Backstab, plot and murder in 15 minutes with Game of Thrones: Hand of the King
Gaming Hardware
Game of Thrones Hand of the King is out and it's already one of our offices go to table top games.
It's a two to four player game and matches last about 10 to 15 minutes.
So the last time we played a board game in the office we were here til about midnight.
And not everyone's got that kind of time to kill on pre-industrial cortical job.
Luckily Hand of the King is for you and it takes about a minute to learn.
And I'll prove that to you right now.
Look at the board like a big sliding puzzle.
Players take turns moving Varys around the six by six grid.
You can only move him into a new position in a row or column that he's already touching, and when he moves, you take the character that he lands on, plus any other character that belongs to the same house that he passes over.
Let's say I take Varys and I move him over to Ned Stark square, I'll pick up Ned and I'll also get Lyanna adding both Starks to my hand.
If you got people belonging to one house than any other player, you control that house's banner.
When Varys has no legal move left, who ever controls the most banners wins the game.
And if you are the bits and pieces like companions that has special abilities and there are some rules to playing teams, but that right there, that's the entire core game 40 seconds.
Nailed it.
So my favorite thing about this game is the moment, when a new player is a move or two into their first game, and they realize they need to start thinking two, three, four moves ahead, setting themselves up for good moves, and leaving everyone else with nada.
If you're new to [UNKNOWN] or even tabletop games in general, thinking strategically.
And plotting like Spymaster Varis, himself, is a great feeling.
It's damn fun and surprisingly deep.
It comes in at around 15 bucks in the US or 20 bucks in Australia making it the cheapest tabletop game you'll buy this year.
Check it out.
