test | winter kingdom

Written by Gudrun Havke at October 10, 2021.

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After nearly 10 years of successful Kingdom BUILDER, Queen Games introduces WINTER KINGDOM, an indie game based on a similar style, but with new exciting elements! Enter the familiar and new world of WINTER KINGDOM. Build your kingdom with more skill than anyone else and meet different victory conditions!

QUEEN GAMES has made WINTER KINGDOM available for us to review.
This does not affect our rating!

Winter Kingdom – Kingdoms building begins!

Two to four people in WINTER KINGDOM compete to build the most beautiful and powerful kingdoms in a new winter environment. They all got 32 houses, 4 fortresses, a registration mark in their color, 7 ability tokens as well as a mandatory job card and a tunnel card. The cards are laid out face up.

In addition, each person receives 5 randomly selected ability cards as hand cards. It can be purchased during the game and then enable additional upgrades. Depending on how many people are playing, there is still a coin or two as the initial capital.

All existing terrain boards are designed to form a hexagonal game board in the middle of the table. Stacks of terrain cards, winter kingdom cards, economy cards, and twist cards are laid out around them. The game instructions recommend playing the first game without the warp sheets. With proper playing experience, there is also no problem to play directly with all the available cards.

Victory conditions:

Before the game starts, three random cards from the Winter Kingdom deck are placed. It shows the conditions that have victory points at the end of the game. For example, there can be points for individual houses, for houses built horizontally in a row, for the construction of houses on the mountains, on the water or on the forest.

Economy Cards and Twisted Cards:

An economy card and a twist card are drawn and placed next to the game board. Economic cards refer to the income rule that applies to everyone during the game. If you build in a certain way, you will get additional coins, which can then be used to buy skill cards. Twisted cards change the basic rules of the game and thus make a difference to the game through additional limitations and possibilities.

Winter kingdoms were created.

The older person starts the game: he draws a terrain card and places three houses on the presented terrain (flower meadow, grassland, tundra, high swamp, snowy landscape, forest). If possible, the building should be adjacent. The mountainous areas, the tunnel, the villages and the castle do not form terrain and cannot be built on. Ice is a special area for which there are no maps, but can be built on using special functions. The tunnel card that is already placed at the beginning provides an initial possibility of moving: if a house is built in front of a tunnel entrance, then this house can be moved to another tunnel entrance on the playground.

Forts can be built like houses, but cannot be moved during the entire game. For this they are worth 2 victory points at the end of the game, and normal houses give only 1 victory point.

After a regular move, skill cards can be purchased with the available money and then laid bare. In the following turns, ability cards offer the possibility to place more than three standard houses on the game board or moving houses in order to better meet the winning conditions.

Then everyone proceeds clockwise in the same way: three buildings must be built at a time and the functions of the purchased ability cards can be used before or after this mandatory action.

All kingdoms are built in WINTER KINGDOM…

… when at least one person puts their last home on the game board. Then the round is played to the end so that everyone has the same number of moves.

The victory point path is now defined and victory points are recorded for all its participants.

1. Victory points are awarded according to the terms of winning the three Winter Kingdom cards shown
2. Each castle space on the game board awards three points to the person who built the most houses in the castle. Castles are considered two homes.

Whoever has the most points at the end wins the game.

game material

The game material is of high quality and very well colored. Game plans are printed on both sides, so they can be combined in many ways. The different cards are illustrated with understandable symbols. In our version, the four red castles were missing, but they were sent immediately after a brief request from the Queen Games. Very good service!

The game instructions consist of 16 pages and explain both the game material and the course very accurately and very well illustrated. The functions of ability cards, economy cards, and twist cards are explained individually so that their impact on the course of the game can be checked at any time. The game instructions are organized in such a way that the game can be started right away. Also regardless of whether KINGDOM BUILDER is already well known in the game group.