Review: The Old King’s Crown

Introduction & Overview

The old king has left us; some say he died peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by the love of subjects and advisors. A beautiful farewell to a benevolent and compassionate reign. There are others, however, who insist that he was the most avaricious of men and that the horrible disease that befell him was an appropriate end. Elsewhere, whispers are heard of foul play, of a knife, or poison or something worse, at the hands of one of his rivals or even one of his relatives. There are those who even claim that the old king is still alive, that he has gone into hiding abroad for reasons yet unknown, or that he has been seen wandering the windswept heath, his eyes wide in the darkness. Be that as it may, the old king is gone and the crown of the kingdom has remained unclaimed for too long.

This is how The Old King’s Crown is presented to us, designed by Pablo Clark (his first game). First published in 2025 by Eerie Idol Games in an English version. The illustrations are done by Pablo Clark himself (also his first artistic work in the world of board games).

It is published in Spain by Delirium Games (the game is quite language-dependent, in addition to the rulebook). It allows for games of 1 to 4 players, with a suggested minimum age of 12 and an approximate duration of between 60 and 120 minutes. The MSRP is €79.95. A review copy of the Spanish version from Delirium Games has been used for this review.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom), with dimensions of 33×25×10 cm (a rectangular box similar to Barrage but slightly taller), we find the following elements:

• Kingdom Board (cardboard)
• Council Board (cardboard)
• 4 Player Boards (cardboard)
• 4 Places of Power Tiles (1 per faction) (cardboard)
• 30 Forge Cards (44×67 mm.)
• 99 Medium Cards (57×87 mm):
  • 51 Kingdom Cards (cardboard)
  • 24 Fog and Menace Cards
  • 12 Ambition Cards
  • 12 Plan Cards
• 96 Large Cards (70×120 mm.):
  • 76 Faction Cards (19 per faction)
  • 20 Simulacrum Faction Cards for Solo Mode
• 4 Heralds (1 per faction) (wooden)
• 20 Followers (5 per faction) (wooden)
• 4 Order Markers (1 per faction) (cardboard)
• 4 Hand Size Markers (1 per faction) (wooden)
• 16 Tactic Tiles (4 per faction) (cardboard)
• 40 Faction Markers (10 per faction) (cardboard)
• 3 Clash Markers (I, II and III) (wooden)
• Active Player Marker (wooden)
• 32 Influence Tokens of value 1 (cardboard)
• 16 Influence Tokens of value 5 (cardboard)
• 20 Knowledge Tokens (cardboard)
• Favor of the Kingdom Marker (wooden)
• Season Marker (wooden)
• Round Marker (wooden)
• Simulacrum Board for Solo Mode (cardboard)
• 8 Bidding Tokens (cardboard)
• 10 Supporter Tokens (cardboard)
• 10 Follower Markers (cardboard)
• Herald Token (cardboard)
• Simulacrum Place of Power Tile (cardboard)
• 2 Reference Sheets
• Solo Rules Reference Sheet
• Rulebook
• Solo Mode Rulebook

How to Play

The Old King’s Crown is a game set in a fractured kingdom after the disappearance of its monarch, where each player embodies an heir who must lead their faction to claim the throne. The game unfolds over a series of rounds divided into the four seasons of the year. In Spring, players simultaneously bid with cards from their hand to acquire powerful Kingdom Cards or steal them from their rivals, while also deploying their Heralds and face-down cards to the three regions of the map. During Summer, clashes for regional control are resolved; the victor in each area, determined by total strength and the use of tactical orders such as Ambush, Flank, or Retreat, claims valuable rewards in the disputed locations. In Autumn, players can Govern to win votes in the kingdom’s Councils and/or Travel to obtain Lore, a resource needed to acquire advanced cards. It is also possible to activate faction-specific tactics to manipulate the board state or boost followers. After completing the established number of rounds, accumulated Influence is tallied; the player with the most points is proclaimed the victor, and in case of a tie, the player who possesses the Favor of the Kingdom or is highest on the turn order track wins.

