The Queen By Midnight board game arrived at my door while I was opening a pack of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Disney Lorcana cards. There's synergy in that - I was attracted to both because they use princes🍌ses as something more than 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:objects of beauty and desire, as fragile damsels to be rescued. In these games, princesses thought and fought. As I read the plot of Queen By Midnight in its rulebook, I realised the connection ran deeper, with inspiration taken from, amongst others, Sleeping Beauty, Mulan, and Rapunzel. But Queen By Midnight's reimaginings can only go so far, and while there is a solid game in here, it occasionally gets lost in rules and dead ends that it can't quite stumble out of.
I have played Queen By Midnight three times for this review. Once, in a first playthrough, with six players - the maximum amount possible. This was probably a mistake as it multiplied the amount of set up and questions required, but I like my first taste of a game to be organic rather than a sterile 'review' playthrough. The second time I played with my wife in a two player game, technically one fewer than the box recommends. The third time was with three, the minimum amount, to replicate the speed of a two player game but with additional tactics and scheming the game demands.
As you'll know if you've heard anything about this game, Queen By Midnight has a 3D rotating clock as its centrepiece. Setting this up right out of the box was far more straightforward than I expected, and pleasantly quick. You could be playing in a few minutes... except setting up the rest of the game is slow going. The rules are simple - you must earn Clout and deplete your opponents' Health. You win by killing all the other players or by having the highest combined Clout and Health when the clock strikes midnight. Unfortunately, we take the scenic route to get to this point.
Each player has two decks, but they share the same back and its difficult to figure out which is which, as well as splitting up which two decks belong to which player. Some characters come with special abilities, and some cards can't be played until the clock strikes ten. There's also a bazaar that has three different decks to be played at different times. Once you get up and running, the game is not difficult and allows for some clever manoeuvres. Queen By Midnight is not a bad game. But it is a bad game to teach five people of varying board game experience while trying to learn it yourself.
The varied approaches and different actions you can take each turn make it lively and give the game a tight pace. The fact you're always attacking others while simultaneously trying to form alliances means some tactics are involved, as you choose between making allies, getting revenge, or targeting either the weakest player to eliminate them or the strongest to keep them in check.
The cards are creative and can be chained together well, meaning each character plays differently with the same goal, and even replaying the same character twice can lead to different outcomes. However, play can be a little restrictive. At first, it wasn't clear how the two decks worked, and as a result we quickly depleted our Clout, stopping us from playing many (or any) cards, and constantly reacting rather than planning. Some characters have unique powers or currencies too, but how these can be used takes some getting used to and often feels cluttered. Once we'd figured out that two decks let you have more Clout, we still struggled to get above 15 or so, and when the counter goes to 30 and can be flipped over to reach 60, it feels too difficult to build up this key resource that you can't play without.
This national Clout shortage had two major impacts - firstly, the bazaar went almost entirely unused. You have to spend Clout to buy and to play cards, so you don't just need enough currency now, but trust you'll have enough to use later on. The bazaar is part of the clock centrepiece, but it feels superfluous. Secondly, each character has an Ultimate ability, like transforming into a monster, summoning a dragon, or rampaging into battle on horseback. These sound great, but can only be used late-game and are often far too expensive to be used much more. Some tweaks to the Clout economy (though admittedly it's better with the official rules than the shuffled rules we ended up using accidentally) would help make the game more enjoyable by offering more choice.
Queen By Midnight
Queen By Midnight brings the battle royale genre to your tabletop in the form of a deck-building game. Each player is a princess vying to ascend the throne and become the next Midnight Queen, plotting against o🙈ther players right up until the clock strikes 12.
In a way, the game becomes a little more fun when you're knocked out of it, and I don't mean that as an insult. When you're dead, you get to collaborate with one other player as their ally, and here your turn is reduced down to a choice between two options - broadly characterised as attacking others or defending your ally, but each character has a specific twist. Whereas in the base game, you can be scrambling to be able to play your best cards, as an ally you can plan and execute your plan more successfully.
Queen By Midnight is exquisitely made and has some wonderful ideas, but is occasionally derailed by these ideas overflowing. It presents you with a lot of tools but is heavily restrictive in how to use them, and this slows down what should be a fast-paced and misc🥂hievous adventure. It needs a little fine tuning of the economy and character abilities to be the best version of itself, but once you get over the bumps in the road, Queen By Midnight just about lives up to its intrigue. It might not be queen 🦩until about 3am, but it will get there eventually.