blue orange games

November Daily Game Challenge: Kingdomino: Age of Giants

This is Day 14 of my Game-and-Blog-Every-Day-in-November Challenge. Search my blog for “Daily Game Challenge” for previous entries.

Kingdomino: Age of Giants

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Got to try the new Kingdomino expansion, Age of Giants, tonight. My buddy Jeff introduced me to Queendomino (basically, a more gamer-y version of Kingdomino) last year, so it seemed appropriate that he introduced me to Age of Giants at game night.

In both games you’re building your 5×5 kingdom using the domino-style tiles. The tiles are laid out in two columns so after you take one, you place your meeple on the tile of your choice in the next column. Turn order will fluctuate as you and your opponents go for different tiles.

To score points you want similar land types next to each other and you’ll need the crown icon on at least one of them to score. The crowns act as a multiplier, so if I had three forest spaces grouped together and there were a total of two crowns on them, then I’d score 3 x 2 for 6 points.

In Queendomino there’s an additional type of land where you can construct buildings from a common pool and you’ll use knights to generate income. They’re simple additions to the game, but it give it a bit more depth than Kingdomino.

The Age of Giants adds two additional types of tiles: those with giants on them and those with footprints on them. If you take one with a giant, then you have to put a giant meeple on one of your crowns, thus eliminating its scoring potential. However, you can take a tile with footprints on it and that allows you to move that giant to someone else’s kingdom. It’s fun piece of take-that that adds some player interaction.

After playing this I immediately added it to my Amazon wish list. Whether you play it with Queendomino or Kingdomino, Age of Giants is a good expansion for a great (and growing) set of games.

Every Night Is Game Night: Dragon Run

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Technically, my Every Night Is Game Night: My Daily Play & Blog Challenge is over, but I missed a few days so I’m writing about other games I played during May. This is post no. 30, so I’ll write one more and consider my quest completed. What are you playing these days? Tweet me and let me know!

Dragon Run has a special spot in my gaming heart: it was the first game I played with my current gaming group nearly two years ago. We played a five-player game and two of us still attend the game night weekly, while the others stopped showing up due to relocation and new work schedules.

Last year around my one-year anniversary of being a part of the group I asked the owner of the game to bring it in. It was fun revisiting a blast from the past, especially with one of the O.G.s (Original Gamers) that I knew.

Dragon Run is a fast, push-your-luck card game of grabbing treasure in a dungeon before a dragon wakes up to burn you to a crisp. The dungeon is a deck of 10 cards: nine of them direct you to take an action or stop, the 10th is the fire-breathing dragon. Each player has two hit points, so you hope to only see that dragon once on your turn. You’ll also have a special ability specific to your character.

In addition to collecting treasures, you’ll get potions and artifacts that help fend off the monster. Any time the dragon shows up, the dungeon deck is reshuffled and the hunt continues until only one player remains or if the dragon is done breathing its fire. In this latter case, the player with the most treasure wins.

I’ll never turn down a game of Dragon Run, if only because it reminds me of my gaming past. It was the reason why I couldn’t resist buying my own copy when I found it at Gamex 2017 a few weeks ago.