Before we begin dear reader, there will be spoilers, as any after the first 10 cards is technically a Spoiler! If you don’t want to read further, Kingdom Legacy is a buy and play!
Kingdom legacy:Feudal Kingdom (referred to as Kingdom Legacy from here on) from Fryxgames (makers of Terraforming Mars) is a solo legacy game that will set you back £15 for approximately 6 hours of content. You start with 10 cards and throughout the game will discover new locations, build new parts of your kingdom, attract visitors but with popularity there’s also the unwanted visitors you’ll discover, in addition to be plagued by well weather and more. You start the game by shuffling your cards, importantly when shuffling you don’t flip or rotate the cards, cards are also double sided so you’ll need to be mindful when shuffling to not rotate, or flip a card but also to try and shuffle them in such a way you can’t see the order, which is easier said than done! Although you always know what the next card to be played is, as your deck is face up.
A turn of Kingdom legacy involves drawing 4 cards from your deck and having them in your play area, you can then take a number of different actions until you take an action that ends the turn or you pass. Most cards have a resource production, so can use the cards for their resource. Although you never physically have the resources in hand, it’s an earn and spend immediately sort of thing.
You may use the produced resources for upgrading another card or for the card effect. Upgrading a card generally costs resources, and if taken as an action ends your turn, there are some card effects that upgrade a card, meaning you didn’t take the upgrade action.
There’s a whole host of different card effects from pay a gold to gain a resource of your choice, or end your turn to discover a new card, destroy a card to gain or prevent something. There are also instant effects which you’ll need to resolve. Sometimes, you’ll have choices, and after my first play through, I realise there are a lot of decisions I would have made differently. Most action abilities require you to discard the card to resolve the action, thus meaning you discard the card to get the action which might be more resources that you then can’t spend on upgrading that card as its now in your discard pile (past Aaron made this mistake several times and then had to do a full turn redo).
Advancing is an action, I don’t think I took often enough, and this involves drawing the top two cards of your deck and adding them to your play area. You always know what the next card is, so there’s only a 50% chance of getting something you either really want or don’t want.
And passing means ending your turn and placing all your played cards into your discard pile. Unless some of your cards have “stays in play” which means you can hold onto cards for a later turn if you didn’t use it, as I worked through the game I increasingly discovered cards that allowed me to choose and retain cards between turns.
To start a new turn you’ll draw 4 cards from your deck and go again, if there’s 1-3 cards left in your deck you draw them all and play the turn. At the point of which you go to draw cards at the start of a turn and there are no cards, you’ll discover new cards for your kingdom. This is typically 2 cards per round, although some are just descriptions rather than cards to add to your deck, and you’ll play until you reach card 70. So you’ll roughly have, let’s say, 25 rounds. You’ll unlock a whole host of different cards that mean your kingdom will ultimately be very different to mine through the decisions you make with your cards, yes everyone will see cards 1-70, but it’s those decisions in game that’ll shape your kingdom.
At the end of the round in which you had added card 70 to your deck, that’s Kingdom Legacy done. You would have created a unique kingdom and hopefully scored more than 138 points! (I took a huge -50 points). You do have the option to expand your game through 3 cards included in the box, which grant you 4 more rounds, although with my Kingdom in such a sorry state, I’m not sure there’s much point! Instead, I’m ordering myself a new box, and I’ll include the expansions in the box and those additional booster style packs.
All in all, Kingdom Legacy took me about 5 hours, and there were some big rule assumptions I made as I couldn’t find the answer on Boardgamegeek, it was only once I finished and went to register my abysmal score that I discovered the website has a card index with more detailed explanations for every single card in the game. And herein lies Aaron realising his mistake. However, it is a legacy game, so my Kingdom is done, battered, and ultimately left in ruin.
But I had a blast with Kingdom Legacy. It gave me a Legacy of Yu feel, and I’m not really sure why. As the games are not really similar apart from they are solo story driven experiences, although I’d say story is very lose and it’s more both are narrative solo games. Neither are particularly strong on the story or world building, Legacy of Yu is stronger than Kingdom Legacy in that sense. There is the ability to reset Kingdom Legacy upto card 23, although I’ve seen folks online work through the game without marking cards and keeping a notebook at the side to track marking cards, and that feels like more hassle than its worth, but I get that folks don’t want to destroy games or reset them. But £15 for 4-6 hours of content (excluding the expansions in the box) feels comparable if not above an Exit Game.
My biggest frustrations with Kingdom Legacy, where firstly the rules, these come on a piece of paper and didn’t cover half the situations or card text that’ll you will discover. Boardgamegeek got me so far, but even then that at times wasn’t 100% clear, so I worked through on assumptions. Looking back had I know there was a card list with detailed explanations, this would have helped massively!
Secondly, there’s no real starting guide or suggested route or path to pursue, and that’s probably why I found myself in ruin. I went heavy into a gold strategy and didn’t realise the importance of other resources, but by then, it was too late. The game does, in part, let you play up to card 23 to get to grips with the rules, which at a basic level are fine. It’s the later cards that needed the clarity. And in the same sense, you haven’t seen a whole lot of the game by card 23. This is why I suspect multiple plays are the way to go, to get the most out of the game, but also to ensure you see the content this game has to offer.
Overall, you know I rate games on a scale of:
Buy or play
Wait for sale or play if you like game XYZ
Avoid
I can’t really give a legacy game a play rating, in the sense you can’t borrow a copy. Therefore, it’s a buy and play! Kingdom Legacy has taken me on a journey of discovery, that for a base game experience felt rewarding, offered decision after decision that felt meaningful. Until the point where my kingdom was in such dismay, there was no hope for its citizens. If you don’t play or enjoy solo games, then Kingdom Legacy probably isn’t going to be to convince you otherwise, or who knows, maybe it might! However, Kingdom Legacy has left its own Legacy on me and my need to go and play through another Kingdom!