Key Concepts

Let’s start with the centerpiece of the table, that is, the Kingdom Board. This component represents the disputed lands and houses the main logical elements of the game. In its center, we find the Map, divided into three Regions (Highlands, Plateau, and Lowlands), each with two specific locations where conflicts will be resolved. Each of these regions rewards whoever activates it with a certain amount of influence points or an effect. In addition, this board includes the Turn Order Track to manage turns, the Progress Track (up to six rounds), and the Great Road, which functions as a dynamic market for the available kingdom cards. In the side margins, there are spaces for players to place their faction cards. In turn, around the board, we find spaces to place the progress marker to indicate the phase the round is in (spring, summer, autumn, or winter).

On the other hand, we have the Council Board, which represents the three seats of political power: the Council of Relics, the Council of Secrets, and the Council of Oaths. Here, players can “Govern” by sending their cards to win votes and unlock increasingly powerful benefits based on their influence in each seat.

Each contender for the throne has their own Player Board, a personalized command center that organizes their most direct resources. It features reserved spaces for their Herald and their five Followers, slots for the Kingdom Cards they manage to occupy (with die-cut spaces under the faction card slots to place cards that occupy those cards), and, on the bottom band, a space for their tactic tiles. In the upper right corner, there is a space to place the Favor of the Kingdom Marker, enabling the associated action, while in the upper left corner, there is a space to place the Hand Size Marker.

Complementing this personal space, each faction has a Place of Power Tile, which acts as an exclusive reserve where their Headquarters cards and advanced units reside, waiting to be recruited by spending knowledge tokens.

The strategic heart of the game lies in its decks. The Kingdom Cards are unique inhabitants, items, or places obtained on the Great Road through bidding. Once acquired, they must be “occupied” by a faction card to be protected, granting the player special actions and effects, though some kingdom cards will be placed directly in the regions.

On the other hand, the Faction Cards make up each player’s main deck. These cards possess Strength values for combat (from 0 to 11), passive traits, and actions that allow for tactical maneuvers; additionally, they indicate how many Votes they contribute to the Council or how many knowledge tokens they generate when discarded on a journey. These cards also show one or more symbols in their upper left area. Some will only be taken into account by effects from kingdom cards or tactic tiles, while others have specific associated effects that trigger under certain circumstances.

At the start of each round, players draw cards from their deck until they reach their hand limit, which is indicated on the Hand Size Marker. This marker functions as a dial that, normally, will be modified (reducing its value) whenever a player has to draw a card from their deck and it is empty, shuffling their discard pile (but reducing the number of cards they replenish their hand to at the start of future rounds).

To define each faction’s playstyle, players have four unique Tactic Tiles. These potent effects can turn the tide of a clash, although they are generally exhausted after use and must be reactivated through specific abilities, though some allow for multiple activations. Each tile indicates in which season of the round it can be activated.

Each player will have a set of Faction Markers to keep track of multiple uses on tactic tiles or to mark temporary effects on cards.

To intervene directly on the map, players use their wooden pieces. The Herald is the main piece; it is placed in specific locations during spring to secure influence rewards or steal resources from rivals located in the same place.

The Followers, on the other hand, are deployed to the regions generally to provide brute strength during summer clashes, but they will be discharged to the lost zone (a general discard pile) from which they can be recovered through certain effects to be used again in subsequent rounds.

The management of these conflicts relies on various markers. The Clash Markers (numbered I to III) are placed by the player who is last in turn order to decide the sequence in which the regions will be resolved.

Victory is measured through Influence Tokens, which represent accumulated victory points and also determine the position in the turn order at the start of each year. These are mainly earned by emerging victorious in clashes and activating a region, although many kingdom cards and faction cards will provide additional influence points.

For their part, Knowledge Tokens act as the currency needed to acquire advanced and headquarters cards from the Place of Power. These are mainly obtained by traveling, although they will also be earned through the effects of some kingdom cards.

