The King Is Dead (2nd Edition) - How To Play

hi and welcome to watch it played my name is rodney smith and in this video we're going to learn the 2-4 player game the king is dead second edition designed by pierce sylvester and published by osprey games who helped sponsor this video [Music] the king is dead and the kingdom is divided the scottish welsh and english are all vying for control of britain and as a scheming noble you sense an opportunity in the chaos back the side that wins and claim the crown for yourself but your opponents won't make it easy so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up place the board in the center of the playing area these here are the follower cubes blue for scottish red for welsh and yellow for english if you're setting up a two-player game as i am here return two cubes of each color back to the box then place two blue scottish followers onto murray two red welsh into gwened and then two yellow english into essex these are known as the home regions for each of those factions then you place all the remaining followers in the included cloth bag mix them up and then randomly draw and place followers so that there are total of four in every region on the map this means you only need to add two cubes to the home regions to bring them to four as well it will look something like this when you're done and then you randomly give each player two followers which they'll keep in front of themselves in the area known as their court place all the leftover followers into the supply area here and then return the cloth bag to the box each faction also has these round control discs in their color which you'll also put into the supply then put these three black disks known as instability disks in france now give each person one of these white negotiation discs to place in their court and return any unused ones to the box the cards with this back are the action cards and you'll first remove any with a cross iron in their name like you see here these are cunning cards used in the advanced game that we'll discuss later from the ones that remain each player will now go through and find the same eight cards that they'll all begin the game with in their hand made up of the scottish welsh and english support cards negotiate maneuver out maneuver and two assemble cards you then return all the other copies which are only used in games with more players back to the box you might have noticed but around the outside edge of the board there are numbers you now take these eight region cards shuffle them together and then deal one face up next to each of these numbered spaces outside the map when you're done it will look something like this and then you set this double-sided victory card nearby and it doesn't matter which side is face up whoever most recently visited a castle will be the first player or you can just choose randomly and that's the setup in the king is dead second edition you'll be competing to gain the favor of the three factions fighting to rule britain and you're trying to subtly manipulate the strength of the factions so that at the end of the game the one in power is the one that you have the most influence over so to be clear you won't be representing any one of the factions but instead trying to have the greatest influence over the one that ends up taking the throne in the end the game is played over a series of turns starting with the first player and then going clockwise around and around the table and on your turn you can either take an action or pass if you choose to pass you do nothing on that turn but if play comes back around to you you can choose to take an action again as normal or pass again once all the players have passed in a row you stop and resolve a power struggle now i know we haven't even explained how the actions work yet but i think it's important we learn how the power struggle works first as that will help you better understand how some of the actions work later the map of britain is divided up into various colored and named regions and when it's time to resolve a power struggle you look at the face up region card next to the board in the lowest numbered space this means the first power struggle will be in the region of northumbria next check there to see which faction has the most followers in that region in this case there are two english one scottish and one welsh you now take a control disc from the supply that matches the color of the faction with the most followers and place it in that region to show that they have seized control of it and then all of the follower cubes in that region are returned to the supply if there is a tie for most cubes within an area for example if it had looked like this with the english and scottish tied with two cubes each or if there had been no followers in the region at all which can happen due to actions that players take you instead move one of the instability disks from france to that region and if there had been cubes in that region those are then moved to the supply thematically you can think of these as france seeing so much upheaval in that region that they're starting to plot their own schemes to control that area now if you would ever have to move the third instability disk from france to one of the regions the game ends immediately with a french invasion which we'll talk about later but basically france was emboldened by the growing unrest and is now really taking advantage as long as there's at least one of these black discs remaining in france after a power struggle then the game continues as usual and after resolving a power struggle no matter the end result you always flip over the card of the resolve region face down play then continues with the next player taking their turn as usual either performing an action or passing but now you know where the next power struggle will take place in this case devon in fact all players can see what regions will be contested in which order based on the location of the region cards around the outside of the map and you'll definitely want to keep that in mind when you choose your actions so with that in mind let's go back to the start of the game and explain how individual actions are taken by the players when it's your turn to play an action choose any one of the cards in your hand to play face up in front of you resolving its effect many of these actions will let you add and move followers except that you can never add or move a follower into a region with a control or instability disk already on it because this would mean the power struggle has already been decided for that particular region and now for the rest of the game it can't be changed so this is why you can't add or move cubes in or out of regions like that so now let's go through each of the action cards you'll have in hand and see what they allow you to do you'll find that you have three support cards one each for scottish welsh and english each of these work the same way they allow you to move two followers of the faction they show from the supply to a single region that borders another region that that faction already controls so at the beginning of the game this might not seem useful since there won't be any control markers on the board yet however these can also be used in another way that is not represented by the picture here you can instead put the two followers into a region adjacent to that faction's home region as long as that home region does not already have a disc on it so for example if we did just play this english support card we could move these two followers into either northumbria warwick or devon here because this is the english home region remember the home regions are essex for the english gwented for the welsh and mori for the scottish now let's say there was a control disk in northumbria when using this action it means that i can still place these two followers in any one of the regions bordering the home region since it doesn't have a disk yet or i could go into any one of the four regions that border