Kingdomino Review - Spiel des Jahres 2017 Winner

Kingdomino won the Spiel des Jahres (game of the year) for 2017 and we are going to break down our thoughts.

What’s it all about?

Kingdomino is a tile laying game where players are building their own kingdom, domino-style.

Each player takes their player marker and selects which tile they want out of the 4 shown. After each player selects a tile, 4 more tiles will be laid out from lowest (‘least valuable’) to highest (‘most valuable’).

Then, starting with the player marker at the top, players place their tile and select another out of the 4 new tiles. Your kingdom must be shaped like a square and cannot be larger than 5×5. So if you try to place a tile that would add a 6th row or column you cannot place it.

After each player has taken 12 tiles, enough to fill a 5×5 grid, the game ends and each player scores up their points. Each “territory” (area of tiles that look the same) is worth points for how many squares large it is times the amount of crowns on the territory. For example, the kingdom above on the left has a lake that is worth 3 points (3 squares * 1 crown).

What did we think?

We really really REALLY liked it!

It’s a super light weight game that has a hidden (small) level of strategy. You have to be thinking ahead and leave room for tiles that you may or may not come across or else you could really get yourself stuck. And the way that you grab tiles is very clever. The player that took the least valuable tile always gets the first shot at selecting the next tiles, which makes this game very balanced and prevents kingmaking.

We have been recommending Kingdomino game for almost any and every occasion as it seems to be at the top of a lot of lists.

And that $20 price point is too sweet, especially for the holidays.

Have you played it? Let us know if you liked it or not!

 

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