Newsgroups: rec.games.board Subject: Re: Kingmaker Zoltan Grose writes: >Has anyone played this game? I believe it is Avalon Hill. >Set in Middle Aged (?) England. Players run around trying >to be king. Good, bad, don't know? Good. The game gives a rich feeling for the historical terrain. Lots of squabbling between political factions, and some of the inconveniences of drawn out wars before modern professional armies. "Sorry about your siege. I really do want to storm the castle, but I my peasants are revolting so I have to go home and crack some skulls." One of the more clever wrinkles of the game is the meeting of Parliament. If Parliament is called, you must scramble to put together a political alliance because votes will be made on various spoils that happen to be available. If you haven't been making friends before Parliament is called, or at least making the right enemies, you may find yourself cut out of the goodies. The weak points of the game: (1) The rules in the AH box need a little honing; the few glaring weaknesses are fixed with errata in the extra card expansion. The rules are hardly complicated, so an experienced gamer could always cook up something. (2) If a good portion of your players do not have a vicious streak, it is possible that the game drag out, with large armies hunkered down in difficult to access corners of the board. If you and your buddies are agressive players, this will not be a problem. BTW, one of my favorite games is Republic of Rome, which could be described in a nutshell as "Kingmaker without all that mucking about the English countryside." If you have played one, this might give you an inkling about whether you would like the other. --Peter p-white@uiuc.edu Buchanan in '96! Why settle for the lesser evil? Newsgroups: rec.games.board Subject: Re: Kingmaker Zoltan Grose wrote: > > Has anyone played this game? I believe it is Avalon Hill. > Set in Middle Aged (?) England. Players run around trying > to be king. Good, bad, don't know? It's not exactly like that. Players run around, having several factions, headed by a noble. The ultimate goal is to end up with the last remaining crowned heir. This means that you'll have to kill 6 of the 7 royal heirs initially placed on the board. When you control a heir, you may shoot it at any time, or crown it when it's the next in line of one of the two competing 'lines', the Lancastrians and the (???). You gain control of a heir by capturing its initial city or by defeating its controller (when he/she hasn't shot it). Their are a number of titles and offices to give to your nobles, making them stronger - but the offices also place a demand on your nobles, e.g. a peasant revolt summons the Marshal of England to a small village near London. That's pretty nasty if you're trying to beseige someone up in the north. Multi-player games are characterised by lots of shifting alliances, to capture heirs, punish big-grown factions etc. Well, just an impression of the top of my hat (I just played a game yesterday evening). Mark. -- Mark J. Sinke Stephensonstraat 58 5621 GV Eindhoven Current project at: Philips Research Laboratories -- Building Prof. Holstlaan 4 5656 AA Eindhoven The Netherlands Phone: +31-40-2773833 E-mail: marks@stack.urc.tue.nl