Strategy Board Game, Kingdomino Mechanic with a Twist, Tabletop Game for Kids Teens Adults and Family Game Nights, Ages 8+, 2-4 Players, Moon River by Blue Orange Games

TL;DR - Easy to learn, layers of strategy, excellent components, short play time, excellent replay value, perfect filler game between epic sessions for the heavy complexity gamers. Grab two!Kingdomino is a really entertaining light filler game that deservingly won the 2017 Spiel des Jahres award given to the best game of the year for casual players (dedicated hobby gamers look to the Kennerspiele des Jahres for the heavier games that appear to the more addicted). It is a great entryway to tabletop gaming in a small, teachable format. The components are of high quality - Blue Orange has done a marvelous job producing this game in a manner befitting such a high-caliber experience.The play is simple - you are building your kingdom by selecting one of three or four (depending on player count) available tiles representing one or two land types,and possibly a number of crowns. You draft the piece in turn order, but the piece you select also determines your draft order the following turn. The pieces are numbered on the back and laid out lowest to highest each turn before the draft - the player who selects the lowest numbered tile will select first the following round. When the tiles are all selected, you add them to your kingdom, keeping in mind that the maximum size for your kingdom is 5x5 and each tile is 2x1. How you place the tile is fairly simple as well - at least one of the two land types must be placed against an existing land of the same type or against your castle (effectively making your castle a wild tile). If you cannot place a specific tile, either because no matching land types exist, or it extends beyond the required 5x5 dimension, you discard the tile. When the draft pile has been exhausted, the players total their points by calculating the number of ordinal contiguous tiles of the same type and multiplying it by the number of crowns in that contiguous land mass. As you can see, crowns are critical to scoring, because even a 10 space forest has no points unless a crown exists on one of them! Adding further strategy is the land types vary significantly with the distribution of tiles and the crowns on those tiles - there are only 6 caverns, and five of them average 2 crowns - a well placed cave system can be a viable route to victory, whereas there are 26 fields but only 6 of them have crowns, and a single one at that.Looking at the attached completed game board picture:1. Note that there's a castle piece located in the 4th row 4th column - there is no requirement that your castle end up in the center of your kingdom.2. Scoring the completed board starting from the top right:A. A two square Lake scores zero points (no crowns)B. The Swamp that begins in row 3 covers 8 squares and there are 3 crowns total, scores 24 points.C. The Mountain range at the bottom left is two squares with four crowns for 8 points.D. The Wheat fields starting at row 1 column 2 has 4 squares with one crown for 4 points.E. The Pasture located on the bottom row scores zero points for two squares with no crowns.F. The single Mountain in row 1 scores 2 points for 2 crowns in a 1x1 plot.G. The Forest next door has zero value, as does the 2 square Lake below it, no crowns anywhere.H. Finally the Forest at the bottom right has two squares and two crowns for 4 pointsThe final score for this board is: 42 points (a pretty strong score) on the power of a huge swamp with three crowns.Diagram of the completed picture for reference:L W W M FL S W W LS S S S LM S S X FM S P P F(L=Lake, P=Pasture, W=Wheat, M=Mountain, S=Swamp, G=Grassland, X=Castle)Final thoughts: I can cite nothing that I dislike about this game. It has definite replayability, and is asked for with some regularity at my home and on game day. GET A SECOND COPY and play 7x7 kingdoms, for even more challenge and a deeper level of strategy!

I was looking for a new game for my kids as a non-digital Xmas present and was set on buying the new Minecraft Builders and Biomes, but that one went out-of-stock, then there was another game, a twist on checkers, that looked good, and also sold out really quickly. Kingdomino was my third choice and I am so happy I was "forced" to buy it!In short, the purpose of the game is to get as many points as possible. You build a 5 by 5 grid kingdom out of domino-like tiles. Each tile has two squares with 5 possible field colors. The color field may feature a building worth one to three crowns - representing the point multiplier. Each player should build the largest possible color-field with as many crowns within a 5x5 zone and using domino matching mechanics (you can only add tiles color to color). We love the game because:It is quick! I used to like Monopoly but 3 hours in with a nine and an eight-year-old, the bickering about rent and drama over who landed on whos property... Kingdomino takes us up to 10 minutes per round (maybe 15 in the 2-player, big kingdom mode). My kids will try to talk me into doing something to fend off the bedtime every day - a 7 minute round of the game will keep them content and they feel like they got away with something (lil dudes, you just did a math exercise).It teaches planning ahead and strategical thinking! There are 5 colors to match and each color will earn points differently - yellow fields are plentiful but they rarely have buildings AND those buildings are only worth 1 crown each. Black tiles are rare, but they may have 2-3 crowns. Who goes first changes in every round as you lay the next set of dominoes out. The backs of the tiles are numbered 1 to 48 and are randomly drawn each round. You lay them up in order, flip them over, and the person who picked the lowest number last round goes first next round, and so on. So if you really need a tile from next set, you may have to pick the worse tile in current round to secure your future pick. You also have to decide if you want to go with a lot of same color tiles with low multiplier value (like 8 yellow tiles with one one-crown building = 8 tiles x1 crown = 8 points, or 3 black tiles with 2, 3, and 3 crowns = 3 tiles x (2+3+3 crowns) = 24 points.It teaches simple math! My kids are in elementary school and counting the points up involves a bunch of simple multiplications and additions. In optional two-player more with 7x7 kingdom, there are sometimes 15 multiplications (each color field times sum of all the crowns in those fields) and then a 15 step addition that comes up to 130-150 points. And they love it! I mean - they need to know who won...It is fun! It is REALLY fun. Combining our little strategies, distracting other players, a little bit of bluffing so someone does not snatch the tile you need... it all makes for a competitive play and, at least for us, the final scores are close enough that no one gets their feelings hurt too much. Other than my feelings that is, because I have to admit I get outsmarted by an 8-year-old...The only issue I had with the game was the instructions. They take a while to digest as there are quite a few steps between laying the dominoes, taking your tiles and so on. On game 3 you will be a pro, but the first one was painful for us. There is however a really cool short video made by a bearded dude on Games Explained YouTube channel - search it up and you will be off to a good start.

One of my favorite games to play with my daughter. It involves strategy, luck and planning. It's great to help my little board gamer to develop strategy skills. The game calls for 7 rounds, but we play through the entire deck until all the cards are in territories.