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Knights of Charlemagne is a card game by Reiner Knizia, published by Playroom Entertainment. It was previously published in Europe as Tabula Rasa.
Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 30 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
The Components
Knights of Charlemagne comes with:
- 21 tiles
- 50 cards
- 1 rulebook
Tiles: These square tiles are printed on linen-textured cardboard. They tiles come in four types: five manor tiles, five city tiles, ten treasure tiles, and one cathedral tile. The manors and cities are actually double-sided, depicting treasure on the back, which makes scoring very easy. (The back sides are used for ties.) All of the tiles depict a value on them from 1-5, and the cities are also colored. Together these elements show tile values as well as what cards can be played on them. Overall the setup is easy to intuit and use.
The artwork on these tiles is relatively simple, but attractive.
Cards: There are fifty cards, divided into five suits, each numbered from 1-5. Each different color of suit also has a unique picture of a knight on it, and the artwork is all high quality and attractive. The cards are medium weight and linen-textured.
Rulebook: A 12-page rulebook, though that actually includes the rules in English, Spanish, and French. It's full color and has a couple of illustrated examples.
Overall the components for Knights of Charlemagne are of average-to-good quality, simple to use, and feature attractive artwork. The price point was slightly higher than I'd expect for this collection of components, but even considering that I still give it a high "4" out of "5" for Style: well above average.
The Gameplay
The object of Knights of Charlemagne is to conquer the greatest value of manors, cities, and cathedrals by playing knights to those locations. The following describes a two player game, with notes on three- or four-player play appearing to the end.
Setup: The 21 tiles are laid out. The five (numbered) manors are placed in order based on their value, from 1 to 5. Then the five (colored) cities are laid out in no particular order. Together these ten tiles form a row which will be the central battlelineof the game. A treasure tile is placed under each of the manors & cities; to the left of the manors the cathedral is placed. With all 21 of the tiles down, the lines have now been drawn.
Two cards are removed from the deck (to prevent absolute card counting at the end). Each player then is dealt 8 cards and play begins.
The Cards. Each card is defined by a number and a suit (which is a color). There are two of each number from 1-5 in each of the five suits, for a total of fifty cards.
Playing a Card: On his turn a player plays a card to one of the five manors or one of the five cities. A card played to a manor must match the manor's value (from 1-5). A card played to a city must match the city's color (which is one of the five colors). Thus, there are ten cards that could possibly be played to each manor or city.
One player plays his cards to one side of the battleline and the other to the other, so you always know which knight belongs to which player.
After playing a card, the player draws a new card (if there are still cards left).
Ending the Game: The players play until they've not only drawn all the cards, but also exhausted their entire hand. At this point the players determine who won each of the cities and manors.
For each the player who played the most knights gets to take the manor/city tile. The manors are each worth their value from 1-5 while the cities are each worth 5. Whichever player came in second gets the 1-point treasure tile sitting next to the manor/city, provided he played at least one card to the engagement.
In case of a tie, each player wins a 1-point treasure tile instead (which helpfully appears on the back of each manor/city).
Then whichever player first won two manors (counting from least value to greatest) also wins the 5-point cathedral tile. This helps offset the lower value of the smallest manors, and makes it a much more strategic decision which manors/cities to go for.
The player with the highest total value of tiles wins.
Different Players: This game can also be played with 3 or 4 players. With 3 players, the third player instead plays his cards to the middle. This slightly changes scoring, since one player isn't going to get anything at each manor/city. With 4 players, two teams of 2 players are created.
Relationships to Other Games
In 1999 Reiner Knizia published three cards in a "card stacking" trilogy, each of which involved players playing cards to opposite sides of a central line. One was Lost Cities, a sort of set-collection game which is one of Knizia's masterpieces. A second is Schotten Totten, published in the U.S. in a slightly different form as Battleline, which is a Poker-like game. The final game Tabula Rasa, which instead features color- and number-matching gameplay was never printed in the United States ... until Playroom Entertainment's Knights of Charlemagne.
Besides being the long-lost member of this gameplay trilogy (at least for us American gamers), Knights of Charlemagne is also an entirely unique entrant to the trilogy by the fact that it supports 2-,3-, or 4-player play, whereas each of the others only supported 2. As such, Knights of Charlemagne has been quite anticipated.
Ultimately Knights of Charlemagne's gameplay isn't quite as deep as either Lost Cities or Schotten Totten, but it's stil a fine member of this prestigious trilogy of games.
This game is also one in a series of Reiner Knizia games produced by Playroom Entertainment that includes King of the Beasts, Poison, and the recently released Dead Man's Treasure.
This is clearly the best of the lot.
The Game Design
Knights of Charlemagne is ultimately a strategic resource management game. Based upon the balance of numbers and colors in your hand, you have to best figure out how to gain control of the most cities and manors. The level of tactics picks up toward the end of the game, as you slowly start to run out of cards and need to figure out how best to spend your remaining cards, and what your opponents might do.
Figuring out what your opponents might do (or what your partner might do in a 4-person game) is also an interesting gameplay element, as plays can accidentally tell what your plans are and your strengths and weaknesses if you're not careful. Card counting can also become important toward the end of the game, but with all cards totally open this doesn't depend on memory. You instead get to look at what's been played and make a risk/reward assessment based upon what cards other players might have, or what you think might be face-down instead.
More than most Knizia games, this one's efficacy does seem partially dependent upon the number of players. I've played one 2-player game and four 4-player games, and I found the 4-player games much more interesting. The decrease in the perfect information of your hand creates for a more stressful (and enjoyable) dynamic, while the increase in the number of players makes that interesting part of gameplay where everyone is running out of cards come that much faster. I regret not getting to play this game with 3-players, but I think that's going to be a very interesting game too, with one player getting shut out of each tile.
Though there is some randomness from card draws, it's pretty well controlled by the fact that you can play each card to two different locations.
My only real complaint with the game is that it's somewhat opaque. It's hard to see how well you're doing, which plays might be maximally effective, and overall if a play is particularly good or bad. However this isn't too bad a match for the light, fast gameplay.
On the whole Knights of Charlemagne is a superb game for casual gamers, and will be an enjoyable filler for more serious gamers too. There's not a huge amount of depth here, but there's still a fair amount for the short gameplay. As such I've given it a high "4" out of "5" for Substance. It's quite a good game.
Conclusion
A new Reiner Knizia game by Playroom Entertainment, this one is considerably better than any of their other productions. It's got fair components and great gameplay that isn't quite up to the level of Lost Cities, but nonetheless is a good, somewhat similar game that supports up to 4 players.
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