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Tumult Royale: The Only Time Being Greedy Is Good!
Ever find that people always call you greedy even though you just don’t want the food to go to waste? Well, I can’t find you a solution to that, but Klaus and Benjamin Teuber can give you an excuse to be more greedy! They designed Tumult Royale back in 2015 but it still goes strong today as a great game. In Tumult, you and your opponents are all royals and you’re greedy ones at that. Obsessed with wealth and vanity, your job is to build as many statues of yourself as possible across the country. Unfortunately, these people aren’t all that happy with the idea, so you’ll need a way to ‘acquire’ some building materials…
Getting The Lay Of The Land!
The rulebook helps you set the game up exactly right and is easy to follow, so we won’t spend time going over all of that. The game board consists of several 3x3 region tiles, each containing 9 squares of a variety of different kinds. Pastures are the easiest to build a statue on, needing only a single piece of bread and one bit of marble. Towns are the way you’ll likely score the bulk of your points, needing more resources but helping you win quicker. And if you’re really lucky you might even be able to build a Palace! These require a lot of resources but get the most points and can really push you ahead of your rivals.
Figuring out what’s best to build and what resources to take is key to success in Tumult Royale. It can take a few rounds to really get a good idea of what to aim for.
We’re Going To Need Resources To Build Magnificent Statues!
What better way for a royal to get what they want than taking the things they need and calling it ‘tax collection’? Hopefully, none, since that’s exactly what you’ll be doing. Building statues of yourself is no easy task and you’ll need three resources, or commodities, to do it: Marble to actually build with, tools to help shape it, and bread- obviously for when you get hungry. Building is hard work! Obviously before you just dive in and start taking things from the people, you’ll need a plan. Taking too much is unwise…
Who Thought Acquiring Taxes Would Be So Hard?!
Not me, that’s for sure. But you have to worry about what to take, how much you need, how much you can afford to take. Phew, not sure I’m cut out for being a royal! Each round, a majority of the commodity tiles will be shuffled and arranged face-down in the middle of the playing space so everyone can reach them. You’ll all then be able to take them to your heart’s content. Well, sort of. The catch is that you only get 20 seconds to do so. This means that you have to know what you’re looking for and how much you need.
Before this ‘tax collecting’ begins everyone has the chance to look at the game board. I always try to choose a couple of fields and remember how many of each commodity I’ll need in total. When the phase begins you all take tiles from the centre at the same time, choosing whether to put each back or add it to your playing space. Again, Tumult Royale’s rules explain exactly how to do this so I won’t cover it here.
The Hungry Hippos Phase!
It may as well be called that, since tax collection often devolves into arguing over who stole too much and who really picked that bread tile up first… Taking as much as you like won’t get you far though. Enter the residents of the land: the people. Naturally, when someone steals something you own, you wouldn’t like it. Well neither do the people in Tumult Royale. Each round, before the Hungry Hip- oops, I mean Collect Taxes phase begins the tumult spinner is taken by the king or queen and they spin it. This determines how many commodities of each type must remain after taxes have been collected. This is what limits you from stealing as you please, because now you have to watch out and make sure you aren’t too greedy.
After taxes have been gathered, the remaining commodities are flipped over and counted. For each one there isn’t enough of, the people identify the player with the most of that resource and punish them! If you are found to be the greediest you have to return most of that commodity. Being too greedy can be severely punished- with less resources you can build less statues, which scores less points.
Some players just can’t help themselves though, and it can be tricky to decide whether to take that extra set of tools to build a new statue, or to leave it and not take the risk. More often than not though, particularly with my regular group of players, at least one person gets a little too greedy. Only having 20 seconds to get commodities means there really isn’t time to look at other players’ collections, and someone can get carried away from time to time. We found that on one of our rounds, one of the players had twice as many tiles as anyone else! Unsurprisingly they were found the greediest multiple times and lost most of the tiles. That’s karma for you!
Birth Of A New Ruler!
When all of the taxes and potential tumults have been resolved, a new ruler is crowned. Supporters are something we haven’t discussed yet but they’re simple. When you pay for a statue, for every commodity you overpay it gives you a supporter. So for example, if you build a statue in a pasture (normally costing one bread and one marble) by paying two bread and three marble you get supporters. Overpaying by one in bread and two in marble gives you three supporters. Each round, the player with the most supporters becomes the new king or queen. They go first at placing statues next round, as well as placing a statue (or statues) in the royal chronicle (which then brings you closer to winning Tumult Royale).
Tumult Royale: Impressively Strategic And Great Family Fun!
I love Tumult Royale and so does everyone in my group. We’ve played several games and each one was a lot of fun. It usually devolves into good-natured arguments and accusations that just make the already silly game even funnier. Despite its simplicity, the game has a lot of strategy once you get into it, and our games are usually very close on points. The frantic nature of tax collection also makes it interesting, as I often find myself forgetting my plans and panicking, often resulting in taking too many or too few of a commodity! And when the people demand a lot of resources it becomes very hard to take them for fear of being the greediest.
Tumult Royale is the perfect blend of strategy and luck, and it takes a good amount of both sometimes to pull off the riskier moves. This is a game that I’d gladly recommend to anyone who likes games like Hungry Hippos- the tax collection is very much similar- or Catan- made by the same developers as Tumult Royale and hugely popular. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and steal- ahem, tax commodities, and build your own statues in your kingdom!
