Board Game Pizza – The r/italy games club

Welcome wandering souls to this new episode of Board Game Pizza, the cyclical thread on board games and RPGs.

Whether you are an experienced player or a novice or someone who knows nothing about this world, you are welcome.

I would like this thread to be used to make small reviews, ask for opinions or advice, even clarifications on an unclear part of the rules or why not, look for companions for a DnD campaign or to play some online board games.

Don’t be afraid to ask, the expert players are here to help and if I can, in my small way I will try to help too.

GAME OF THE MONTH

The king is dead

When I saw the new reprint of The King is dead by Studio Supernova I immediately jumped on it.

It’s one of those games that is deceiving at first: you look at it, think “this is simple”, then find yourself sweating over every single decision. It’s a control and influence title set in medieval Britain, after the death of the king. The throne is vacant, three factions – English, Scots and Welsh – are competing for power, and we players are not one of these factions, but ambiguous nobles trying to side with the one destined to prevail at the right time.

During the game you play on a map divided into eight regions. In each there are cubes of the three colors, which represent the presence of the factions. On my turn I can play one of the only eight cards I have for the entire game — and each one allows you to move cubes from one region to another, swap them, add them or manipulate the order in which crises will resolve. After playing a card, I must remove a cube from the board: that cube goes into my personal supply and indicates the faction to which I am gaining personal influence. When all players decide to pass, the next region is “resolved”: you look at which faction has the majority of cubes and that gets control of the territory; in the event of a tie, chaos ensues and the throne totters, with the possibility of foreign forces gaining the upper hand.

What makes the game brilliant is the constant balance between supporting a faction and not weakening it too much. If I collect too many blue cubes because I want the English to win, I am also taking away influence from the board, and risk them becoming too weak to dominate subsequent regions. It’s a subtle and constant tension: you want “your” side to win, but you can’t openly help them for too long. Everything is visible, but the intentions are opaque: every move communicates something and, like in a silent chess game, everyone tries to understand who is working for whom.

The feeling at the table is tense, controlled, almost cerebral but never cold. There are long moments of silence where everyone calculates, then one player plays a card and the table tenses, because you know that single move will change the game. There is no luck, just timing, reading others and perfect management of the few cards available. The second edition also adds “Cunning cards”, which introduce asymmetrical special powers: small variations that make each game different and give more personality to the strategies.

After playing it several times, the feeling it leaves is that of a dry but very dense game: in less than an hour you experience an elegant, ruthless and incredibly balanced power struggle. You feel like a manipulator rather than a conqueror, a strategist who must choose the exact moment to move. It’s a game that rewards those who can read the table and those who can restrain themselves, and every time you put it back on the table you discover a new nuance in how to influence the kingdom without ever getting your hands openly dirty.