Thoughts on… Kingdom Builder
“A horse (paddock)! A horse (paddock)! My Kingdom for a horse (paddock)!”
Richard III, on realising he was one river away from scoring some big points.
Welcome to the unspoilt lands of… ah, Kingdom Builder… across which 2-4 great powers will spread their influence in the pursuit of…erm, Victory Points? No, wait! Gold! That’s what’s it called! Yes, and… oh screw it, there’s no theme here. But at the end of the day, theme exists primarily to aid immersion, and you will have no problem being immersed within the utterly compelling puzzle that is Kingdom Builder.
Presented before you is a patchwork land, a vast grid of hexes broken into regions of different terrain types. Yes, you’ll have barren deserts trapped between dense woodland and flowing rivers, with a lush field of flowers to the south, but what everything is doesn’t really matter. Each turn you’ll place three of your little wooden houses down on the map until someone runs out. There are just two rules that drive this game: 1) you must always build adjacent to previously built houses if possible (people like to be near each other!) and 2) you must build on a randomly determined terrain type each turn (people don’t give a damn about each other!). I did say there was no theme right?
This system of construction, while perhaps not advisable if you’re planning on building your own civilisation, nevertheless leads to some very interesting effects. Importantly, once you can’t build next to something you’ve already built, because of the terrain card you’ve drawn, you are free to build on any other matching bit of terrain on the map! Setting these turns up is hugely important, and players will be doing anything they can to fill up the regions they have built on, or carefully avoiding touching neighbouring terrain where possible.
But how does a player even know how to begin? Particularly when faced with their first placement of the game? Well, dotted across the map are cities, and special locations from which you can gather special abilities if you visit them. While the former will give you victory points at the end of the game, a player’s opening move should always be to pick up a special ability. These powerful tiles enable you to do something extra every turn, often placing extra houses, sometimes even letting you open up new fronts of expansion that wouldn’t have been available to you. Their rules do require careful reading though, as there are often exceptions and considerations that need to be taken into account when using them that are not clear from the symbolic instructions provided. The abilities are so important that it is recommended to grab one at almost every opportunity!
Once you’ve grabbed your first power (and to be honest, sometimes before then) you’ll need to be following the guidance of the 3 victory cards that describe the conditions for collecting victory points this game. Perhaps you’ll be tasked by the merchants with connecting the cities and special ability locations, the fishermen want you to build next to rivers, while the knights want you to create a defensive line across the map. I mentioned that the cities will award points, and this is true every game too, so every game is a new challenge of balancing 4 different scoring opportunities. While you can score big from a single card, the diminishing returns from investing in a single strategy tend to reward a balanced approach.
Every combination offers a new experience, often throwing together fascinating challenges or opportunities that are impossible to refuse. A game I played recently featured firstly the farmers (always a challenging card) that reward you points for the smallest number of your wooden houses from each of the 4 board sections. It encourages you to try and get the same number of settlements in each board section, but just getting into every section can be hugely difficult! This came together with the Lords who reward a big score to whoever has the most settlements in each (and any) of the 4 board sections. Not wanting to sacrifice a chance at either of these cards meant the scoring of each section came down to the wire!
Shear variety is one of Kingdom Builder’s biggest selling points. As discussed, the 3 victory point cards by themselves would offer a hugely variable game. But the board itself also changes! Made up of 4 separate sections, there are 8 possible sections in the box, and even how they connect together, the order you place them down, will change the game as the positions of impassable rivers and mountains change. Each of the board sections has a unique special ability too, so each game will only feature 4 of the 8 abilities. How these contribute to the different victory conditions will mix up the game every time. All powers are good, but some are undoubtedly more useful than others under given circumstances.
If there is one possible issue with this game, it is how punishing it can be to poor opening turns. Putting yourself next to too many terrain types, or inside of a large expanse of a particular terrain type, can easily leave you stuck and unable to expand as you would want. This means new players can feel at the mercy of the terrain deck, but persevere and you’ll learn to mitigate the luck and to put yourself into positions where bad terrain cards just don’t happen anymore. This is a game you can get good at, which is a tremendous selling point!
Interestingly, this “issue”, as far as it is an issue, is worse with two players than with higher player counts. While more players makes competition over certain spaces much higher, that tightness also means that, by rubbing shoulders with your opponents, you can intentionally restrict the places you can place adjacently thereby freeing yourself to place in other places on the map. Even though passive aggressive blocking can be a big part of the game, the presence of your competitors on the map need not be to your disadvantage.
Kingdom Builder is a great game, with huge replay ability. The fundamentals of Kingdom Builder are simple; it is an easy game to teach, though be careful to explain the limitations of the different abilities. Yet despite this simplicity, the game offers tremendous tactical challenges. Deciding where to push more for one strategy over another, while dealing with the flips of the terrain cards and the decisions of your opponents, drives this game to spectacular heights. Theme – pah! Who needs it?
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