2008.12.16
Beowulf: The Movie Boardgame vs. Kingdoms
I’ve played Kingdoms many times, and generally I like the game. It’s a very fast-paced game, with a nice dose of “take that” and enough luck that new players stand a decent chance of winning even against experienced players. The strong luck factor and the large degree of “take that” are also the games two largest criticisms in the community.
In 2007, Fantasy Flight published an updated version of the game under the title Beowulf: The Movie Boardgame. Creating the game as a movie tie-in might be the biggest mistake Fantasy Flight made with this game. Gamers who are willing to look past the lackluster box office results of the movie will find a very good re-implementation of Kingdoms, with enough rule changes that it plays differently than the original game.
In Kingdoms, a player has 3 choices on her turn:
- Draw a random tile and immediately play it into a vacant space on the board.
- Play one of her castles into a vacant space on the board.
- Play her hidden tile for the round into a vacant space on the board.
As a result of these choices, there are very limited options for long-term strategy, and the game comes down to risk management. Placing castles early leaves you more vulnerable, but there is a potential for a lot more payoff at the end of the round. But there is a very big problem, especially in a 4-player game: suppose you opt to draw a random tile, and you draw a +6 tile. Having not yet placed any castles (because the risks are too high), you cannot use the tile to help your current position; all you can do is place it and watch as the other 3 players place castles in prime real-estate, leaving you out in the cold. You do not have the option to hold the +6 for a future turn.
Beowulf addresses this by changing the rules slightly. Each player has a hand of two tiles. On his turn, a player has only 2 choices:
- Draw a random tile into his hand, then play any tile from his hand
- Play a figure (equivalent to a castle in Kingdoms) onto the board.
Even the very limited hand management afforded by option 1 is a dramatic change from Kingdoms, and greatly improves the strategic options for play.
In addition, in Beowulf it is possible to avoid playing a tile on to the board in some cases (which can be handy when there are no advantageous moves) and some tiles also allow a player to move or replace tiles and / or figures already placed on the board. Overall, the risk of playing figures early is decreased over Kingdoms, and this means that the same spiteful strategies that can win you a game of Kingdoms quite handily do not necessarily work at all in Beowulf.
If Kingdoms is a game where the goal is to “lose the least” and spend as much time as possible sticking it to your neighbors, Beowulf is a game where you have to look at maximizing your own benefit while minimizing the benefit to the other players. I do not plan to buy Beowulf myself, but for others who are considering a purchase of Kingdoms, I strongly suggest you give Beowulf a try first before you decide.
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