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Let me take you to a land far away, Tessandor. It was a land held together by the strength and courage of the King. When the King failed to return from battle, the enemies seized the opportunity and have since tried to take over the Kingdom. You, as a hero, have received a letter from the Queen and she has tasked you to organise the heroes of the land to help keep Tessandor safe.
The story in By Order of The Queen could easily be adapted to fit a Games of Thrones or Lord of the Rings story, but where that is dark and bleak this is the opposite. Bright Colours and cute, yet evil looking monsters, mean this is a co-op game that plays 2-4 players in just over an hour, and is suitable for all ages.
Lay of the Land
The box art for By Order of The Queen is fantastic and the spot gloss really is a great look. When placed on a shelf next to my other games it does really stand out. The contents are equally impressive and the production quality (Kickstarters are really are upping there game recently) is excellent.
You get a game board, several decks of cards, tokens and dice. The cards all have varying art work on them and even the writing on the cards (some lore, some missions) is very well-worded and fits the theme well.
To play the game, first you need to lay out the board and tokens before sorting the decks out. The decks all have different backs which makes this easy and the rule book, again includes that great art throughout, has brilliant coloured pictures that aid the set up. The game board has several spots where you put cards and again this is made easy by the corresponding art work.
The game is played until victory conditions are met or until the enemies have met certain conditions. On a player’s turn, you have three steps to take:
- Action - Here you will take on a quest to try and win rewards, fulfill the Queen's order, fight against the ever-growing Horde or fight against a Nemesis (when a card is in play).
Questing - Here you will draw two cards and choose one to be your active quest, you then assemble a team of Heroes to take on this quest. The Heroes cards have icons (attributes) on them that match attributes on the Quest card. Matching these symbols make rolling a dice test easier, so selecting a card and Heroes that have matching symbols is a good idea.
Fulfil the Queen's Order - Here, if there are no Nemesis cards in play, you must assemble a team of Heroes and attempt to fulfil the Queen's order by drawing a location card and rolling a test against the attribute on that card in the same way as you would on a quest.
Fight against the Horde - Assemble a team of four heroes and fight against the monster cards at the bottom of the board. Matching attributes again is key here.
Fight against the Nemesis - This is only available when a nemesis card is available. Here you again assemble up to four Heroes and do a combat test.
- End of Turn - Now you discard any Heroes in your party. Gain rewards if quests have been completed and collect rewards. You move the moon track (this tracks the event phase which happens once every four turns) and if it moves off the full moon it returns to the quarter moon and the event phase happens. If not the next player takes there turn.
- Event phase - Here there are 11 steps that are completed in a certain order. Things like Nemesis are spawned, their abilities used and monsters also appear.
Above is just a basic and quick run through of what can be done on a person’s turn and what things may happen in the event phase. By Order of The Queen has surprising depth and you will have to play through it a dozen times to see all the quest cards and enemies.
Final Thoughts on By Order of The Queen
The art style is fantastic, as is the production quality, but aside from all this what does the game offer? With the art being very colourful I believed this to be a game aimed at kids.... boy was I wrong.
By Order of The Queen is very in-depth and engaging, you always feel as if you are in control and this is great considering you are only governed by what cards you draw. The game does this by offering multiple choices along the way, so even though luck of the draw is a big part (including dice rolls) you always feel that it’s down to you what happens. This makes the game great for gamers of all ages, kids will love it as they get involved in the lore and story, and adults will really enjoy trying to out-think the deck of cards and its monsters.
Being a co-op game, I expected this to suffer like co-op games do and allow one player to take control and lead the game. This does not happen here; each player has their own heroes and quests so even though you are all working towards the same goal, each player has things they must achieve to gain victory for the team.
With the rule book being one of the best looking I have seen in a while you soon get to grips with what is a simple game with hidden depth. The added pages of back story and information on things from the guilds, monsters and optional rules means it’s a game that you can get lost in for hours and one I hope the guys at Junk Spirit Games revisit sometime soon.
If I had to mention a downside it would be that By Order of The Queen can be unforgiving, sometimes you can lose a game quickly if you don’t have a good draw of cards coupled with bad rolls. This however doesn’t happen often and with the quick set-up you will be soon set to go again.
