The Rose King Board Game | Classic 2 Player Kosmos Game | Award Winning Designer Dirk Henn

It’s hard to find 2 players games that are made for 2 players. This game is great! We love it. Simple, yet strategic.

We actually really love this game! I heard it was like chess, and we really like competitive thinking games, but this surprised us. The theme is cute, taking over territory is similar to chess but with the special knight cards it allows you to take over an already occupied space THIS IS WHERE IT GETS GOOD!Having that option four times in a game make you more strategic, do you hold out and wait to use your cards....will you ever get the card with the correct moves to get you where you need to go?We played it three times in a row on our first day it arrived...it's that competitive and fun:-)This is also a fairly quick game 20-30min if that.There wasn't alot in the box, and the rose tokens are not that attractive, wish they were made better and actually looked like ROSES but that aside the game is a keeper!!

We really enjoy playing this game over a bottle of wine. My wife is always the white rose (York) and therefore goes second...she has won all but one game...I won the first game.Our only question is the second play option; drawing a card. if you draw a card does that end your turn OR do you get to play that card (if it plays)? The instructions don't say you can play the card but it also doesn't indicate your turn is over...the first game we played, we played that if you draw a card your turn is over (my wife got stuck drawing several card that didn't play and I was able to keep playing. This is the game I won. Wifey Poo didn't enjoy drawing and when she had a card that finally played she had to wait until her next turn to play it. We decided if you draw a card and it plays, play it. These are the games she won. I'm sure it's a coincident but...makes you think. Fun, quick moving game.

The Rose King is (loosely) themed around the Wars of the Roses period in English history, which concerned the fight between the Houses of York and Lancaster, over the succession to the throne..The components are fine, especially at this price point. They are pretty typical for Kosmos small-box 2-player games: the cards are a smaller format than "poker" cards, and are on thinner stock with a basic matte finish; the "rose" tokens are decent, and are diecut cleanly.Play takes place on a nice, small-format board which is printed with an antique-looking map of central England, prominently including the cities of York and Lancaster, and their immediate surroundings - this is the only nod to theme, though..The game itself is a total abstraction, and the two primary mechanics involved in gameplay are area control and hand management. Each player draws from identical decks to obtain a hand of cards which show their allowable moves. Once played, the crown token (which is a location marker, placed atop the last piece placed each player turn) is moved to the space corresponding to the instruction on the card. The crown can NOT be moved to a space that is already occupied, so positioning can literally "shut your opponent out" for one or more turns, allowing multiple moves to be made..There are also some one-time-use special cards (4 per player) that allow a player to flip one token already on the board, changing the allegiance of that area..The game is won by the player who has built up the most influence on the board, in total. Influence comes from the number of orthogonally contiguous areas that are wholly marked with that player's color (white or red roses, again, one of the very few touches of theme). A single, isolated white rose will earn the white player (York) one point. 2 white roses together, however, are worth 4 points (2x2), an area of 3 contiguous roses is worth 9 points (3x3), and the scoring proceeds in like fashion, squaring the number of roses in each controlled area. So, as you can see, joining up your control markers (and thereby consolidating influence) is the most effective means of scoring.The "special action" cards, mentioned briefly earlier, can be used to break up an opponents larger blocs of control, or to join up two or more of your own, relatively isolated smaller enclaves..I am a devoted fan of Kosmos games, and really enjoy their 2-player offerings. That being said, The Rose King is not the best of the lot.I like this game very much - it is especially crunchy in the mid-game, when the areas on the board are beginning to coalesce and one can start to plan their strategy; concentrating on one or more large blocs, and (conceivably) writing others off as not worth improving.Unfortunately, the drawing of cards into the hand to provide your possible moves introduces a little too much of a dependence on luck into the game. Also, and this is my biggest criticism, there is just no compelling theme... This game could be about birds, trying to establish the biggest nesting colonies; or about rival shepherds staking out the best pasturage; and so on..At this price, it is a terrific two-player game with decent components and an interesting - if completely abstract - area control puzzle.Not sorry I bought it.

I play many games of various complexity. Always on the lookout for good 2 player games. This one has luck and strategy. Easy enough to teach to grandma. Components are nice. Well worth the reasonable price.

I paid 11$ bucks for this game and at that price it is a bargain. You are getting an excellent production with great art, good quality cards, and an excellent board. The game is easy to play and you will learn very quickly. It is an abstract game and the theme is in my opinion pasted on, to me despite the attempt at a War of the Roses theme, the game is pretty themeless. For a filler game there is a decent amount of strategy and tactics here. It feels like a cross between checkers and Onitama. The biggest drawback of the game is the lack of movement cards. There simply are not enough and in the course of a game we had to reshuffle the discard pile and start again too many times in my opinion. The game needs more cards. Again, great production and for around 10$ you will like this game, and certainly I would rather play this than checkers, but the game is hampered by not enough cards.

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This is an abstract game that has nothing to do with the War of the Roses. It is a wonderful game where both players have a limited choice of five actions known to both players, so it is chess-like. However, the action choices are based on a card draw so each game is different and, after actions are chosen, a new card will be drawn as a new choice. That means that players know all the present possibilities but NOT all the possibilities for the NEXT turn. It's brilliant! The dark side is that you can get 'bad cards', it isn't chess and there's not guarantee of fairness but it's a short game. I rate is as equal to Backgammon (a dice game) in skill and luck level and that game has been played to thousands of years.