Knight: Kickstarter Buzz Review

Information:

Mechanics: Flip and Write, Area Control, Print and Play
Player Count: 1 - 4 Players
Time to Play: 40 - 60 Minutes
Publisher: Hammerdice
Game Designer: Radosław Ignatów
Game Artist: Michał Teliga
Year Published: 2024
Disclaimer: A preview copy for the game was provided by the Hammerdice they now have the kickstarter now live here.

Basics:

Knight is a primarily solo (with multiplayer modes) flip-and-write game of resource efficiency, combo chains, and map management. The game is made up of 12 turns. On a turn, one event card is flipped over with two available sides. The player will choose either the left side or right side. These sides have the resources that the player will gain for the turn, the court action that will activate, and the scenario action i.e. which enemy track will activate.

During your turn you may pay resources to gain greater influence on different actions gaining initial rewards; then more resources later when this action activates. The other reason you are increasing your court actions influence is that throughout the game you will be blocked on certain tracks until you have met specific influence conditions. After turns 3, 6, and 9, the goal marker will score and give you resources if you met a certain goal. It can also dish out enemy attacks if you have failed.

Each scenario contains multiple instant win goals and instant loss goals that focus mainly on certain control over the scenario's map.

Uniqueness:

At the end of every event card, one of the three enemy tracks will activate. This creates 1-2 consequences a turn, whereby adding more enemies, moving the enemies and attacking with them. Some of these consequences can be avoided by paying a cost or picking the other side of the event card.

Each scenario has its win-or-lose condition based on the map. The lose conditions could be a total amount of enemy units on the map either attacking or surrounding your castle, gaining enough diplomacy, or destroying a number of fields. Players have a way to fight this by using command points they gain through multiple turn planning. These command points allow you to add units, attack or move with your units, reduce the enemies' diplomacy or gather resources from the fields the players are on.

Planning your units on the map effectively will help you gain resources during the game but, more importantly, may win you the game if you meet one of the win conditions. This could be controlling with no enemy presence a number of fields, gaining enough points and influence, or winning the five battles.

The battles change every scenario and are a challenge that requires a resource payment to achieve. More importantly, the prerequisite condition is normally very challenging, such as completely fulfilling certain court actions.

The game comes with many scenarios containing different rulesets, win/lose conditions and different battle prerequisites. One thing not previously mentioned about scenarios are that they also contain different abilities activated with coins (a resource type); different king rewards, and different court action location rewards and configurations, since not every court action will have a bonus reward for every scenario when activated on the event card.

Zig Zag (game flow):

The main game flow focuses on two things. The first being which side of the event card you are choosing each turn. This comes with consideration too whether you can properly mitigate the enemy attack before the end of the turn, and if you have a good use for the resources. You want to try and use all resources every turn and refill them as much as possible before your next main phase.

The other focus is the order in which you earn influence on the court sheet. There are thirteen sections, each activated on different event cards. Different scenarios value certain court actions more. Throughout each court action there are constant prerequisites for other courts to gain more influence. There are also linked court actions. If the court action is maxed on influence it can be connected to a linked court action. From then on when the maxed influence action is used it will gain resources from the linked action.

Zone:

As you can see this is a heavy flip and write with many layers of strategy, balancing the combo chain, map control, goal planning and the initial decision of which route to take each turn. This is the kind of game that will speak to fans of heavier flip and writes, as this game contains multiple sheets; character, plus scenario and court sheets each containing multiple facets of information and content. Once players have worked through the initial puzzle there are multiple characters and scenarios that will be available through stretch goals that will keep this game fresh and challenging.