At the start of each round, the turn order will be established, which will be of great importance when resolving actions in each of the seasons. For this, each player will have a Turn Order Marker.

Finally, the Favor of the Kingdom Marker is a coveted disc that grants access to a special action exclusive to each faction. In addition to its mechanical utility, possessing the favor is the definitive tie-breaker at the end of the game to claim the crown. Once obtained by a player, and as long as it is not taken away from them, this marker will allow them to activate their faction ability up to three times (in different years). If its use is exhausted, it returns to the corresponding region, whereas if it is claimed by another player, that player places it on their faction board at its maximum value.

That is enough to get started.

Setup

1. The game length is chosen from three options: Standard (5 rounds), Short (4), or Extended (6).
2. The Kingdom Board is placed in the center of the table and the Council Tile right above it.
3. All Kingdom cards are shuffled to form a deck and placed face down in the space to the left of the Great Road.
4. Three cards are drawn from the Kingdom deck and placed face up in the open spaces of the Great Road; additionally, the top card of the deck is flipped over so there is a total of four face-up cards.
5. A general supply is formed with the Influence and Knowledge tokens near the main board.
6. The Favor of the Kingdom disc is placed in the Harvest Field location.
7. The Season marker is placed on the Spring space and the Round marker on number 1 of the round track.
8. The three Clash markers are stacked in their corresponding space on the board, with marker III on the bottom and marker I on top.
9. Each player chooses a Faction (or it is determined randomly) and receives:
   • A personal board placed in their play area.
   • A Herald figure and five Follower figures placed in the indicated slots on their own board.
   • A hand size marker placed in the upper left notch of the faction board, aligning the initial size icon (6) with the arrow.
   • Four faction Tactic tiles placed in the lower space of the personal board with their “Unexhausted” side (the one with text) face up.
   • Ten faction markers set aside.
   • A Place of Power tile placed near each player’s board.
   • A faction card deck. Each player searches their faction deck for cards with a Knowledge cost (Advanced and Headquarters cards) and places them face up to form a pile on their Place of Power.
10. Each player looks for their Heir card (value 10) in the deck and adds it to their hand.
11. The rest of the faction deck is shuffled and placed face down to the left of the personal board; then, cards are drawn until a hand of six is completed.
12. The initial turn order is determined (by age or randomly) and the order markers are placed on the corresponding track.
13. The player in the first position of the order track receives the Active Player marker.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of The Old King’s Crown takes place over a set number of rounds (determined at the start of the game), with each representing a year in the game world. Each round is divided into five main phases.

Phase I: Start of the Year

This phase is skipped in the first round. In subsequent rounds, proceed as follows:

• Determine Turn Order. Players adjust the order marker according to their amount of Influence; the player with the most Influence goes first. In case of a tie, the previous order of the tied players is reversed.
• Draw Cards. All players simultaneously draw from their deck until they reach their hand limit. If a player must draw and their deck is empty, they suffer attrition: they shuffle their discard pile, create a new deck, and permanently reduce their hand limit by 1.

Phase II: Spring

In this phase, players prepare their presence on the map and acquire strategic resources.

First, players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and reveal it. Based on their Bidding Strength, and in descending order, they can choose one of three options:

Acquire a Kingdom Card. Take a card from the Great Road and occupy it with the bidding card, placing it in one of the two spaces on their personal board (if both spaces are occupied, they discard one of the dos cards, return the card that occupied it to their hand, and place the new kingdom card in the space and occupy it with the card used for the bidding).

Steal a Kingdom Card. If their strength is higher than that of a card already occupied by a rival, they can steal it. The rival returns the card that occupied it to their hand.

Retrieve the Card. The player returns the bidding card to their hand and does nothing.

After this, in turn order, each player places their Herald in a location on the map to vie for extra rewards.

