well, let's be frank, a lot of other games, everything from Risk Europe, which I know takes place in 18th cent or the 19th century, 18th century, and there's a lot of games that take place fighting in Europe. This one's a little bit different because this fights on a very like a more streamlined scale. Let me show you. When playing the game, you'll pick which factions. They give you some configurations like it says if you're playing a four 2v2 game or four every man for himself. These are the different factions that they recommend. Although you can pick any one you want. When you have a faction, you're going to have three different starting territories. Uh some territories will be covered up based on uh if that player might not be in the game. But let's pretend here I'm playing in the very center. I'm going to put my leader in one faction, my king.

1:21 Here I got Clovis as my king and one of my places starts with a one coin, a two coin and a three coin. I own those three territories. Now there are two ways to win the game. One is to eliminate two opposing kings. If you do that, you win. Or if you control seven territories, each player has a board that tells you your special ability and then your king's special ability. And you also have the new territory markers, which will have a cost to put out. And you also have your warriors which will have a cost to put out. This tells you the five different actions you can take in your turn. On your turn, you take one action. Action one is maneuver. All your units can move to a spot you already control. You have a special movement called castling where you can switch your king and another unit, but there can only be one unit per spot. If you are in a port, you can move out to the ocean. And in this game, the ocean is one giant space. Even though there are dotted lines that connect two spots, that doesn't split the ocean. So once you're in the ocean, you can go to another port. Now, you can only move into territories you already control. If you want to move into someone else's territory, whether it's uncontested or somebody else's, you move in there.

2:33 Other players can challenge you. If someone else has units next to that territory, they can also move in, in which case a battle will occur. Otherwise, you move in and you will take off the amount of money that Oh, a three coin. That's nice. that now goes to my treasury. I've plundered it. On a future turn, I can claim that territory by spending money to put one of my control tokens in it. I already showed you how much those control tokens cost. And when you pay that amount, so this would cost one. You put the amount in the territory that that cost. And in the future, if I want to put military units is another thing I do. I can recruit. I pay the amount of money that shows underneath the trooper to recruit. But that amount of money also will go into that territory, making that territory tempting for other people to take over.

3:20 So whether you're claiming an area or recruiting when you claim an area, people can also you have to give people a chance to respond if they want to move troops in and fight you or not. So battles, when there's a battle, you're just going to compare the power between everyone involved in the battle. So if this king was fighting my troop here, he invaded, there would be a battle. It shows you right here in the battle, your control token is worth two points, kings are worth six, and regular troops are worth three. But each person also can spend money. Each sh can spend money to add to their power. The losers are immediately defeated. They go back to their board where they can be recruited again except for your king. You won't get your king back. And in fact, if you defeat two kings, that's one of the ways to win the game. So other than special abilities, that's pretty much how the game plays. You keep going till someone has accomplished their victory condition.

4:21 Barbarian Kingdoms is almost chesslike in how it plays. There is very little luck in the game. In fact, there's I mean I guess the luck would be when you capture a territory, you plunder it and you get one to three coins. Other than that though, there's this back and forth because nobody wants any other kingdom to fall. If I see that you have five territories, I might be like, "Two more territories and they win the game. So, I'm going to take one from you." But I have to be cautious because when your king is in a battle and your king's pretty powerful. Your king's in a battle, there's always a chance that you will lose it. And if you lose it to somebody, that person could win the game by conquering two kings. The game will eventually come to a halt. There's just some unique rules to this. The fact that the ocean is a single space and any port can jump to the ocean and that ocean can jump to a port. The fact that someone might get off in their own corner and do stuff and you're like, we need to stop them. The special abilities, but I like that when you buy units, you have to put their money on the board, which means other people can go do it, or you can take it yourself. There's another action I didn't mention in the overview, which is tax, where you can take money off the board based on a number of territories you control. But there's this constant taking money off and putting money out.

5:30 And the game will eek towards someone winning at some point. It's not a particularly long game. The boxer says 15 minutes per player. And that's correct. It's also a game that could really end at any time. So people have to be constantly worried. You as a third player, for example, if two players have each killed a king and they're now fighting each other with their kings, one of them is going to win. So you don't want that to happen. So everyone is there's this constant balance. Now what are the downsides? The downsides are the combat is pretty deterministic except with coins. So having a bunch of coins so you can win a combat is a big deal because you're you give those coins to your opponent. So you could crush them but now they're rich to fight back. But in a final battle it doesn't matter.

6:16 And so the game is going to be too slight for some people. There's not the raw of combat. But it's also there. There's the very clever move. There's a setup. There's definitely a lot of discussion at the table. And I think because of that, the game here is two to six players. And I think more players in this one is a better thing because there's more give and take. And turns aren't particularly long. You're taking pretty quick turns. You're going to do one thing, one thing, one thing, and go around the board. But I also think it's not for everyone because this game is unique and different. It's not going to appeal to everybody who kind of is more used to maybe a more traditional war game. I like it. I think it's interesting. It keeps me from wanting to do it all the time. I'm giving this a seven out of 10. I think it's a a fun style game, but I would pref you know, sometimes I just want to roll dice.

7:06 Sometimes I want the game to feel a little bit more meteor, but I also am impressed with here you slide in and do different actions. And so, and I have to applaud the fact that it tried to do something I've seen in a lot before, this combat in Europe done in a different way with a historical flavor to it, special abilities. So, definitely one worth checking out and one that feels different than most games out there. So, that's Barbarian Kingdoms from Jester. I'm Tom Vassel and you've been watching the Dice Tower. Before we go, I want to say thanks to some of our game found backers. Thank you to the Tez family, Jesse, Destiny, and Everly. to Bruce Schwaring, to all the great Jake playing games in Oklahoma, and to Breff Bulch and all the folks at Bulchcon. Thank you all for supporting the show, and thank you all for watching.

8:02 Hey everybody, thanks for watching this video. If you like this review or whatever you just watched, wasn't it amazing? Uh, check out our channel, Dice Tower. We have all kinds of things. We review games. We do top 10s. We play games live. It's all about board games, but especially the people who play them. Check out Dice Hour YouTube channel.