#FamilyFriday – Fossilized in #Boardgame #GameNight by Neolithic #Kingdomino Origins fm @BlueOrangeGames (2021)

Kingdomino, designed by Bruno Cathala and published by Blue Orange Games in 2016 is a RockyMountainNavy family favorite. We use it as a gateway game to introduce others to hobby boardgaming. We have gifted it maybe a dozen times. Over the years we acquired several different versions; Queendomino (2017), Kingdomino, Age of Giants (Expansion, 2018), Dragomino (2020) and Kingdomino Origins (2021). So popular is the game that when RockyMountainNavy Jr. packed for college he took the family copy (not to worry, we have several extra on the gifting shelf).

With RMN Jr. off to college, RockyMountainNavy T and I now face off against each other on Saturday Game Nights. This last week we decided to bring out Kingdomino Origins and play a two-player game. We set up the game, and I took a quick glance at the rules for the first of the three gameplay modes in the box—Discovery Mode. There, in the very first lines of the rules, was something that I had totally missed before; “2 player game rules specifications can be found at the end of this booklet.”

Hey…I’ve got this!

Two player Kingdomino is very straightforward. Each player has two Kings and you remove 24 of the 48 tiles before play. When making a domino selection, you can choose any of the remaining tiles. Simple.

As I read, I discovered Kingdomino Origins uses, “Special two player rules – Neolithic.” There are two subtle rules changes that made a big difference in our play:

• Use all 48 dominos to make a 7×7 territory (this is called the Mighty Duel variant in Kingdomino)
• When choosing tiles at start, the Chief that goes first gets to choose tiles 1 and 3 OR tiles 2 and 4.

We rarely play Kingdomino with two-players (Kahuna by Gunter Cornett from Kosmos in 1998 being the usual 2-player go-to quick boardgame). The few times we played 2-player we usually don’t play the Mighty Duel variant. We also have never seen the alternate starting order as laid out in the Kingdomino Origins Neolithic gameplay mode. It was enough of a change to make this play far more challenging.

It has been years (and I mean years) since I have not completed a perfect 5×5 or 7×7 territory (called Homo Hablis in Kingdomino Origins or Harmony in Kingdomino). I picked wrong one round (!) and ended up with an unusable tile, thus missing my perfect 7×7. The five points missed was enough to give RMN T a 2-point win.

Disappointment hasn’t felt this good in a while.

We both haven’t played a brain-burner game of Kingdomino in years. The game is usually more a fun pastime than a serious thinking challenge. Not tonight. We both wracked our brains on a simple 7×7. It was glorious.

Welcome back, Game Night. You’re off to a great start!

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Feature image by self

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