Board Game Arena

Hello,

This is a general suggestion for an alternate rule. Kingdom Builders is a game generally build on strategy with a little bit of luck. If luck is bad, you can end up getting a bad card multiple times in a row. Regardless of how well you play your first move, there is a chance you get extremely unlucky, particularly if you are the last player in a 3 or 4 player game.

Instead of it potentially ruining the chance of one person winning (which unfortunately happens quite frequently with cards), I propose that an alternate rule be added to optionally allow a player to choose between two cards. This rule, completely optional, should cut down on times when a player simply gets unlucky, preserving the strategic nature of the game.

If this rule is selected, each player is dealt two cards instead of one. Upon choosing one card the other is discarded and then two news cards are drawn. Since there are 25 cards, there are more than enough to ensure a player will always have two.

No. The restriction is fundamental to the game's design. If players always have a choice between 2 cards, the game becomes so loose there's little point having any restriction at all.

It is unlikely that the license BGA has obtained from Queen would in any case permit altering the game so drastically.

nandblock wrote: ↑30 August 2020, 05:09 No. The restriction is fundamental to the game's design. If players always have a choice between 2 cards, the game becomes so loose there's little point having any restriction at all.

It is unlikely that the license BGA has obtained from Queen would in any case permit altering the game so drastically.

This.

The single card IS the game. Make the best of each draw.

Also, one of the token powers from one of the expansions is exactly this, so once the expansions get added (which I hope will happen!) it would break that power to have that happening by default.

Our house variant was just _almost_ this: preserve a little choice by having the _initial_ draw be 2 cards, with one played. Subsequent turns are still draw one, play one (of the two in your hand). The only caveat is that if a drawn card is the same as the one in your hand, you may discard and re-draw until they're distinct. This makes it a bit more strategic without cycling the deck much faster.

What expansion has "exactly this" power?

pjz wrote: ↑14 October 2020, 03:19
What expansion has "exactly this" power?

Crossroads I think. (Without your caveat)

nandblock wrote: ↑30 August 2020, 05:09 It is unlikely that the license BGA has obtained from Queen would in any case permit altering the game

Forget the "so drastically" part. BGA's licenses do not allow for house rules. Variants are generally included in the base rules, or a thread on BoardGameGeek that the designer/publisher has agreed with.

This game has chance built into it. There is no question about that. A good player minimizes (but does not eliminate) what chance will do to one's opportunity to win.

The law of large numbers says that the more that you use a random event the less impact those random events have on the overall course of the game. In Monopoly (or here at BGA, Rallyman GT) one rolls the dice alot. This balances out the luck factor, even though it might seem that when the result of the game hinges on just one roll of the dice, then the entire game pivots on just one roll. But when there is alot of dice rolling that is not the case.

The appearance of the luck factor in Kingdom Builder is that over the course of a game, one only draws 8-12 cards, a relatively small number of random events.

IF there were to be a rule change, I would recommend that starting on turn 3, each player could ONE time during the game discard the card drawn and draw another.

But allowing a player to choose a specific card would change the complexion of the game well beyond what the designer intended.

The game I just played, a guy complained about getting the same card 3-times-in-a-row at the start, and then went on to win by 30 points.

If you get the same card at the start then it's very likely you complete the little area you start in and can then move to the other side of the board, which is normally quite advantageous - you'll get to more bonus tiles and/or castles.

So there are ways to minimise this luck factor, or to actually play to it's strengths.

RicardoRix wrote: ↑17 November 2020, 13:30 The game I just played, a guy complained about getting the same card 3-times-in-a-row at the start, and then went on to win by 30 points.

If you get the same card at the start then it's very likely you complete the little area you start in and can then move to the other side of the board, which is normally quite advantageous - you'll get to more bonus tiles and/or castles.

So there are ways to minimise this luck factor, or to actually play to it's strengths.

Getting same card 3 times in row is in general super bad, of course in some cases its less bad but overall you don't want it.