Gamex Report: Sunday - 8th Post - To Court The King

The last game I played at Gamex was Super Yahtzee, I mean, To Court The King. No, I shouldn't be so mean (and that joke is old). I don't want to criticize this Tom Lehmann game since there are a ton of dice games out there now that are all using the Yahtzee mechanic of 'roll the dice and pull at least one out at a time'.

In fact, To Court the King is closer to a pure Yahtzee game than most others but with a whole host of cards you can acquire with various combos so you can get more dice or more ways to manipulate them to complete better combos.

While Jay was teaching Heather and me, Devi came up and said that he liked it because "you get more control as you go along". Indeed, TCTK gets better as you gain cards which give you special abilities - each named for some person or noble (maids, barons, laborers, all the way up to the King and Queen).

Some cards add dice set to a particular number (you can re-roll them after the first turn) to your rolling set, while others allow for pip manipulation (move them between dice to turn, say, a four and a two into two threes), while others allow for re-rolls.

And, yes, this is all dependent on the rolls you make. Luckily for those who dice hate (like yours truly), there is also the Fool card which you get if you are unable to roll a good combo (which are sets, higher totals, and the like). The Fool lets you do a free re-roll and if you get a second Fool, he turns into the Charlatan card, which mercifully gives you an extra die. All of this builds towards the winner combo - seven of a kind. This courts the King and then everyone gets one turn to beat that roll (i.e., roll seven 'fives' if the King-holder has seven 'fours'). If no one can unseat him, he wins. If someone manages, the King is handed over but the Queen stays and helps the original finisher gain the King back.

One potential issue for some is that large number of different cards that do different things. There is a cheat sheet but it is long and also double-sided. This is kind of a pain but I'd rather have them than not.

The game plays in about a 1/2 hour once you know how to play it. For those that cannot manipulate numbers (and, hey, they are small - it didn't intimidate this Literature major) and think quickly about how to reorder things with a whole bunch of factors, this one will seem harder than it should be. But as a casual activity for those who enjoy rolling the bones, it is fun. We played with three (including Jay) and it moved along nicely (despite the quirky choice to have the Start Player rotate counter-clockwise, giving everyone consecutive turns each round).

I plan to pick it up because I think it will play well with two and because I would like to use it to encourage good math skills with my kids. The numbers are small but the concept of moving the pips around to make other numbers sounds like something good to drill into elementary school kids.

One most post with a wrap-up will follow. I will also do a podcast wrap-up with more opinions later on.

...Sheylon
www.boardgamebabylon.com