The king is dead! Long Live the King! In For the King (and Me) published by iello, a very young and inexperienced monarch ascends the throne. This young monarch has no talent for governing and leaves the royal tasks mainly to his court and ministries. All advisors quickly gather around the young monarch and try to win over this young and fragile soul. Can you attract as many prestigious royal titles as possible with your influence and well-filled pouches full of gold? Manipulate the court in front of you and amass the most power in the kingdom! For the King (but mostly for me……)
For the King (and Me) consists of two different phases. In the first phase (the influence phase), players try to distribute and collect cards (influence). In the second phase (the prestige phase), players start bidding for favors from the king. In the influence phase, players take turns drawing cards from the draw pile to distribute among the players and the king. The active player draws a card from the pile 1 by 1 and decides whether to distribute this card to himself, open on the table in front of the other players or to the king for on pile of favors to distribute during the two phase. There are government cards (which allow players to influence certain positions within the court at the end of the game), money cards that allow players to bid in the prestige phase, and king cards with special effects that can affect the value of a particular position within the court equally. In the first phase, players collect a personal hand of cards with government cards and money cards in this way. With the collected cards they can bid for the king’s favors. With money cards players can bid by discarding cards and on government and king cards they can bid with acquired money.
Why do players collect cards in the first place and what do I mean by positions within the court above? In the center of the table is a game board with different portraits. Under each portrait are royal titles (positions) that players compete for. Each title/position has certain value. These are the victory points. At the end of the game, players look at who has collected the highest value of government cards in a certain color and this player gets the corresponding title. King cards allow you to increase or decrease the value of certain titles during the game. Think you have the most cards in the blue color? Then jack up the value of that color and lower the value of a feature you can’t have much influence over.
For the King (and Me) is a new printing of the acclaimed game Biblios. In Biblios, players tried to gather the best library of holy books together in their abbey. For the King (and Me) has a theme that may be a little more imaginative. The game play now includes funny and colorful drawings full of character and also characters. The game remains a hilarious beer game in which players can screw each other up big time and in which a good dose of bad luck can throw a spanner in the works. During the influence phase, you naturally hope to assign the best card to yourself, but since you can only draw 1 card at a time, you naturally try to push luck to the limit. With 2 or 3 players the game is also very entertaining, but with more players the game offers a lot of fun. Great game to quickly set up and play when you are in the mood for a fast-paced game!
