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Top 5 Queen Board Games

top 5 queen games feature

This month, our top 5 is somewhat inspired by the Platinum Jubilee for Queen Elizabeth II. Now, I am going to enjoy the June bank holiday with a whole bunch of board games. And one of the publishers that I think is most appropriate to look into is Queen Games. There’s no convenient publisher anniversary as there was for Stonemaier or Pandasarus this time around. Instead, there’s a loose inspiration to spotlight a publisher who has provided us with a great number of games to play for as long as I’ve been alive! 

Easily recognisable by their bright yellow banner, Queen may be recognisable to you as the publisher of Alhambra, one of the classic tile placement games provided to new gamers, originally in 1992 but rereleased in 2003 to win the Spiel Des Jahres. It’s an iconic franchise with all the various expansions and big boxes it has spawned. It isn’t one of our top five. However, it’s worthy of an honourable mention, something which helped launch the ship. God save the Queen (Games) and let’s see the blogger's top five.

PioneersNeil Proctor

I love Western-themed games. Especially ones that deal with the great journeys people took travelling from the east to west coast trying to make their fortune and start their new lives in the ‘New World’. Pioneers gives 2 to 4 players that epic feeling of a great and prosperous endeavour in less than 60 minutes.

The board is mostly a giant map of North America with lots of locations you can visit to utilise the pioneers you are carrying in your coaches. Each pioneer has a special ability which is either a one-time or ongoing bonus. The clever trick with this game is all players share the stagecoach that moves around the board. Therefore on your turn, you have control of where the stagecoach ends its movement but not on the other player's turns.

Turns are fairly simple with just 3 actions to take, firstly you collect income, make a single purchase of either a road, double road or new coach, then move the stagecoach along roads by paying the owner of the road. The stagecoach will stop its journey when it reaches a space with a pioneer tile. Then you replace the tile with a pioneer from your coach that matches it and completes the action relevant to that type of pioneer.  Actions range from the Gold Digger who will take a gold nugget at random, a Hotel which just provides income, a Farmer who can have 3 of your pioneers placed on this space, a Barkeep who removes a pioneer from one of your coaches, and a Sergeant which gives you the ability of placing another road or doubling up on someone else’s road.

The game is quick, there are plenty of ways to score, there is no downtime and the rules are easy to understand and it looks brilliant on the table. The component quality is very high and the meeples shaped like cowboys are adorable. I highly recommend this game.

Escape the Curse of the Temple - Thom Newton

I quite like a strategic game where you have to plan your moves several turns ahead to cut your path through the gameplay landscape. Anticipating the ways the play state is most likely change and how you can use these projected changes to your advantage to best your opponents and rise to the top.

Escape: Curse of the Temple is not that. Like, at all. This is a madcap dash through a temple. Players must simultaneously roll their dice as fast as they can to try and explore and then escape the titular temple. You’ve got to work as fast as you can to build out the temple, lock in gems and then get back out in under 10 minutes. You’ll be franticly looking for whatever rolls you need but you’ll be walking that tightrope of not rolling black masks which lock your dice and reduce your options.

Players can help each other out to try and reactivate these dice, or even work together to roll the symbols needed to properly activate a room. But if you stick together, you’re not going to get the chance to explore as much as you need and you’re going to get locked in the temple when the 10 minutes are up.

It is such a fast and exciting experience. It'll have you wildly talking all over each other to try and help each other when you need it and let each other know where the critical parts of the temple are. It also has some additional modules in the box that allow you to up the challenge if you need it. The only major downside is that the game needs a CD player which meant I had to dig one out of a drawer so I could play it. Still definitely worth it!

MerlinNick Welford

One of the first things you learn in modern board gaming is that roll and move games are bad. Essentially, it is rolling a dice and moving that many spaces on a board. Monopoly is the most well-known example of this. It’s hated because it removes player choice and assigns their fate to the gods of luck. So here is the thing - maybe you'd even call Merlin a roll and move.

I get it. You roll dice and move your knight or Merlin around a central circle. In board game terms, this circle is known as a rondel. There are a couple of rules that elevate this from being a bog-standard roll and move. Firstly, you roll three dice of your colour and one white die. On your turn, you will choose to move your knight clockwise with one of your coloured dice, or Merlin in either direction with your white die.

Every player has a white Merlin die. It may be better to wait for another player to move Merlin first as it might change your options. These elements turn the luck of roll and move into a whole different affair filled with decisions, bluff and risk.

Action spaces you land on with your knight or Merlin can lead to power plays and mini-games. All of which have fairly high interaction with the other players. We've seen these mechanics before. Though they work very well together, the highlight for me is using my dice to achieve my ends. Although I cannot plan my strategy, I love the challenge of reacting to the dice and adjusting my plans in the most efficient way!

CopenhagenFavouritefoe

I have never been to Copenhagen. But after playing this game, I have a real hankering to see this watery city and its colourful canal-side houses!

If you haven’t played it yet, Copenhagen is an easy to learn, hard to master tile-laying game. You’re charged with designing a new façade for your waterfront building. And you do this by stacking up colourful polyomino tiles, Tetris style, trying to make complete rows and columns.

But you don’t just get to go polyomino picking. Firstly, you have to buy the tiles you want from the common pool with the corresponding number of colour-coordinated façade cards. On your turn, you can only choose 2 façade cards at a time. Each of which has to be adjacent to the other!

So each turn is a choice between acquiring cards (up to the maximum hand size of 7) or buying and placing polyominos. And whilst each completed row or column scores, the bigger points come when you can create a row or column made entirely of windows. The game ends when the end-of-game card appears in the draw pile and then the points are totted up.

There are some handy special powers to help you along the way too. These are triggered when you lay a polyomino over a shield symbol on a specific square or complete a row with one printed on the edge.  And they are handy! They include being able to pick up a bonus single-window tile, taking an extra card, or treat a colour in your hand as wild, or even pick up cards that aren’t adjacent to each other. You can also use your ability to revive special powers previously acquired. And if you can place a polyomino that matches the colour of one adjacent to it, the cost to lay the new tile decreases by one card.

If you like puzzly tile placement games that are quick to play and easy to learn, Copenhagen could be one for you!

Kingdom Builder - Luke Pickles

Alhambra might be Queen Game’s flagship franchise, but for me, the top of the heap is Kingdom Builder. Kingdom Builder is a game where players are placing down little wooden houses on one of the five different terrain types to try and satisfy the three different point-scoring opportunities. As the game goes on, you can pick up bonus powers which let you play more of your pieces on the board. The game end is triggered when one player has less than 3 pieces left. Sounds pretty straightforward, no? Well yes and no. 

The gameplay is very simple but the terrain you are placing on will depend on the card you drew on your turn. If you drew a desert, you’ve got to place on a desert. If you then draw a grassland, onto the grassland your pieces must go. HOWEVER! You are always placing, if possible, adjacent to one of your previously placed pieces.

Beyond that, there is a ton of replayability within the base game, with the gameboard made up of any four of the eight included to create a nice rectangle. These boards can be turned upside down put into different configurations and create a fresh experience every time. On top of that, you have 10 different objectives which you can pop out three every game. Kingdom Builder has a special place in my heart. It was one of the first games I played with my now fiancée which really cemented her love and enjoyment of board games. 

Simple enough to pick up easily but complex enough to keep us coming back for more. There’s even a big box and a whole bunch of expansions for you to explore.