Next, simultaneously, players place a card face down next to each of the three regions on the map. If a player does not have enough cards in hand, then this player must deploy their cards before the rest.

Finally, in turn order, players can activate any number of available spring actions and effects, including placing followers in the regions to provide strength in conflicts.

Phase III: Summer

First, the last player in turn order decides the resolution sequence of the three regions (I, II, and III) by placing the markers face down. Once they have placed all three markers, they reveal them.

Now, following this order, for each region, this sequence is followed:

• All cards assigned to the region are flipped face up.
• In turn order, players activate summer actions and effects from their active cards or tactics.
• All mandatory night phase effects (identified by hexagonal borders) are resolved simultaneously.
• The strength of the active cards, followers (+1 for each), and ability bonuses are added up. The player with the most strength wins the conflict. In case of a tie, the tied players add a new face-down card to the region. If at least two players add cards, the resolution of this region proceeds again from the beginning. If all tied players refuse to play a card, the region ends in a tie and the resolution of the clash ends at this step.
• The winner chooses one of the two locations in the region and gets its reward. If their Herald is there, they earn additional Influence (1 for the herald plus points for each vote symbol on cards they discard from the first space of the council board and can steal one point from each rival who has their herald in that same region).

The phase ends once all three regions have been resolved.

Phase IV: Autumn

In this phase, starting with the starting player and continuing in the established turn order, each player enjoys an action turn in which they can activate autumn actions and effects. The options that are always available are:

• Govern. The player places a card from their hand with Vote icons in one of the three Councils to obtain permanent and cumulative benefits.
• Travel. The player places a card from their hand into the Lost Pile to gain knowledge points according to its corresponding icons (unless the card has a map symbol, in which case it goes to the personal discard pile). At this moment, the player can immediately spend these knowledge points to acquire advanced cards (which go to the hand) or headquarters cards (which are placed horizontally, applying their effects) from their personal Place of Power.

The phase ends once all players have completed their action turn.

Phase V: Winter

Proceed as follows:

1. Mandatory effects for this phase are activated simultaneously.
2. Each player retrieves their Herald.
3. Followers on the map move to the Lost Pile.
4. Cards in the regions move to the personal discard pile (unless they have markers that allow them to remain, removing the markers).
5. The marker advances one space on the round tracker.

After this, a new round would begin.

Game End

The game ends at the close of the final round (depending on the chosen duration). Each player sums their accumulated influence points, adding one point for every two leftover knowledge tokens if they have no cards left on their place of power tile.

Variants

Solo Mode. The player faces the Simulacrum, an automated rival that uses Ambition and Plan decks to direct its actions. Unlike the basic mode, the Simulacrum does not use cards to bid, but rather bidding tokens with fixed strength values to occupy Kingdom cards. In each round, Ambition cards define its region and suit priorities, while Plans determine the deployment of its followers and the fog. This fog activates Threats that apply various effects in the affected regions. During the Spring phase, the Simulacrum deplies three cards from its deck organized by priority levels (Gold, Silver, or Bronze), which are visible by their backs. The Simulacrum does not have a hand of cards; any card obtained is placed directly on top of its deck. In the Councils, it competes using influence tokens instead of cards to gain presence. The player wins if they accumulate more points than it by the end of the rounds, with the ability to adjust the experience with forge cards that modify the difficulty.

Personal Opinion

I could start this opinion section by talking about the double-edged sword that expectations represent. When they are high, they often work against us by involuntarily setting the bar at a height that perhaps the designer didn’t even intend to reach, generating a certain frustration in the consumer.

Other times, conversely, they generate a very positive feeling when they are so low that as long as the game functions adequately, it will leave us with a sense of satisfaction more out of the unexpected than anything else. Yet another sign that impressions, especially first ones, are heavily conditioned by the context in which they are generated.

That is why, as a general rule, I prefer to go in blind to those first board game experiences. And the thing is, even if we try, it is hard to avoid establishing a level of requirement for a game based on the opinions of people whose judgment we hold a certain degree of trust in.

