|
King’s Breakfast is a simple set collection game by Alan R. Moon & Aaron Weissblum.
Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 15-20 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
King's Breakfast is published in Germany by Abacusspiele as "King Lui".
The Components
King's Breakfast comes with 110 cards & a rulebook.
Cards: The cards, typical for Abacusspiele's games, are printed full-color on sturdy, linen-textured cardstock.
105 of the cards are divided into 7 groups of 15 each. Each card shows a distinct type of food (e.g., fruit) against a distinct background (e.g., green). Thanks to the colorful backgrounds, the different food types are very easy to pick out.
The remaining 5 cards each show Emerald the dragon. I wish these cards showed what Emerald does (eat two cards), but it's a simple enough rule to remember.
Overall, the cartoony illustrations on the cards are attractive.
Rulebook: A small, three-fold rulebook. There's just one short example, but overall, the game is very simple & easy to understand anyway.
Box & Tray: A small, two-deck box that includes a cardboard divider to keep the cards from running into each other.
Overall, this game is attractive and features high-quality cards that generally exceed my expectations for quality in a card game; it thus earns a "5" out of "5" for Substance.
The Gameplay
The object of King's Breakfast is to have the most of each dish type (especially those the king likes), but never more than the king.
Setup: The king (box) is placed to the side of the table and the cards are shuffled. A first player (chef) is choosen.
Order of Play: Each round a set of cards is distributed as follows:
The chef deals, face-up to the middle of the table, a number of cards equal to two times the number of players (a course), and groups all of each dish together.
Starting with the chef and going clockwise, each player either takes all of the face-up cards for a specific dish or else takes one (hidden) face-down card.
After each player has made one choice, the remaining dishes are given to the king. The first player (chef) then rotates one space clockwise.
About Emerald. Sometimes a card representing Emerald, the king's pet dragon, will be flipped up alongside the dishes. A player may choose to take Emerald instead of a dish (or a face-down card). Emerald then immediately eats two of the portions (cards) that the king has previously taken.
If Emerald is not choosen, he remains face-up, and available to take in future rounds.
Ending the Game: The game ends when there are not enough cards to complete a course. At this time, each player scores the points for each of his dishes.
A dish is worth the number of portions that the player has times the number of portions that the king has, or zero if the player took more than the king. So, for example if a player had three (yellow) cheese and the king had four, he'd score 12 points; but if the player instead had five cheese, he'd score nothing.
The player with the highest score at the end wins.
Relationships to Other Games
King's Breakfast is a simple set collection game with a card drafting mechanism. Set collection is the same category of games that includes Rummy--and on the much simpler side items like Go Fish and Old Maid.
As I understand it, King's Breakfast was received by Abacusspiele at about the same time as Coloretto. And, they're both kind of similar games. Each uses about 100 cards, each has a drafting mechanism of selecting cards from a public pool, and each scores in a unique manner, including penalties for certain actions (collecting too many of a set in King's Breakfast, collecting too many sets in Coloretto). However, Coloretto ultimately proved to be more strategic, and King's Breakfast lighter.
At first I wrote King's Breakfast off as "like Coloretto, but not as good". Since, however, I've come to enjoy King's Breakfast more, because it's light gameplay does still have some strategic basis, and it can be a simpler, less stressful game to play. In the end I played Coloretto 14 times in 2004 and King's Breakfast 7; they're both good, if similar games.
The Game Design
Accepting King's Breakfast as a light game, it's best points are: it's fast; it's simple; and it allows for some tactical play (in trying to get the perfect number of each dish; in assessing what results passing a dish on to the king will have; and in using Emerald to hurt your opponents).
The deficits are: the strategy is limited; and the scoring is too complex (it usually takes a couple of minutes to tote up the total, with each player having to multiply out numbers for all of their dishes). As a result of the latter, it's also often hard to see how well someone is doing too.
When I first got this game, I thought it was pretty average, but since it's managed to hit the table a lot, and I've had to reassess how well designed the game is. I think it falls into that surprising area of elegant simplicity (like classic, Lost Cities, and others), and so I've let it eke in a low "4" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
King's Breakfast is undoubtedly a light set-collection game. But, it goes fast enough and it allows just enough strategy to be entirely replayable, and thus a good filler. Though I was initially disappointed when I read the rules, King's Breakfast has continued to hit my gaming table, and is thus recommended.
|
