Kingmaker II comes to Shedquarters

[In the interests of full disclosure I know the person who reworked this edition and I wrote the historical notes for it. I did not pay for my copy]

For people of a certain age - mostly blokes between the ages of 55 and 70 now, I'd guess - the original "Kingmaker" is an iconic game. My brother bought a copy of the Philmar printing soon after it was released in 1974 following a trip to Minifigs in Southampton. I'd have been  about 14 at the time. My, we played that game to death, and I was still playing it at University. Mind you, the  university club copy was the Avalon Hill version with the revised combat system and so on. I never liked that version that much. After I got married I played it a few more times with pre-university friends, but in the end people move on, as does life, and I sort of stopped playing that type of game. I have a (badly printed) copy of the last Gibson games version. Don't know that I've ever played it more than once, if that.

Anyway, recently Gibsons decided to revise and reprint the game, and asked Alan Paull of Surprised Stare games to do the work. I know Alan through Wargames Developments, and he asked me to re-write the original historical notes for the Kickstarter page, and ultimately the back page of the main rule book.

What that afternoon's work got me was a free copy of the game, which Alan delivered to me at COW, when I remarked that I hadn't seen mine yet, and everyone was talking about it.

 

The box comes with three sets of rules, "Original", "Extended Original" and "Kingmaker II". You also get a "Solo challenge", a "Guide to Kingmaking" and player aids, so a fair amount of literature in the box. The three sets of rules also mean you get all sorts of extra cards and pieces too.

If you are wondering where the extended rules are, the "Classic" rule book is reversible. 

I haven't played the Classic version of this reprint yet. The board is double sided as they've made changes for Kingmaker II. For the Classic board there's some tidying up, de Vere has been added, and they have clearly marked the regions where you get extra troops, so it is obvious what spaces are within two of London, for example.

We played Kingmaker II last night. This is where the most work has gone in to fix perceived issues with the game (which, it should be noted, took some stick when it originally came out). The main "fixes" are:

1. Movement 
   Spaces are much bigger and there are fewer of them. They are divided into Regions, and you move from region to neighbouring region, or from area to area within a region. The forests are gone. It played okay in our game, but gave some surprises for players of the old game, as you can move quite large distances in some parts of the country without using the roads.
   
   
2. Set up
   The initial deal could always give someone a really strong hand or a really weak position. Like having only Stanley as a noble and no ships to get him out of Douglas. You can still deal cards out at random, but the game gives you pre-determined factions, so everyone is in with a chance.
   
   
   
   
   This is one of the factions for the five player game, the most you can have in Kingmaker II. Everyone gets c200 troops, plus some offices and a town, ship or bishop. Also, to keep factions in balance you now draw two crown cards, then discard one from your hand. This cycles the deck more quickly and gives out a lot more information of what is and isn't available. There are also cards in Chancery at the start of the game.
   
   
3. Stanley
   Referring to the problem above, Stanley now comes with a ship.
   
   
4. Who owns what counter and where are you?
   Everyone gets a full set of noble markers with their background colour
   
   
   
   
   Here are some from the grey set, which I used last night. They show if you are in a castle/town or outside. I'm not sure I ever thought this was a problem that needed fixing, but it didn't really do any harm, except players with slightly less dexterity found it awkward flipping stacks over. 
   
   There's still only one set of ship counters.
   
   
   
   
   
   These now show if you are in port or not. Again, not a problem I ever remember having.
   
   You get little waxed envelopes with a sticker to seal them to keep your counters in. Very kind to the environment, but frankly, useless. I stuck the sticker on a bit of card, and used ziplocks from my stash:
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Being wiped out
   The original game gave you several opportunities to be completely wiped out, forcing you to rebuild from scratch, effectively kicking you out of the game. This has been mitigated a bit. Plague now only kills your most powerful noble (so when you check out the game report below, you'll see I could have sat in York and taken the risk). Also, if you are defeated in a battle or siege, there's a "Rally to the Cause" rule that gives you Crown cards on a 1 for 2 basis against the number you lost.
   
   
6. Will it never end?
   Another complaint was that the original game could end in a stalemate. For hours. One of our group played in as club where if it wasn't finished by 6am, everyone went to St Albans and slugged it out. The game now has a way to win with more than one king left in the game. 
   
   

   

   
   Now there's a tile half way down the event deck that triggers a "Prestige Victory". You get "PPs" for holding certain crown cards, king pieces and winning "major" battles and sieges.
   
   
7. Parliament
   The mechanism for calling Parliament is slightly different. It can only happen 4 times in a game, when a "Clamour for Parliament" Event Card is revealed. It is also easier for the Chancellor to call Parliament, as when a "Chancellor may call Parliament" Event Card is turned up it has to be given to the Chancellor. Also, Writ cards are a thing of the past. You just summon someone to come.
   
   
8. Holding King Pieces from two houses
   Just kidding. You still can't do this. This is one of the biggest fudges in the game, which supposedly starts in 1453. In 1455 the Warwick/York faction controlled both York (!) and Henry VI, and do so for a year at least. This happens again in 1460, with Henry VI and York then March until 2nd St Albans in 1461, and also in 1465 when Henry VI is captured until 1470 and the Readeption. And then briefly in 1471. I don't know how it would work, but it should be possible.

So how did the game go? We played the five player version. All of us, except for Tim, claimed to have played before although mostly not for a long time. Phil admitted at the end of the game that he'd never really understood it when he'd played before and from what he has said, he played in a club of really avid board gamers who gave no quarter, even to new players. Well, that's certainly an approach to teaching the game.

As the factions are balanced, the opening was very cagey as we all tried to work out what was going on, and how to get hold of a king piece. I had Captain of Calais in my opening faction, and a ship, so I was able to get hold of Richard of Gloucester early on. I drew Coventry as a Crown card early, but someone else besieged it and captured Edward of Westminster in the same round. I was also up to capture Henry VI in London, using Constable of the Tower, only for him to leave to go to an Embassy. He ended up being put in a region, if not an area, where Tim had troops. Again this happened in the round I drew the crown card. On advice Tim called a Parliament to stop himself being killed and to reassemble his faction in one place.

We played a series of very cagey turns, and it was hard to corner anyone and fight a battle. We had a series of sieges to capture king pieces, which distributed them around, but no one could get hold of Richard of York so Tim persisted with the one King.

Finally I had enough troops to go and capture RoY in York. Rather than occupy the city - the plague card hadn't shown up yet - I sat in the field outside.

It was then time for a coffee break.

Whilst I was making coffee and tea (thanks for the picture to Chris K) Richard talked Phil into forming an alliance, and they moved their troops into my area. Because of the turn sequence, they could wait until Phil brought up Percy to add to the army before attacking. Defeating me would trigger a Prestige Victory*.

However, if Chris marched and joined me, we could combine and attack Phil & Richard, and we could win instead. Chris decided not to. I can only surmise that after 2 1/2hours he'd had enough and wanted to go home. 

Anyway, we all played our remaining cards from our hands, and they needed a better than a 2:1 odds victory. They flipped a 3:2, and that was it.

An enjoyable evening all round. The new rules make it a much more balanced game and less prone to wild swings of fortune. I probably need to play the Classic version again to see which I prefer, but even so, it was a bit like being 14 again.

* Actually it wouldn't but I didn't realise I'd read the rules wrong until I tidied up this morning. They needed to crown the Richard of York piece, and then hold on for another whole round, so they were a long way off winning in fact. They also had a lot of nobles who could be dispersed by cards quickly - like Percy - so we probably had at least another hour's play.