If, on top of that, the product in question receives a wave of positive comments, it will be very difficult not to go into that first game with, at least, the desire to see what the design has in store. And this is precisely what happened with The Old King’s Crown. A design that has been reaping great reviews and that many recommended to me. Now the time has come to put into writing what the game has conveyed to me.

In The Old King’s Crown, we are going to take control of a faction with a contender to the throne of a kingdom whose monarch passed away some years ago. And of course, seizing power in a kingdom is no simple task. Backstabbing, betrayals, or alliances will be the order of the day. Will you manage to anticipate your rivals’ intentions?

Mechanically, we find ourselves mainly with a game of blind bidding through simultaneous card selection. The game will play out over a set number of rounds (which players can adjust between four and six depending on whether they want the game to last more or less time). Each of those rounds will represent a year in the kingdom, which will be structured into four seasons.

Before briefly discussing what happens in each of these seasons, let’s focus on the most important component of the game: the faction card deck. Each player begins the game with an identical deck of cards with numerical values ranging from 0 to 10. These cards will also feature a series of additional symbols that come into play in different phases of the seasons depending on how they are used.

Players will be able to expand this deck by acquiring cards from a private reserve by paying one of the resources that players can obtain at certain times in the round, giving rise to a light deck-building mechanic. While it’s true that the game allows players to retrieve recently used cards, the usual flow will see a card pass to the discard pile after being used for its main intended purpose.

Another quirk of the game is what happens when cycling the deck. If a player has to draw a card—something that normally happens at the start of each year, when players draw cards up to their hand limit, initially six—and there are no cards left in it, the player will shuffle their discard pile to form the deck.

But, additionally, the player will see their hand limit reduced when performing this process, so the game urges participants to try not to deplete their deck, as this will reduce their room for maneuver since, as you will see below, in a year players can play six cards without having to resort to specific effects (potentially being more thanks to said effects).

Well, once this is understood, let’s talk about the flow of the game. The first season, spring, allows players to resolve the first of the blind bids that will happen during the year. The objective of this first blind auction is none other than to compete for turn order when choosing a kingdom card, which provide specific effects that players can enjoy while they are in possession of said card.

A first quirk of the game is that players can snatch these kingdom cards from their rivals, since the card used to bid not only serves to position oneself in the selection order, but it will remain occupying the kingdom card (as if we had sent that unit to conquer and protect that territory). Thus, in a later round, if a player reveals a card whose value is higher than the one occupying a kingdom card, that player can steal it instead of choosing one of those available in the supply.

After having decided what to do with each card, players will place their herald in one of the six locations (organized into three regions, two locations per region), deploy three of their cards to these regions (for another blind bid), and players, in turn order, will resolve spring actions, the most common being the deployment of followers that will function as bonuses for the cards.

We move on to summer, in which these three blind auctions will be resolved in the order chosen by the player who is furthest behind in the turn order. For each region, after revealing the cards played in the corresponding row, players resolve summer actions in turn order, most of which are on the cards themselves, allowing them to return to the hand, change regions, or play additional cards.

Once the summer actions are completed, night actions would activate, which are generally related to the elimination of cards, so they would not be taken into account for the resolution of the region. This resolution simply consists of calculating each player’s strength by adding the value of their card to that of their followers plus any possible modifiers that are applying. Whoever has a higher strength value will win the clash and can choose which of the two locations to activate, which will provide one or two influence points plus as many others as we can obtain if the victor has their herald in that location.

This procedure is applied in all three regions, after which we move to the autumn phase, where players will simply resolve autumn actions in the established turn order. Many of these actions will depend on the cards players have in hand, the special abilities of each faction, or kingdom cards. But there will always be two available: traveling (which allows discarding cards to obtain knowledge points to acquire new cards) and governing (which will allow placing cards in specific positions that will enable various effects).

