The Tao of Gaming

The Amigo rules have a "tip" which implies that you can roll dice from the Bishop, etc. as part of your first turn roll, which BSW has implemented. This was not my intent and contrary to what my submitted rules stated.

Shortly after UK&K's publication, Amigo contacted me to clarify this point. I don't know what official errata, if any, has been issued by Amigo, but this was an error in translation, not a deliberate change on their part.

Rio Grande is working from my original rules in preparing the forthcoming English version of UK&K, "To Crown a King".

Going for lots of dice in UK&K is certainly strong, but often loses in the final roll-off to a player who has one fewer die but better control cards. How many control cards and when do you take them is subject to group think; some groups push the pace faster than others.

The Feldherr (Warlord)'s two extra dice to roll *is* a potent lure, but if someone simply goes for six dice as fast as possible to get a chance for it, they will often fail to obtain it due to lack of control, further complicating the decision of when to push for dice versus control cards.

One approach is to use your "double turn" when going last and then first to take a control card and then use it to obtain a dice card on your second turn.

A player who has already "lost" a turn due to getting a Jester faces more pressure to get the Feldherr to make up lost ground, but can afford to play for variance more freely than other players, since a complete failure will produce a Charlatan die.

The final two complicating issues in all this are that some control cards work better in combination with each other and that being the first to claim the King has its advantages as well. Often, the first time you roll six of a kind, you also roll a seven of a kind: do you take the King or the Warlord?

I'm glad you are enjoying the game. One of the design challenges I faced with it was making it robust both in the face of different play styles and someone who just gets plain unlucky early on.

Your Warlord variation is interesting. I'm by no means convinced it is needed, though.

Well, as long as we're talking about it...

I think the Bishop is too easy to get, and the Hoffdam and Edelman are essentially the same, so taking one or the other is kind of a coin toss. As much as I think the game is exactly the right length, I sometimes wish it would go on longer, just so I could explore more card combinations. As it is, in a 3+ player game, I've rarely seen anyone with 2 non-dice cards have much of a chance, which is a shame. Unless, as you said, group-think allows everyone to get 2 non-dice cards. (I'm not counting the Queen here, by the way) 3 non-dice cards..? Can't imagine you'd have any hope. And because of this, the Zaurauber (sp?) is almost never used as anything other than another Astronomer - I don't know why this bugs me, but it does.

Having said that, I really like the game - liked it as Royal Advancement, have played it 66 times as UK&K.

Possible Expansion Cards...

Modified Feldherr: gives you two dice, but after 1st roll, you must return any 1 die back to card. Or, you could treat it like a die-card: two dice on it (set to no number). Can't come out for 1st roll. When used, both dice are added to next roll, but any one die must go back on card afterwards.

Modified Edelmann: Allows you to add and/or subtract 1 to any number of rolled dice. If that's too powerful... but at the cost of having to add a "locked" die to the next roll (i.e. rerolling a die you've already put aside).

Modified Astronomer: allows you to match one rolled die to another *rolled* die, not one that's "locked." This would also give the Zaurauber a little bump, as it would now be the only "real" Astronomer. Plus, the choice of going for the small straight (and not X of a kind) might be more interesting.

New Character: after you've set aside at least three dice, you can, after you roll, "clear your board" - bring all "locked" dice into the current roll, set at least one aside (as normal), and then roll all remaining dice.

Hi Dave, glad you're enjoying the game!

I agree with your overall point that having more divergent routes (than X of a kind) to obtaining more dice would be a Good Thing, but I disagree with you that the Bishop is the right place to do this.

The Bishop is certainly quite powerful, given the ease of getting it. And, you can often try for the Warlord (Feldherr) and then abort to the Bishop if your dice don't cooperate. I think this is a desirable property.

Two of my overall design principles are: provide interesting choices/hard decisions (as a corollary, remove false decisions) and reduce player frustration.

In a dice rolling game, you are already courting player frustration -- since sometimes, a player will simply get unlucky. So, there are a lot of places in UK&K where I've made various design decisions to handle the case where a player has fallen behind due to bad luck.

One of them is to try to provide some catch-up. The Jester/Charlatan is part of this story, but only a part, since otherwise, a player who falls behind would be permanently behind either a die or ~1/2 a control card (the Jester) relative to the other players. So, one of the reasons the Warlord exists is to provide catch-up (I'm not thrilled about Brian's proposed variant because I think it weakens this).

(Another reason the Warlord exists is texture; having to think about the Warlord as the game progresses means that UK&K doesn't just feel like "more of the same" as you work up from Group I to V; instead you have to think about Group IV differently than Groups II and III and decide how rapidly you want to advance to Group IV. The Astronomer is a very good control card in Group II, which is fairly easy to get, to sharpen the choice between going for rapid dice advancement and stopping to grab a control card.)

So, suppose a player is behind on dice due to having taken more control cards than the other players (we'll tackle the Jester case below), and then single-mindedly obtains dice and now has six dice to roll/bring into play. Further suppose that the only dice card below Group IV left that his player doesn't own is the MoneyLender (Pfandleiher); this can be tricky to get on six dice if one is going for six 3s, say, to make use of a Hunter (Jaeger).

