Attention, Guardians! We need your help!
The King needs you to work together to thwart the coming of evil. Please, use all of your resources and bring our villagers to safety. Whoever of you brings the greatest resources and saves the most villagers shall be named the one true leader, the Guardian of the Realm! Go now, and please, hurry!

What Is It?

A set collection, tableau building game that has you earn cards and coins through bluffing and deduction. It has a little bit of a Sheriff of Nottingham feel to it with how the card offers work, but it also has a few different elements going on with the sets as well, so there’s a bunch to pay attention to and a lot of ways the gameplay can go depending on card draws, number of players, and choice of who to offer to.

Who Is It For?

The game itself says ages 14+, but I don’t think it’s super difficult by any means, so I’d probably even go ahead and recommend a little younger, maybe 10+. While not difficult though, it can be kind of tricky to get into the mindset for it, since you’re trying to deduce if players are telling the truth about their card offers, so players who enjoy that type of deduction will likely enjoy this. On the other hand, if you’re not great at keeping a straight face, this one might not be for you because that might screw you out of a few hands of cards, unfortunately.

Quality of Components

I thought the quality of this was nice across the board. Everything from the cards to the cardboard coins is a nice quality, but I would definitely recommend sleeving since the cards are handled a bunch and you don’t want them to get damaged and have dents or nicks give away what cards are in an offer. The insert is awesome and keeps everything in place really well. The art is gorgeous and the colors across the board are vibrant, which I love. Finally, the minis are simple but sturdy, and fun, vibrant colors.

PROS

  • Simple concept
  • Pretty art
  • Variable player powers (benefits based on getting certain cards in offers)
  • Can teach to basically anyone (gamers/non-gamers alike)
  • A bunch of different ways to score points
  • Offer tokens in 3+ players prevent favoritism (so that one player can’t always choose to offer to the same person)

CONS

  • It’s a bit long for a simple game
  • It’s entirely possible that you can get unlucky and never obtain cards from offers and not do very well because of that (I saw it happen one game). Because of that, the “catch-up”/compensation mechanic of getting one coin doesn’t seem like enough because you need a fair amount of coins to do anything, and still can’t get a great tableau going

Difficulty

I think I would rate this in the middle for difficulty, so a 3/5. It’s not hard in concept, as I mentioned, you just want to collect cards. But bluffing, and guessing if players are lying can be super tough, of course, so it’s hard to master. A fun time as long as you’re into that kind of challenge though!

Final Thoughts

I instantly enjoyed this because of the similarity to Sheriff of Nottingham with how the offering/bluffing worked, so if you’re a fan of that, this might be a good one to check out! While similar, it obviously has a lot of unique elements between a wider variety on ways to score points, curse effects, and how turns work. I’m particularly fond of how it works well with 2 players because I feel like you don’t find a lot of deduction games that do that, so it’s cool to find something unique like this. It’s a little bit long, as I said, so I might not recommend it super frequently, but it’s still something neat to get played with a great table presence!

Happy Gaming~

Additional Information:
Designer – James Hudson
Artists –  Noah Adelman, Lina Cossette, Damien Mammoliti
Publishers – Druid City Games, Skybound Games
BGG
BGA

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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