Winter will be nothing more than a maintenance phase in which the cards played will move to the corresponding discard piles, heralds will be retrieved, followers will be discarded (must be recovered through some effect), winter effects will activate (if any), and the progress marker will advance.

And so on until completing the number of rounds agreed upon at the start of the game, at which point it will be checked which faction is worthy of seizing the kingdom’s crown by tallying the influence points accumulated during its course, adding points for leftover knowledge tokens if all the cards available in the faction’s private market have been acquired.

Well, now you have more than enough context. Do you remember that at the beginning of this opinion section I told you that the mechanical core of the game was blind auctions? Twelve paragraphs later, here we are, once again, corroborating that, in essence, it is a blind bidding game just like Mission: Red Planet could be, one of the most interesting designs by Bruno Faidutti alongside his namesake Bruno Cathala. Another comparable game could be Libertalia (here is its tocho-review) because of the simultaneous selection and that the value of the cards and the timing of the card effects matter.

And of course, if you know either of these two designs, you are surely wondering if all this paraphernalia of phases, effects, and asymmetries generates a much richer experience in terms of decision-making and nuances. The short answer, from my point of view, would be no. The long answer is, obviously, it depends.

The Old King’s Crown is either of these two designs on steroids. Right off the bat, we have four factions that, although they share the same starting deck, feature five unique abilities (one of them dependent on obtaining the kingdom marker by activating one of the available locations in a region) plus five specific cards that players can acquire through knowledge points.

Many will say that knowing how these factions work is essential to enjoying the gaming experience. And I’m going to agree with them completely. The problem is that we are talking about very specific effects that will be activated once (in the case of the tiles) or a few more times in the case of the cards.

Asymmetry in these games is usually absorbed through trial and error, either personally or by observing rivals. Witnessing the effects of each concept and, thus, gauging their consequences. But of course, the fact that an effect triggers only once per game and then we forget about it makes assimilation enormously difficult. So knowledge of the factions is almost reduced to having to play with them to see the full picture of the synergies that the different available effects allow.

Then we have the huge deck of kingdom cards, which generates a progressive asymmetry. I don’t think this concept is bad, and I think it would have suited the design better if it were the sole source of divergence when developing strategies. But of course, it compounds the issue by adding more information, this time progressively throughout the game.

Proof of this is the feeling of fatigue they generate, as in each round you have to read what options the new cards allow. As you might guess, I didn’t quite connect with the game; in all my matches, in advanced stages of them, when each player already had a relatively satisfactory combination of cards, we resolved the blind bidding phase for the kingdom cards with too much listlessness.

Let’s talk about the fundamental phase of the game, that is, summer. This is where the real action happens, and where the disappointment is truly consummated. And the thing is, so many options end up leading to a tremendously tactical and chaotic phase, where the chaining of effects ends up generating a continuous feeling of frustration when a player’s plans are thwarted.

It’s true that whoever manages to pull it off will feel like Machiavelli or Littlefinger (from Game of Thrones). You know, “Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And others, they’re given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.”

Petyr Baelish’s speech, which the screenwriters invented for the famous HBO adaptation (for those who don’t know, the chapters in the A Song of Ice and Fire books are narrated from the perspective of a specific character, and neither Petyr Baelish nor Varys, to whom he delivers this speech, have their own chapters in the novel corresponding to the events represented at that moment in the series), fits like a glove with what it feels like to play The Old King’s Crown.

The problem is that this is a board game, and in the end, you’re left with the feeling that achieving a small victory, especially in the opening rounds, is the result of an alignment of the stars rather than a carefully calculated plan. We will make decisions trying to minimize risks, but on many occasions, a player’s combination of effects will prove overwhelming.

If we knew all the factions inside out, would we have enough information to have better calculated all possible scenarios? Undoubtedly, but the question is whether it’s worth achieving such a high level of knowledge about a design that, in the end, boils down to blind auctions.

