The Dwarf King Review

The Dwarf King is a fickle master. One round he wants you to win tricks, the next he demands that you lose the most, then after that he punishes the players who wins their third trick fastest. But still, you go back for more, hoping to gain his favour.

The Dwarf King is a re-release from Iello Games of Bruno Faidutti’s classic trick taker from 2011. Does it live up to the King name or should it be left in the dark like the dwarfs? Read on to find out.

How To Play

The Dwarf King is a fairly standard trick taker in terms of the core gameplay. You have 3 suits numbered 2 to 10 with a Jack, Queen and King in each. There is no trump suit and players must follow the lead card played with the highest card winning the trick.

Add into this mix special cards of 1’s and 11’s of each suit plus special magical cards which have their own rules written onto them dictating when they can be played and how they break the standard rules. One of these is added to each round and then discarded after it is finished.

Still not enough chaos for you? Well Dwarf King doesn’t reward you for winning tricks. Nope. In this crazy game a new quest is revealed each round which prescribes how the scoring will be carried out. It could be nagative points for winning certain cards or suits, or positive points for your largest chain of trick wins, or points according to how many tricks one of your neighbours wins (my personal favourite). There are 40 different quests and only 7 are played over the course of the game.

Sometimes the combination of the special card and quests can be very pedestrian and you will finish the round uninspired. However, the next round will be bonkers with every player desperately trying to pass off negative cards whilst still trying to win an exact amount of tricks.

Who becomes the dealer, who chooses the quest and who leads the first trick are all handled via the number 5 cards in the 3 suits. If you have the number 5 blue card when the hands are dealt you get to choose the types of quest (from a choice of 2), who has the 5 red card gets to lead the first trick, and the player that wins the 5 green card gets to be the dealer in the next round.

The game is played over 7 rounds and players accrue and lose points according to how well they did on the quests, which makes it strange a score pad or scoring tokens were not included with the game.

Components / Art / Variants

For the most part the art style is just ok. The jacks, queens and kings of each suit are nice but the normal numbered cards are just functional. The quests are nice in terms of the quality of the cardboard used but once again they are quite boring to look at. This is all fine though as the game lets its gameplay do the talking rather than relying on fancy art.

Because each round feels like a variant (due to the combination of 14 special cards and 40 quests) the game does not include any other variants and to be honest it doesn’t need it.

Final Thoughts

The Dwarf King is a really fun trick taker with its combination of special cards and quests which almost always end up causing chaos and laughter. The game does suffer from the usual ‘best hand wins’ problems of old for all trick takers, but due to the points being allocated purely on the quests and the fact that you play seven rounds this means all players have an equal shot at greatness.

Initially I thought seven rounds was going to take too long to play but I found myself wishing the game went on for even longer. It is not unusual for two games of The Dwarf King to be played back to back at my games table.

Because there are 14 special cards and 20 double sided quest tiles (40 quests in total) and the fact you only use 7 of each per game, there are so many combinations that no two games will play exactly the same. Sometimes the quests will be a bit boring, as an example plus one point per trick you win, but the next round will bring real excitement with a quest that deducts points according to when you win your third trick.

The interaction between players is very high with constant evaluations of each other’s trick totals, who will lead the next round, who gets to choose the next quest and how can we totally derail a certain player who is definitely in the lead at the moment.

I cant wait to teach The Dwarf King to more players.

All hail the Dwarf King.