natenc tailara wetherby
Elisabetta Buendia
Kingdomino Origins is a tile drafting and placement game set in prehistoric times for two to four players. Just like the original Kingdomino (even though this is titled Origins, which makes me chuckle) players will be drafting tiles from the offer and adding them to their village, matching terrain types to those already built. Instead of crowns to count VP, Origins has players using fire icons and tokens to multiply VP for endgame scoring. New for Origins is the ability to play three different modes: Discovery, Totem, and Tribe Mode! The player with the most VP at the end of the game wins!
DISCLAIMER: We were provided a copy of this game for the purposes of this review. This is a retail copy of the game, so what you see in these photos is exactly what would be received in your box. I do not intend to cover every single rule included in the rulebook, but will describe the overall game flow and major rule set so that our readers may get a sense of how the game plays. For more in depth rules, you may purchase a copy online or from your FLGS. -T
To setup (a two-player game playing the Tribe mode is used for this review), place the Cave Board on the table, shuffle the Caveman tiles, and deal four to the board. Separate the fire tokens and resourceeples into their piles on the table. Shuffle the main domino tiles and, as in the original, draw four, arrange them numerically, and reveal them to make the offer. Place another four domino tiles nearby, face-down, and arranged numerically. The players each choose a color, takes their starting tile with hut placed atop, and their two chiefeeples. The first player will choose to take tiles 1 and 4 or 2 and 3 from the offer by placing their chiefeeples upon them. The game is now setup for Tribe Mode and ready to begin!
On a normal turn, a player will have two steps to complete: Place a Domino, and Choose a New Domino. In a 3-4 player game, each player will have one domino to place, but in this 2 player game each player will have two dominoes to place within their 77 grid (a 55 grid with 3-4 player games). The player takes their chosen dominoes from beneath their chiefs and add them to their village grid. As in all domino-based games, the terrain (or side) of the domino must be placed adjacent to a matching terrain type in the village; the starting tile is wild and can match to any terrain type.
Once a domino is placed, if it shows icons or volcanoes, special rules are enacted. For icons showing resources, a wooden resourceeple is placed upon the icon. These come in mammoths, fish, mushrooms, and flints. In Tribe Mode, these will be used later. However, if a volcano is placed in the village, it will spew forth one to three flames, whose tokens will be placed on a domino square in the village. The volcano tile showing one active crater sends a flame soaring up to three squares away, and diagonal movement is acceptable. A volcano tile showing three active craters throws three flames (a fire token with three fire icons) one square away.
Once both tiles have been placed, the player will next Choose a New Domino (or dominoes when playing a two player game). From the now-revealed set of four new tiles in the offer, the players will choose their next tile(s) to be played during the next round, thus also creating the turn order for the next round.
After players have chosen their dominoes, and only in Tribe Mode, the final step to the turn is optional: Recruit a Caveman. Remember those resourceeples that were placed on tiles? By discarding two different resources, a player may recruit one of the face-up Caveman tiles from the board. By discarding one of each type of resource, the player may instead look through the stack of Caveman tiles and take one of their choosing. These Caveman tiles do many different things, but they primarily offer extra VP for being placed adjacent to specific resources, or by clumping together similar Cavemen in the village.
I have recently discovered a really nice board-game. Well, discovered might be a strong word,it has won Spiel des Yahres for 2017, so it is pretty well known by now. It is a simple game,might take me and my wife around half an hour to play a round and we can manage the ruleseven when exhausted after the day is over and before we go to bed.
After I finished my first game, I thought to myself, "These rules are simple enough to play with our little Elen",the two-player game is quite quick and playing the 6 rounds should fit within 3-year-old attention span.
We do actually finish more games than not, and even those times when we don't finish properly, it usually morph into something similarly interesting,like free-form kingdom building, or funny discussions about kingdom's food chain, that probably will include both dragon, two types of water-monster and a man-sized spider.
