My extended family in Korea understands my love of boardgames. Over the years I shared my love of boardgames by introducing the hobby to various nieces and nephews and their children. I still fondly remember my niece visiting years back and playing Ticket to Ride endlessly with her cousins. So it was a very pleasant surprise to be gifted three boardgames when my niece visited recently with her husband who is also a boardgamer.
Great Kingdom, designed by Lee Sedol from Korea Board Games (2023) is the first in the three-game WIZSTONE series by the former professional Go champion. Lee was the fifth-youngest professional Go player in South Korea starting at age 12 years and 4 months. He is perhaps most famous for playing a five-game series on live TV against AlphaGo, a computer AI developed by Google DeepMind, in 2016. He lost the series 1-4. At his retirement in 2019 he was quoted as saying, “Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated.” He returned to the spotlight (at least in South Korea) with the release of a series of boardgames in 2023.
Each game in the WIZSTONE series is based on the ancient game of Go:
The abstract strategy game series WIZSTONE is based on ideas inspired by Go’s strategical diversity. Just as a single move in Go can change the games trajectory, with WIZSTONE you will be advancing onto new levels by applying creative strategies.
Great Kingdom, 6
The rule book for Great Kingdom somewhat dramatically describes the game as:
Rules are simple enough for anyone to start playing, but as easy as learning to play is, winning is not. Widen your territory by placing castles, and lay siege to your enemy’s castles. A dance of the rise and fall of an empire.
Great Kingdom, 5
As befits an abstract boardgame, the components of Great Kingdom are very simple. Play is conducted on a 9×9 gridded board. A neutral castle starts the game in the centerpoint and each player has a stock of 80 castles. The 20-page rulebook is in Korean but an English-language version is available on BoardGameGeek.
At heart, Great Kingdom is an area control game. Players alternate placing castles on the board to surround territory. The winner is the player with the most territory at the end of the game. Beware, however, that the game is lost if even a single castle of a player is destroyed. Castles are destroyed in sieges which occur when a player’s castle(s) are completely surrounded by their opponent’s castles.
Great Kingdom is aesthetically pleasing on the game table. Though the components are plastic, the translucent castles against the white game board are easy on the eyes yet allows the game state to be immediately visible.
Like Go, a game of Great Kingdom can be a real brain-burner. Playing time is rated at about 20 minutes but games can go longer if one is overtaken by analysis paralysis. Alternatively, games can also be much shorter like the one in the video below.
In the RockyMountainNavy household, Great Kingdom currently sits aside boop. (Smirk & Dagger, 2023) as a quick weeknight filler boardgame. I fully expect the later games in the WIZSTONE series, Nine Knights and King’s Crown, to be similar in play time and usage.
Great Kingdom, 18
The bigger the territory, the greater the empire
Feature image courtesy RMN
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