The Rose King Review

The Rose King. More than just a token laying game, The Rose King is as integral a part of British society as Lancashire Hot Pot or Yorkshire Puddings. What many people might not know, those from South of the North-South divide or (heaven help us) overseas is the long enduring importance of the War of the Roses. Inadvertently offer a Yorkshireman a red rose, or waft a white rose beneath the nose of a Lancastrian, and you’ll certainly be slapped about the cheek with a cardboard box and challenged to an immediate game of The Rose King, no finer a way to restore lost honour having ever been invented.

Many an ignorant flower trader has found themselves swiftly surrounded by a mob of baying Yorkshiremen, shouting in their near unintelligible dialect, and sat down at a miraculously appearing tabletop across from the injured party. A pile of double sided chits (corners chipped from long use), a deck of well shuffled cards and a board featuring nought but a grid a squares, between them. If this sounds terrifying to you, it should! But fear not, you need only read on to discover the inner workings of this game and why you should take home a fresh copy for yourself…

In The Rose King you are looking to spread your rose-scented influence across Northern England by plying the board with your tokens like so many Oreos. What do you mean you haven’t used Oreos to gain influence with someone? Don’t lie. We’ve all been there. By building large connected regions of your colour, you’ll score ever more points at the end of the game. Indeed, the total number of tokens in a block (diagonals don’t count, as exemplified by the smartly squared off flat caps so beloved of the region in which the game is set) will be squared to determine your points, inevitably testing your arithmetic skills to the limit come game end (though fortunately there is reference table in the rulebook). Thus, denying your opponent a single token on a large region can be immensely important, while cutting a region in two can be a devastating blow…

To get your roses out on the map, you’ll be playing one of the 5 power cards from the face up display in front of you. Each of these indicates a direction, with its glowy sword, and a number of spaces in the crown, and this tells you where the wooden crown token moves to on the board. When it arrives, the crown marker poops out a fresh rose token in your colour, as royalty is wont to do when it visits a new place, and the power card is discarded, limiting your options on future turns.

Instead of moving, you can take a fresh power card from the draw deck, and inevitably you’ll need to do this but when is an important decision. The more cards you have, the more flexibility, but by taking cards you are gifting your opponent the opportunity for moving twice, or more, in a row. It all comes down to what options your opponent has left, options you can see arrayed out on their side of the board. It is a rare turn indeed that you are not staring at what the other player can do – this game has you playing out both sides at every point. Indeed, for little more than an abstract game, you can really feel like a King staring at a map of his territory, seeing where your enemy’s influence is growing and trying to curtail it.

Better yet, force your enemy into a corner from which they cannot escape! You are unable to move to a space that is already taken, and if unable to make a move, even with 5 cards, they are forced to do nothing while you ride about the countryside throwing roses to the townsfolk with enthusiastic abandon, the impact surely not lost because of the cackling laughter you emit as you do so.

But, aha! You each have some aces up your fur-lined sleeves in the form of hero cards. These allow you to move the crown to a space already taken by your opponent and swap the colour of the rose in that region, like letting lose a gardener from Alice in Wonderland. These hero cards are supremely powerful if played well, able to decapitate a large region if only connected by a single piece, or creating a link between two of your own regions for even bigger points than on those glowy swords. You want to hold on to them for the right time, but if forced into a corner, you may have to spend them because there is nothing else you can do! This is immensely painful to experience! Your opportunities wasted to early! A hero card! A hero card! My Kingdom for a hero card!

The Rose King is very interesting game but every rose has its thorns. Being able to see every card your opponent has is a recipe for analysis paralysis as you consider every possible option (just don’t, for your own sakes). There is a definite luck to the draw that keeps the game more tactical than strategic but can leave you feeling at its mercy when things don’t go your way. Worse, from the perspective of the losing player, you can be pigeon-holed into doing specific actions by virtue of the cards you have and the actions of your opponent. Seeing them build up a winning region while having few choices over your actions feels demoralising – not fun! Of course, this is representative of good play by your opponent but it’s going to feel frustrating if it comes down to the way your cards come out. The short play time (<30 mins) at least ensures any luck can always be mitigated by another game…

2-player games, like the meeting of men from Yorkshire and Lancashire, are often confrontational and The Rose King is no exception. A game of timing and making life as difficult for your opponent as possible. It is an elegant system, which will inevitably feel somewhat abstract, but from a gameplay perspective it feels none the weaker for it. If you are sensitive to luck of the draw elements then maybe steer clear, but if you are looking for a clever 2-player game with more tension than Todmorden during rose growing season, then you should absolutely check out The Rose King. Especially if you’re ‘eadin teur t’ north any time soon.

 

Rating: Rosy

 

p.s. Don’t worry. Northern England is perfectly safe for flower salesmen, really.