Crusader Kings Boxed Board Game

A fantastic board game, its the best Grand Strategy Board game I've played. Premise: The game allows you to simulate a medieval King and his kingdom, with scenarios such as crusading in the 11th century. The decisions your king is allowed to make is marry queen's, create duchies, start wars,and overthrow territories. It is based on the Video game series with the same name. Though I cannot tell if the game stays true to the video game because I haven't played it, I can tell you it does remind me of Total War Medieval 2. Gameplay: fun gameplay, a good balance between simple enough to understand and complex decisions to make for the player. In the game you do certain actions by playing cards, with successes being determined on the Virtues and Vices of your dynasty. The goal of the game is to conquer territories, crusade and develop your Kingdom. Conquering territories is, I would say the best part of the game with the player being faced with dilemmas and paranoia, combined with the satisfaction of building an empire while defeating your opponents. Would say that the player needs to do some forward planning to fully coordinate the actions of the King and not end up with a broken kingdom. Complaints about the gameplay is that the cards are sometimes too luck based. Sometimes, no matter how cunning of a plan you can come up with, if your Cards are terrible, it will be hard to achieve your goals. Most of the cards trigger events bad for the player. With players receiving these cards, instead of being able to build your empire by building tall or wide you are putting out fires that the cards started. Further as a result of the simplistic design, there is no religion mechanic. Historical Accuracy: the game sacrifices Hostorical Accuracy for gameplay. While this does make for a balanced game, if you are into History ypu might be angered at the fact that by the 11th century Portugal is formed and the Spanish have taken back most of Iberia as well as a united Italy. Factions: this game is for up to 5 players, with rules for solo play, however solo play rules make for a lengthy game. The game is missing some playable factions such as the Byzantines, the Moors, and the Holy Roman Empire has been removed from existence. Time: 30mins set up time, 3 hours game. Double that for solo play. Rules: I wish this had a playthrough guide because you will have to read the rules a couple of time, and keep referring back to it multiple times in the first few games. Map: the map is a massively oversimplified Europe with there being a tiny 34 provinces to conquer, add on top of that the fact that 1 empire is only allowed to have up to 8 provinces. The crusade mechanic is not on the map but instead a list of cities that a crusade occurred in. In short, this game is the one of the best, if not the best grand Strategy game out there judging solely on gameplay.

TL;DR 9/10 good medieval intrigue game Overall I watched a few reviews off YouTube and as a big fan of crusader kings 2 I figured hey this would be excellent to bring to game night. I wasn’t wrong. You spend a lot of time building up noble families and taking land and plotting against each other. It’s pretty rules intensive so it’s not very well suited for casual players but if you can get past it and actually learn the game it’s pretty great. I could go super in detail but I don’t want to type up a 12 page essay here. Just want to help people get a informed opinion as like nowhere has reviewed this. On a side note the more players the better here. It’s like twilight imperium or game of thrones the board game. In terms of quality the board is great, the cards are good clear quality, and I only found one typo on joust. Wordings generally pretty clear in everything and they go with the mtg rule of cards always right. The miniatures... well... they look nice, but at the same time they went for a cheaper plastic so there’s a bit of flexibility and occasionally warping to them. Don’t expect games workshop or fantasy flight quality here. It works for the game but not for external use. The actual bits you organize your cards with are just card stock folded down the middle. I didn’t really care for that but I knew it going into this and it didn’t negatively impact my game. The chits are a bit hard to pop out actually. The cut was clear on the cardboard but I knicked the edge on a couple and hard a few layers separated. Noting some glue or a marker can’t fix but still. I’ve had much smoother experiences there. Overall while the physical component part was a little lacking, the game in execution does a solid job of getting the fundamentals of CK2 on the tabletop. I’ll be cracking into it’s first expansion whenever I get the chance as this is a game I can realistically see myself getting the expansions for.

If you're looking for a streamlined version of Fief or Warrior Knights, then Crusader Kings is the game for you. It's almost exactly like those two games, but instead it's focused to a fine point and all the needless mechanics that slow down Fief and Warrior Knights is removed and replaced with pure fun! That doesn't mean the game is simple or easy to learn, but everything that is in the game makes a tremendous amount of sense and plays to the theme of the game. There will be times where you're making shady deals, just to back stab that person at just the right moment; or other times where you'll be sending off your King to die in the Crusaders just so you can replace him with a better heir so you can get their traits in you bag before someone tries to assassinate them. There is so many ways to play this game that it becomes this evolving experience over time depending on the actions of others and the events that happen. Unfortunately this game gets little respect because it is unfairly compared to the PC game it is named after, but it deserves your attention. Especially if you're into medieval history and political intrigue the likes of which can only be found in the show Game of Thrones or the novels Ice and Fire. If anything I've said piqued your interest or you've looked at Fief or Warrior Knights and found them cumbersome, you owe it to yourself to pick this game up ASAP before it becomes hard to find. I love this game!

Beautiful components. I’m a fan of the computer game. This board game adaption looks great. Only issue is the game board had a defect as seen in the picture. I contacted the publisher and they are sending a replacement.