With these two prompts we are able to play fairly well. I explained the importance of crowns on tiles to her,and that creating large continuous areas is good, and even though she doesn't really play with much foresight,I would say that her tile-placement is anything but random :-) She even beat me on one occasion. Well, the final counting of points is not something,that really interests her, even though she really likes the idea of having lots of points ?
I relaxed the rule about keeping the kingdom in 5x5 grid, because I figured that it would take too long to explain,and I didn't want to just forbid her placing a tile, if she wouldn't understand why she shouldn't do that.I understand the reason for the 5x5 rule, but from a perspective of a 3-year old, it sounds arbitrary.
this is how we do it, and it saved us few afternoons, especially when Elen was sick and we couldn't go play outside.If you will try this as well, just keep in mind, that the goal here isn't to win, and that sometimes it is more important to have the dragon in your kingdom than having the most points.
Give each player a neanderthal meeple, a starting tile and a camp in their player colour. Shuffle the domino tiles together and form some draw decks. Place the top four tiles face down in a column in ascending number order and then flip them. Voila! Set up is complete.
On your turn you will place your meeple on one of the four tiles in the column to claim it. This claimed tile will be placed in your Kingdom. It must either touch your starting tile, or at least one matching region type of those you are placing, like in dominoes. You will then pick your next tile from a second column of tiles available. This is done in turn order. If you pick a lower value tile you will get a better choice next time.
Wait I hear you cry, this is all very much like Kingdomino! It is at this point. The main difference is that there are volcanoes. These erupt with fire around the board adding points to neighbouring regions. Volcanoes are not a scoring region so there is a positive and a negative to balance. The fire they spew out can have detrimental effects on tokens, but you only use those in the variant plays!
In addition to the Discovery Mode detailed above, you also get Totem Mode. In this variant whenever you draw a tile with a symbol in the bottom corner, you place a matching token on the tile. Whoever has the most of each token type claims additional points at the end of the game. Eruptions of fire can destroy tokens so majority can change around a bit.
Tribe Mode is the final variant in the box. You still place tokens on your tiles when you place them, but you can now spend two or four tokens to recruit cavemen. These unlock additional scoring opportunities by meeting certain adjacency placement rules.
It depends on your expectations, but there is little that can disappoint in the Kingdomino Origins box. Instagrammers will still curse the shiny tiles, but will delight in the new tokens, especially the mammoth ones. The domino tiles remain satisfyingly chunky and I like the artwork that adorns them. Particularly the little Easter eggs, see if you can see a familiar looking sloth similar to Sid from Ice Age fishing on one of the tiles!
The instructions are clear and because of the popularity of Kingdomino, there are good videos showing you how to play too. The box itself is not too big and everything stores away nicely in the plastic insert.
Harrison (14): I prefer it to the original. It takes the good bits of Kingdomino and makes it a bit harder and more complex. I really like the extra modes too. I would choose to play Origins over the original as it definitely improves it.
Had Kingdomino never existed I think I would be raving about Kingdomino Origins more. Both are great games but on reflection I prefer the original for its accessibility as a truly brilliant gateway game. However, Kingdomino Origins has the ability to grow with your family and so could be a fantastic option for you.
You are a Lord seeking new lands to expand your Kingdom. You must explore all the lands, wheat fields, lakes, mountains in order to spot the best plots. But be careful, as some other Lords are also coveting theses lands...
A Then, from the draw pile, take the same number of dominoes as the number of kings in play (i.e. three dominoes for a 3-player game and four dominoes for a 2- or 4-player game). Display them next to the box, numbered side up. These dominoes must be displayed in the ascending order (the lowest number next is always placed next to the box). Finally, turn them on the lands- cape side.
B A player takes all the kings in their hands, shuffle them thoroughly and then they get them out of their hands one after the other. When your king appears, place-it on an empty domino in the line. Each tile can only have one king. It means that the last player doesn't have any choice. (in a 2-player game, each player will choose 2 dominoes, one for each of their kings)
Each player should have in front of them a 5x5 grid forming their kingdom. (some kingdoms may not be complete if a player was forced to discard any dominoes - see above). Then, each player will calculate their prestige points for their kingdoms in the following way:
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