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When Century Spice Road was being touted as the next big thing there was a lot of comparison to Splendor. While I understood that they were both similar games in terms of ease of play, Century was 100 years ahead for me. (See what I did there. #writerskillz) Now Majesty: For The Realm, by Z-Man Games, has appeared and turned this one on one into a triple threat, but will these comparisons stand up to scrutiny? And how strong is my pun game today?
Majestic
Majesty: For the Realm comes with a lot of cards. The large bulk of them are mini character cards. These are placed in the middle with six face-up. They will show one of seven characters or a split card showing two. These relate to eight realm cards which each player has in front of them.
These have an A-side and a B-side, the B-side being slightly more complex. You can play all As, all Bs or a mix, as long as all players have the same versions in front of them. Helpfully, they all have numbers on them indicating their order, and order is important. The first seven of these are buildings that accommodate characters, and the eighth is the infirmary where attacked characters are placed face down.
On your turn you can only do one thing, take a character card and place it under the relevant building in your realm. So if you take a miller you must place her in the field. This will immediately reward you with some victory points and maybe some meeples. The character furthest away from the draw pile is free and, in a similar fashion to Spice Road, you must 'pay' meeples for each card you bypass to get to the one you want.
So if I want card four I must place a meeple on cards one, two, and three. You start with five meeples and more can be earned through locations. Character cards are brilliantly drawn and characters of the same type have subtle differences between them.
The Witch, the Knight and the Guard also provide other instant bonuses. The witch will heal the top character in your infirmary, and the Knight will attack every other player who has less Guards than the current player has Knights. Attacked players must take their left most character and place them face down in the infirmary.
The other location that has a special is the infirmary, which at the game end will give negative points for any characters there. Once everyone has played 12 characters the game ends and final scoring happens.
My Realm is better than yours...
The beauty of Majesty: For the Realm comes from that crucial decision of each character. Each location will give you points, but do you want to take a ton now, or build for a monstrous turn in the future? You see each effect accumulates. At the most simple, the field gives two points per miller underneath it, including the one you are playing to activate it. The brewery gives two points and a meeple per brewer (or barreller as we call them) plus it gives everyone who has at least one miller two points. You can only keep five meeples in storage but in a generous move you can sell your overflow for one point each.
Points are pleasing heavy plastic tokens, almost like poker chips, and they only have one purpose - to keep track of your score. It's hugely satisfying to turn in a pile of one and two chips for a 10 and then 10's for a 50 and so on.
The end game scoring also plays a part in your strategy. Each location will score bonuses if you have or share majority in it. Plus you get to multiply the number of locations you have a character in by itself. So you get at least one character in all seven locations (barring the Infirmary) you get 49 points! Whereas only six locations would get you six points.
These clever little tweaks turn a simple game into a more thoughtful affair that still plays quickly due to only taking 12 actions over the course of the game. The game can feel totally different depending on the order the characters turn up in. More knights early on means more interaction whereas guard means the opposite.
Majesty: For the Realm is simple enough to play with my family, but with enough meat to be enjoyed by gamers too.
