Coiledspring Games Kingdomino Duel+Game

Product Information

Kingdomino Duel is easy to play for families enjoying other Blue Orange classic award winning board games like Photosynthesis, Planet, New York 1901. Kingdomino Duel is a dedicated two-player game based on the bigger box tile laying games, Kingdomino and Queendomino. Most of which are simply because, IMO, Duel suffers greatly when compared to the original Kingdomino. Sure, there’s an element of luck to the tile game, but the variance of this one makes Weirdly Bad games a possibility that the tile game doesn’t allow. There aren’t always enough chances to gain a scoring cross (see that dice rolling curse again) to waste one.

I still recommend the original over the others in the series because it captured the perfect balance of light rules overhead, thinky decisions, quick play time, and lovely aesthetics. You can try to leave certain spaces on your sheet open in the hope that something will pan out for future turns, but who knows whether or not the dice gods will be kind.

While only one of the spells give you straight up points, many of the others can be really strong in the right situations. A lot of this game is figuring out when it’s best to focus on your needs and when it’s best to dump on your opponent. Every time you add a coat of arms without a cross to the map, fill in the corresponding square in the spellbook. You’re trying to accomplish the same goal (have terrain/icon types next to each other with crowns/crosses in them to score). After players have marked their dominoes in their kingdom as well as marking spaces in the Spellbook, another turn begins.

The new twist however is that the 2 players get to build their own “dominoes” from the dice pool rolled at the start of each round. It looked so inconsequential, so simple, that I was afraid it would be more of a children’s game than something I could enjoy. KIDS, FAMILY OR ADULT STRATEGY GAME: This 2 player fantasy game can be enjoyed by a parent playing with their child as well as two adults. Each player in Kingdomino: Duel starts off with an identical kingdom sheet, with the spell book sheet placed between them.In the original, it was always a matter of time before the higher value lands were played on the table. Both our 7 and 5 year old absolutely love to play the original Kingdomino so we gave them each a few cracks at this one.