Get Your Puns On! Cover Your Kingdom

New game expectations: Fun fun fun– Characters are adorable – Bringing the family together – Giggles and smiles. Our reality: Severely stressed – Stupid MobGoblins – Flipping the game in the air and some entertaining competition.

We felt the full range of these emotions with Cover Your Kingdom by Grandpa Beck's Games. Unboxing you discover creature cards that are puny and whimsical, kingdoms will make you grin and a little crown!! Additionally, in the box are the petulant Free Creature cards and the smartly calculated rulebook. To be clear, this is not a story of unpleasant gaming experience. We sat down to play an uncomplicated card game and ended up playing a ruthless jubilant game.

The game starts with a royal decree proclaiming you a Ruler of your own Magical Kingdom. Yay! Regrettably, your Kingdom is empty and holds zero Magic. Boo.

Chance would have it that a multitude of magical Creatures are wondering searching for a new home. Convenient. The mission is to persuade these creatures to join your Kingdom and live happily ever after… maybe. The other Kingdoms are trying to recruit YOUR Magical creatures to their Kingdom.

You need to be crafty to enticing the Magical Creatures to your Kingdom because they will not join by themselves, only in matching pairs. Once achieved, you can place a newly formed clan to a region in your Kingdom. The creatures live in specific lands; Highlands, Lowlands, and Anyland with correlating space on Kingdom cards. Each time you form a clan in your Kingdom, they will be stacked across a previously placed clan. The exposed clan atop each land is vulnerable to being recruited by the other players. To recruit may challenge with a Wild Creature or a matching creature. You can most certainly defend with the same choices. The last one standing wins the whole pile of creature cards and places in their Kingdom. Keep in mind that this pile of creatures are vulnerable till a new clan is placed atop them.

When all the Creatures have been played, the Magic is tallied. At the end of this tangled Kingdom soap opera, the Kingdom with most Magic wins the treasured crown and the title The Noblest and Supreme Majesty of Magical Might. * My nickname is Princess for a multitude of reasons and this Princess eternally craves a crown.

Mechanics That Worked for Us

Holding in hand a Wild Creature and a matching creature of one of your top clans in reserve for inevitable attack (recruiting) by another player. I learned early that adding to the top clan to gain more Magic leaves a hefty stack of Creature cards that will be recruited.

The Free Creature cards that perform an action and not join a clan were held onto till towards the end of the game. The skipping a player turn can be a lifesaver when you have a vulnerable stack, and you can utilize that to get another pair and cover your magic bounty.

The MobGoblins are evil or fantastic, depending on which end of the card you are. The record for a stolen stack is 280 magic. I know! It hurt. Yes, I used the Grumbledalf's Elves creature card to remove it from the game. Free Creature card's actions are thoughtfully crafted to heighten the strategy and stress levels.

It can be played with two players; however, we fancied a higher player count.

The Modification with the Kingdom Powers added a delicious layer of gambit. We found the Modifying cards more useful than the Action Power cards. Forgetting to use these cards usually only happened once.

Bits and Bobs

Eight Kingdoms

Sixty Constellations

Eight Turn Guides/Kingdom Powers

131 Creature Cards

One Blank Creature card

A Crown!!! (The Best Idea!)

Turn Action

You Must take one action each turn. You can take up to two actions. You can repeat an action or choose two different actions.

Form a Clan.

Attempt to recruit a Clan.

Add a Creature to Clan.

Employ a Creature.

Discard then Draw.

Our Thought

The cards mingled through all our Syfy favorites with witticism and plucky art. The rule variants added smart layers to the game. The Constellation Prize modification felt like an utterly contrasting game. Finding the pairs turn the Creature Tokens to the night sky. Collecting these accrue additional magic points, and we played the first to collect all the pairs wins the Astronomical Bonus. This version was less sabotage and focused on speed. We all used our Wild Creatures to make the clans instead of holding for defending recruitment.

We have played more card games in the past two months than… ever. They have been variations of the same theme except Cover Your Kingdom. It is highly interactive with a big dash of sabotage to intensify the gameplay. It is set collecting with a cagey twist. Bad puns, that's how eye roll.

This was our first Grandpa Beck's game and we are diving into the next one!