That is why I prefer designs like Libertalia or Mission: Red Planet, where similar situations also occur, but the information to manage is much more limited and there are no asymmetries, which allows for a somewhat more manageable calculation. Something that seems fundamental to me in a design of this type, because it would force players to have a similar level of game knowledge for there to be some tension. Otherwise, an expert player will likely crush novices.

Mind you, I don’t want this argument to serve as an excuse for why The Old King’s Crown isn’t a game for me. There are games with high asymmetry that require deep knowledge of it and where an imbalance in game experience ensures an imbalanced ending. And I love many of these designs, like Wir Sind Das Volk! (here is its tocho-review) or Twilight Struggle (here is its tocho-review).

My problem here is that we are dealing with a game that is, in my view, too finicky, with too many layers, effects, symbology, and elements that seem designed simply to counter other effects. A problem that can already be glimpsed from the explanation itself, making it difficult to keep the attention of new players since it is not easy to establish a common thread regarding all the options available in a round.

The level of chaos leads me to prefer how the game plays at two players, a configuration in which it is relatively easy to control what options the player has because you can see at a quick glance what cards they have locked in their kingdom cards and the council board. If you are interested in the game, the most affordable way to get to know it is to play two-player games until both contenders master all four factions. The problem is that this process needs to be carried out by another two players in parallel to be able to get together and enjoy the four-player experience. Too much effort for the reward I’ve obtained.

As for replayability, if you connect with the design, it includes a somewhat curious amount of material that can more or less ensure the development of games in which different strategies are taken. However, my feeling is that blind bidding dominates the matter too much, so, in the end, the feelings will be similar. At least, once the flow of the game has been absorbed, the rounds are resolved smoothly, barring crazy combos.

To close the thread opened at the beginning of this opinion section, although it’s true I had certain expectations for the game, they were along the lines of finding something that would surprise me for the better. I really didn’t expect anything mechanically that didn’t end up panning out later. Simply put, a game of these characteristics, with a non-trivial conceptual load, is just not worth it for me. I don’t enjoy them, just as I don’t enjoy cooperative games or long-duration wargames.

Let’s move on to production, one of the most striking aspects of the package. We find cardboard elements of good thickness and pressing, cards of adequate weight, smooth texture, and an interesting snap (I don’t see it necessary to sleeve because the cards are hardly shuffled and aren’t held in hand for that long), and wooden elements with original shapes and printed outlines. The rulebook could perhaps be better structured and generates quite a few doubts at least in a first game, although it is true that the reference sheets help a lot.

Visually, the game is stunning. It’s true that the deployment of components is a bit awkward and the collage of images that is formed can become overwhelming, preventing one from enjoying the wonderful work of the author himself, with that baroque style that is quite dark for what is usually common when a game is set in a medieval-fantasy world. The pity is that all this work fails to generate any narrative, which is what one would expect. I understand that there are games with a high conceptual load seeking to implement certain aspects in search of generating a narrative, but beyond specific moments of some surprising play, it will be difficult to tell the story of what happened in the game.

And let’s wrap this up. The Old King’s Crown presents itself as a baroque and excessively overloaded proposition that attempts to elevate a blind bidding system through an amalgam of asymmetrical layers and chained effects. Faction card management and the fight for turn order are marred by a resolution phase that, far from rewarding long-term planning, drifts into a tactical chaos where plans crumble in the face of unpredictable and overwhelming interaction. The flow of the seasons seeks to provide depth but ends up burying decision-making under a volume of progressive information that generates more mental fatigue than intellectual satisfaction. Although the deck-building system and hand limit management propose suggestive ideas on paper, their practical execution feels clunky and lacks a common thread. In the end, the feeling that victory depends on a fortuitous alignment of the stars turns the experience into an exercise in frustration more than anything else (although for whoever pulls it off, it feels satisfying). It is a design that suffers from its own ambition, offering a heavy conceptual load for a mechanical core that fails to shine amidst so much noise. For all these reasons, I give it an…