Coiledspring Games Kingdomino Duel+Game

Product Information

However, picking up a symbol without a cross allows you to move closer to activating a special bonus. There is a Wizard Ability that gives you points for having multiple different Territories of one type, but that seems like a late-game saving throw, if anything. It does, however, keep things fair and interesting by preventing the start player from grabbing all the “best” dice. If you’re going to do it every game and you’re just going to choose whatever gives you the most points, why not just … include that as part of scoring?

It’s rare to see people get totally shut out on this; once my space is at least 7 or 8 spots, I just go for it on the next chance I get (and it almost always happens). The pencils are fully functional but you will inevitably need a sharpener at some point, that is not included. These bonuses allow you to do things like split your two dice when placing them, or add a cross to any coat-of-arms, or not follow orthodox connection rules that can make a big difference in the game. Either way, it’s got enough going for it that I think it’s a fine adaptation of the base game, but I don’t think that it manages to distinguish itself sufficiently from its predecessor to justify me playing it rather than Kingdomino’s awesome two-player mode. Well, you wouldn’t if you bred horses, as neither have won Ascot or the Grand National, so perhaps that was the wrong analogy.Final score: 4 stars – Blue Orange Games managed to successfully distill the Kingdomino experience down to a neat little package. Players also use another sheet and place it in the center of the table with the reverse side up to track special spells to be gained. This expansion adds new dominoes, new giant tokens, new challenge tiles, and additional components to allow a fifth player to join the game. They then draw the symbols of their domino on their sheet with at least one symbol adjacent to another of the same type.

The first player to fill in all the squares for a particular coat of arms in the Spellbook, gets to use that spell!

While it lacks the original character of Kingdomino, the spirit carries over into a very fun two player game that offers players a nice amount of strategy for those looking to spice up their Kingdomino experience. After players have marked their dominoes in their kingdom as well as marking spaces in the Spellbook, another turn begins.

We reserve the right to substitute one mail service for another if it is equivalent and will result in the games being delivered faster than by Royal Mail. If you’re hoping to enjoy this with your own children, I’d say look towards that older 6 or 7 year old as a good age to introduce this one. At least in the original you could see which tiles with crowns were coming out for the next turn and try to position yourself to grab one. The others are fine games, but the original was lightning in a bottle and no amount of futzing with the formula can replicate that. Space is at a premium here, and it's not long before you are having to plan in advance to make sure that you don't end up caught out and unable to play.We’ve been playing a lot of the more complex variety lately and I truly found this refreshing in a way I didn’t realize I needed. Normally it's easy to get back in the game, and with the addition of the spells you can play, more options become open as the game progresses. It’s like someone said, “Since you can’t really strategize here, we’ll throw you a bone that might help you clean up the mess made by the luck of the die rolls.

The game ends when either at least one player has filled in all the spaces in their kingdom or neither player is able to place their domino that turn.

Kingdomino Duel is Blue Orange’s 2p response to the now-classic Kingdomino, which took the Spiel des Jahres a few years back (really competitive year, since it edged out Magic Maze and The Quest for El Dorado; all excellent). One of the dice must be placed next to a matching coat of arms, and if a die contains an X symbol, it’s marked off in the circle on the space where the die is being recorded. But because it exists in the same universe as Kingdomino, I can’t really recommend it over the original. All photos on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.