To catchup, this player tries for a Warlord. If he or she fails -- getting four 3s and two 5s after using control cards, say -- and the rules were different so that this can't buy a Bishop, tplayer frustration occurs ("I'm behind on dice, so I'm trying to catch-up, and now I'm even further behind. Stupid game."). By often being able to abort to a Bishop, a player can stay in the game and hope that a Warlord will still be available next turn.

And the Bishop is a very good card to have when trying for the Warlord (or King), since going for 6s with seven dice enables an easy abort to the Moneylender if the dice don't cooperate and you believe you still need more dice.

But, of course, the rub in any such catch-up scheme is whether it becomes a "rich-gets-richer" mechanism as well.

Suppose the leading player has six dice and the Astronomer and comes down to 3-3-3-3 (set aside) and 4-5 (just rolled) when trying for the Warlord. This player could use the Astronomer to make the 4 or 5 into a 3 and then take a 1/6 shot at getting the Warlord. Typically, this player will either take a second control card or use the Astronomer to pair up the 4 or 5 and take a Bishop. Having the Bishop as a easy "fail-safe" deters this player from taking a final 1/6 shot for the Warlord (and 1/6 shots do come in, sometimes!). So, this feature tends to preserve Warlords for players who either have more control cards left (and thus are more likely to take a higher % shot) or for players who are way behind and willing to go for a high variance, low odds chance.

For example, consider the player who has six dice and a Jester and gets down to 3-3-3-3 (set aside) and 4-5 (just rolled). Why not use the Jester and reroll one of these dice? You have only a 1/36 chance of getting the Warlord but you also have an additional 10/36 chance of getting a Bishop. And, if you fail, your Jester turns into a Charlatan giving you a seventh die, which keeps you in the game. (Some outcomes will also give you a choice between a decent control card and keeping the Jester or taking the Charlatan.)

So, that's a long answer as to why the Warlord and Bishop were designed the way they are. Does this make sense?

Now, hopefully, UK&K will succeed well enough that an expansion can be put out. And, in the expansion (with some custom dice) that I'm currently playtesting, there's another dice card in Group IV: the Aristocrat, which requires a pair of 4s, a pair of 5s, and a pair of 6s to claim and which gives an extra 4,4,5,5,6,6 custom die to roll. Does this seem interesting?

The approach to making the game longer used in my proposed expansion is to add more unique Group V characters (Prince, Princess, Chancellor, Steward, etc.) as well. The King is still seven in a row to claim, but players may decide to hold off on claiming it to take one of these characters first, to gain improved chances in the final roll-off...

Brian, hmmm... I mostly try not to discuss play strategy for my games in much detail as I think most players want to discover strategies for themself and that I, as designer, shouldn't bias this too much.

The Serving Maid (Disentmagd) and Philosopher exist mostly as alternatives to the Jester, as you surmise. But, if I'm going last (about to take two turns in a row) in a non 2-player game, I sometimes take the Serving Maid on my first turn and then a dice card on my second. If you're aiming for more 4s, 5s, or 6s, the Serving Maid is 2/3 an Astronomer and often more flexible when combined with the Alchemist in the end-game. This isn't as good a combo as Wizard/Alchemist, but I get to use the Serving Maid in the meantime.

(Wizard and Alchemist tends to be much stronger than Astronomer and Alchemist in the end game. That's where the subtle differences between the Wizard and Astronomer show up the most.)

I've seen a starting Philospher win before, but I think it's often wasted until you have five or six dice. The counter-argument is that Philosopher and Astronomer together are two easy to get control cards that synergize well when making N-of-a-kind and will often enable you to get a Warlord as soon as you get six dice. If other players are taking either just dice or only one control card and are often failing to get the Warlord on their first try, then this strategy can work.

The balance of dice versus control cards is partly group think.

In my experience with "dice-centric" strategies, all dice often loses to one control card and dice. Two control cards and the Warlord will typically beat one control card and no Warlord. Two control cards and no Warlord will often lose to the all dice player. Scissors-Paper-Rocks, where much depends on the actual timing and, of course, luck. The two player game is somewhat different from the three and four player game, though, due to better fall back plans involving still available Group I dice cards in the two player game and more contention for the Group II-IV cards.

I like Player 2 in that situation.

In any case, after another half dozen games I'm still mellowing on the Warlord. I mean, I wouldn't turn it down, but I'm seeing plenty of games where he doesn't win, but keeps it close. I just had a BSW game where my opponent got hofnarr'ed early on, and I got a die, then rolled two pair to grab the astronomer. I could practically hear "Noooo!!!" from across the continent. But he grabbed dice and took the luck shot at the Warlord and got it. I still won, but it wasn't a sure thing after the first set of rolls, and I rolled perfect against a crap out. That's impressive.

I'm quite happy as player 2 to take the astronomer, and then just grab as many dice as possible. The other controls aren't as good (in that you don't have them for the early game to make your rolls safer). Although, your point about the serving maid is well taken.

In any case, I'm personally a "One control card" player, although if I stumble into the Hoffdame (+1 to any dice) then the Edelmann (+2 to any dice) is a strong pickup.