I’m not really sure what kind of game someone would expect to play if they were told its name was “Kingdom Death”. Is… a kingdom dying? Is it Death’s kingdom?
Kingdom Death is a the most fantastically successful survival cooperative board game that you’ve never heard of. You and up to three friends play a group of settlers returning from a lantern festival that are ambushed by a deadly lion. Armed only with a stone dagger and a lantern, you kill the vicious beast. Wounded, but alive, you return to your village, pile high your lanterns in the center square, and vow to become so powerful that you and your fellow villagers need never fear the monsters that prowl in the dark.
I last played this at my boyfriend’s apartment when he lived in Ohio, with both of us playing two characters each. (There are always four characters on the board; the game can easily be played solo or with two, three or four people). I fell in love with it immediately. The miniatures are simply amazing. The card based monster AI feels at once threatening and unpredictable, but helped with tokens that allow the monster to focus on who threatens it most.
Every battle is a story.
Tonight, we played that first fateful encounter against the lion. We had it surrounded. The lion immediately saw Ally’s character and rushed her, knocking her over and doing her some damage. Meanwhile, the rest of us closed in as best we could. I hurled my stone dagger, my Founder’s Stone, at the lion, causing it a critical wound in its foot and knocking it down. We all took the moment to rush in, but we couldn’t get close enough to bring it down.
It stood up again, infuriated, and the battle truly began.
We all jockeyed to be behind it, because it can’t see us so well there. Ally got wounded on her arm, critically. Tom lost a leg. I dubbed his character “Stumpy”.
Drew got up behind it and cut off its balls. Yes, that is totally a thing you can do. This got the lion’s attention. I dubbed Drew’s character, “The Groinfather”.
It was a mano-a-mano fight from then, ending only when Drew threw his knife and caused another critical wound (and cut off the lion’s shimmering mane), and then the lion decapitated Drew.
With its rage fed further, it turned on Tom and tore off his other leg, killing him.
All our attacks had had its effects, and the beast was slowing. Ally got in a solid hit, but it was I that got the killing blow.
I grabbed Tom’s Founder’s Stone for my own, and Ally and I looted the creature. We brought back to the village two large baskets of crafting materials with which to make armor and better weapons so that the next time we go out to hunt — both us experienced hunters and two untested villagers — we would be prepared.
Kingdom Death is a campaign-style game where villagers fight, mate, raise children, grow old and retire while every year or so going on the hunt to find rare monsters to slay to bring back vital supplies and materials. There’s a great deal of risk in going hunting; random chance or one wrong move and you could be dead or so severely injured that you never hunt again.
The monsters get progressively larger and weirder as the campaign progresses, but it’s always just four characters against an increasingly thick monster AI deck. Control of the monster rotates from player to player and forces each player in turn to decide, in the case where a decision is necessary, who most needs to die. Characters can be driven insane by this difficult choice. Literally. There’s an insanity threshhold.
Everyone enjoyed the game, but I put an end to that discussion. We’re not playing again until Tom finishes painting the miniatures 🙂 So whether that’s next week or next year… it’s up to him.
