Too much board game for the format but a solid implementation – Kingsburg Serving the Crown Review

Let me start out by saying that I’m not a fan of Kingsburg as a board game. Although it is a popular game that many people seem to have connected with a strong way, it struck me as too long, too random and too repetitive. The pieces are all there: a now-classic roll-and-collect game where the die rolls provide you with stuff. Unlike Ra: The Dice Game or Roll Through The Ages, Kingsburg makes you compete with others to get what you want. When you roll and then select an advisor that will give you a certain resource or advantage, no one else can do the same. While there are often other ways for you to get what you need, you usually can’t do it as efficiently. My issue with this kind of game is that efficiency, which we generally strive for in games, doesn’t come from good choices, it comes from lucky rolls. So, Kingsburg amused me for three years (I think) - only to have the game go on two more years! But what about the app itself? Kingsburg on the iPhone/iPad means the game will not only move faster but I can actually remove the annoying analysis paralysis that the game seemed to engender. With all these advisor choices, it could often overwhelm deliberative players and make them take quite a while to determine how they should place their dice, especially since you can put them together for other combos. Anyway, I was quite excited to give the game a try in iPhone format. And for the first game, I was pleasantly surprised that it seemed to move along well. I lost, though, and realized it was because I was hurrying in my consideration of advisors and wasn’t making the best decisions. Why did I hurry? Well, despite the terrific production quality and great artwork in Kingsburg, the learning curve is there. Although the publisher’s come up with a reasonable format to open settings and back to certain screens, the icons used are not always indicative of what you are selecting nor are there clear paths everywhere. Often, I’ve found myself hitting the same wrong choices over and over again, winding through a path of building lists, resources, and advisors that seemed to never end. In a way, I think iOS games often benefit from having fewer paths to places because when you can get anywhere from anywhere, the flurry of options can overwhelm even the savvy player. I think I also hurried to select advisors because I couldn’t really picture all the advisors at once. The producers of the game made a choice that I can only see as sensible - you only see one advisor at a time. When you select a certain choice on the dice (by clicking them), you are presented with the advisor that would be selected with that number of pips. If you add another die, the advisors that woudl come from that addition instantly pops up. Similarly, if you select an extra bonus die or other die-altering choice, the right advisor pops up. In fact, the reaction time on this option is so fast that is it dizzying - heck, I even played with it for a bit to see if I could crash the app (nope, they’re okay). What this failed to give me was a chance to look at all my options at once. Thus, I made poor choices quite often. This is certainly not a crippling flaw for everyone but, for me, this led me to the conclusion that perhaps Kingsburg has too much going on, too large a board that you want to see all at once and too many turns to consider to really work as a eurogame. Just because a game can be reproduced and played on the platform doesn’t mean that it ideally should. Kingsburg is a competent implementation with good music, sound and the AI seemed fine but, I will admit, I’ve only gotten through two games of it so far. I just feel like this one isn’t for me but if you are a Kingsburg fan, you can enjoy this opportunity to knock out a game faster and train for the face-to-face games in the future.
Review by Boardgame Babylon on Kingsburg Serving the Crown.