Basic Information for Kingdomino
Number of Players: 2-4
Age: 8+
Time: 15 minutes
Price: Medium
Introduction to Kingdomino
Kingdomino is a tile placing game where players are trying to build the land around their castle using the domino tiles. It’s a great small fun game that is really easy to learn and uses a good amount of strategy. This is a great game to play with older kids as I feel the game is fairly balanced between kids and adults playing together. I really enjoy the art style and the overall and also won game of the year in 2017.
How to Play Kingdomino
Each player has a castle and a king that matches their castle colors (2 player games have 2 kings). To set up you shuffle the domino tiles and place 4 face down in the center and the rest are face down in the box. You order the tiles from lowest to highest and flip them over. Players decide who goes first and they will play their king on one of the 4 domino options and continue in a circle for this first round. Players then take out another 4 domino tiles and place them face down, again ordered from lowest to highest. Player then flip these tiles, and the player that placed their king on the lowest value tile gets to go first for the next tile choosing. The next lowest value player then choses and so on.
Players are trying to build a 5 x 5 grid using the dominos. They are no allowed to breach the 5 x 5 land limit so sometime a player will have one less domino on their final board and there was no place to put it. You must match at least one color to the same color (except for the starting castle tile) and build out your kingdom following the basic domino rules. Once half the total tiles are used players should have a 5 x 5 grid (or almost a full 5 x 5 grid). Points are counted with the amount of crowns there are in one connected color group. For example, I have a large forest of 5 tiles that has two crowns. 5 x 2 is 10 so I receive 10 points for that forest. I have a single forest tile that is not connect to that forest and has no crown, it does not earn any points. The player with the most points wins.
Notes on Kingdomino
Like sushi go or other point based games you can play to see who has the most points are the end of 3 games. Kingdomino is also a great couple’s game to play. Me and my partner will usually play this if neither of us a feel like playing a biggest game like Gloomhaven or Pandemic. It’s a great little game and I highly recommend it.
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