This review continues my series of detailed reviews. I have tried to cover every aspect of the expansion and as such you may prefer to skip to the sections of most interest.
Image Courtesy of spayne
Summary
Game Type – Euro Game
Play Time: 80-120 min
Number of Players: 2-5
Mechanics – Dice Rolling, Role Selection, Resource Allocation
Difficulty – Pick-up & Play (Can be learned in under 20 minutes and takes only 2-3 plays to fully grasp)
Components – Excellent
Release Date - 2009
Designer(s) -
<PERSON> ( Hyperborea, Kingsburg, Kingsburg: To Forge a Realm, Kingsport Festival, Orkensturm, and Signorie)
and
<PERSON> ( Fairy Land Kingsburgand Kingsburg: To Forge a Realm,)
Overview
In this review I won’t be going over the basic play of Kingsburg. If you would like to better understand the mechanics and general game play of the base game, I recommend you read this review first –
Kingsburg - A Detailed Review
Instead I will be outlining what new features are present in Kingsburg: To Forge a Realm and how they affect the play.
Thematically there is not much to justify ‘To Forge a Realm’, which underlines its Euro status. The basic premise is that the kingdom has expanded and new realms are opening up. The kingdom’s engineers and architects have designed new buildings and advancements for Governors to build. New and safer roads also allow the Governor’s (that’s the players by the way) to better predict how many of the King’s Reinforcements are likely to be forthcoming in the fight against the hordes of darkness. But all is not well as the sheer size of the realm now means that those forces are stretched rather thin.
In short, most of the theme offered up by the paragraph in the opening of the rulebook is more justification for expansion inclusions rather than an engaging tale. But it isn’t a big deal with an expansion of this nature.
Components
Improved Province Mats – The first major component of note is a new and improved Province Chart. The original 5 row chart is still here but now there are an additional 2 rows of buildings, one at the top and one at the bottom of the chart. With 7 building rows on offer, the realms of Kingsburg never looked so cool.
Image Courtesy of ackmondual
Alternate Building Strips – If a total of 28 buildings wasn’t enough, 'To Forge a Realm' offers up another 14 Alternate Building Strips (2 each of 7 unique strips), which are the perfect shape and length to overlay the Province Chart. More on these later.
Images Courtesy of perigorn
Governor Cards – A total of 24 Governor Cards are included. 581
These represent who you are as a Governor in each game and consist of two panels. The left side depicts artwork of the character in question, which is cartoony in nature but gorgeous non-the-less. The right panel outlines the power of the Governor...err...you. I should also mention that a blank card is provided to allow owners to customise their game...but really...does anyone ever do this?
Image Courtesy of Tommy_M
Event (Destiny) Cards – Another deck of 29 blue cards represent the Destiny Deck. Each of these cards contains a sentence or two that outline an event that the players must adapt to for a full year. Again a blank card is provided...but really...does anyone ever...(line left blank for you to fill in)...............................
Image Courtesy of Tommy_M
Soldier Tokens – The last major component are a series of round discs that serve as Soldier Tokens. Each player gets a set in their own colour and whilst each set is identical in the values they contain, the back of each player’s tokens feature a unique symbol to represent their realm.
Image Courtesy of amquick1
Rules – Rounding out the new offerings is the rulebook. It features the vibrant orange of the box (which is a nice contrast to the relative dark tones of the original game) and each page is presented in glossy colour. Certain buildings and characters are outlined to avoid ambiguity and some official clarifications are provided to clear up rules from the base game or contradictions between the base game and expansion.
Image Courtesy of zombiegod
All in all the components are up to the very high standard of the base game and fit in well when added to the components of the base game. Despite the rather poorly designed tray of the base game, all of the components found in 'To Forge a Realm' easily fit into the base game box. Which is a shame really as I never see my expansion box, which is rather nice to look at with its orange colouring. 872