northumbria which includes the home region itself both of the followers you place must go into the same region and remember you cannot place followers into a region that already has a control or instability disk also if there are fewer than two followers remaining in the supply of the color you need to place just place as many as you can this means even if there are no cubes of the color you need in the supply you can still play a card for your turn that would try to place them rather than pass but nothing on the board would change and this is true for any card that has you taking cubes from the supply you just resolve it as best you can and ignore anything you can't resolve now let's look at the assemble action and you'll get two copies of this each one lets you add one of each type of follower from the supply into any regions of the map you can place them all in the same region if you want or you can spread them out across any number of regions now we come to the maneuver action and this allows you to swap a follower from one region with a follower from another and these followers can be from any factions which is represented by these gray cube symbols and they can come from any regions they don't have to be neighboring you can also use maneuver to swap followers of the same faction which can be helpful if you want to play an action but don't want to actually change the state of the board the important thing to understand is that you cannot use a maneuver to reverse the exact maneuver just taken by another player unless at least one other action has been taken in between so if a player maneuvered these two cubes i couldn't then play a maneuver and switch them right back but i could play a maneuver and then switch either one of them with some other cube like this or just going back to after they maneuvered as long as another action is played in between then i could play a maneuver and exactly switch these two ones back the outmaneuver action works in a similar way except it lets you swap a single follower in one region with two followers in a neighboring region so for example maybe like this the followers you swap can be of any faction even the same faction and you must always perform a full maneuver that is swapping two cubes for one as long as that is possible somewhere on the board if performing this fully is not possible anywhere then you can play this card and just swap a single cube for a single other one like maneuver you can't use an out maneuver to undo the exact out maneuver just taken by another player unless at least one other action has been taken in between however you can use an out maneuver to undo a maneuver that was just played or use a maneuver to immediately undo some portion of another out maneuver the final action in your hand is negotiate which lets you swap the locations of any two face-up region cards along the outside of the board perhaps i would switch these two like this then you set your white negotiation disk on one of those two regions a region with a negotiation disk cannot be swapped later when another negotiate is played by another player and if you play negotiate but there are fewer than two regions that are eligible to be swapped then you can still play this card but it will have no effect after resolving any action it stays in a face-up discard pile in front of you with only the most recently played action card visible you can always look through your own discard pile but never your opponents you'll only be able to see their most recent action now to complete an action no matter which one you just played and resolved you must now choose one follower from any region of the board and add it to your court in front of you this follower doesn't have to have been involved in the action you just took it can really come from any region just not the supply and then the cube that you take you'll put with the others that you already have in front of you and remember you start the game with two random ones already summoning followers to your court is how you increase your influence over the related factions still on the board and your influence will be the most important factor when determining whether or not you'll win the game also your court must always remain clearly visible to everyone else at all times for example right now you can see i have two points of influence over the english and one point of influence over the scottish just remember every time you play an action card afterwards you must take a single cube from any region now if you passed instead then you won't collect a cube but this is why you might even play an action card you can't really use effectively just so that afterwards you can collect a cube from the board and then gain more influence but here's the catch remember to win a power struggle we said a faction must have the most of its cubes in that region so every time you take a cube from the board yes you're gaining more influence over that faction but you also just weakened that faction's position on the board now to help see why this is important we should talk a bit about how the game will end and this can happen in one of two possible ways one is after the eighth and final power struggle is complete at that point every region card will be face down and each region on the map will contain either a control or france instability disk this type of ending is known as a coronation so let's see how it works first make sure the victory card has this coronation side up and then count the number of regions controlled by each faction and rank them in order here in the case of a tie the tied faction that last one a power struggle will come out ahead and you can always tell which power struggles were resolved most recently by counting backwards using these region cards located along the map in the situation we have here the welsh and the english each control three regions while the scottish only control one since the welsh and english are tied we'll have to see the last time either of them want a power struggle and that would be here in strathclyde where the english one so they break the tie in their favor this means we'll rank them here with the english first the welsh second and the scottish coming in third the player who wins the game is now the one who has the most followers of the leading faction within their court so here this player wins they have four influence over the english well this player only has two in the case of a tie as shown here whoever has the most followers of the second place faction wins and if there's still a tie the tied player who used all eight of their action cards first wins and how quickly you play your action cards is so important in this game remember you only start the game with eight of them so if you wanted to you could play all eight of them before the first power struggle even resolves itself just never pass every time your opponent passes you just play another card but then after that power struggle you'll have no cards to play for the rest of the game rendering you effectively powerless so as the game unfolds you'll be carefully deciding how many cards to invest before each power struggle occurs especially in relation to your opponent can you afford to play one or two more cards than they have to ensure your preferred faction controls a particular region knowing they will now have more cards in their hand for later in the game tough choices but getting back to the end of the game a lovely coronation ceremony is not the only way things can end as mentioned earlier the game will also end immediately with a french invasion as soon as all three of the black instability discs have been placed on the board and remember these are added whenever there is a tie when resolving the power struggle in a region or if the region is empty when a power struggle would occur in this case flip the victory card to the invasion side and now the winner is the player who has the most complete sets of the three different types of followers as shown here in this example the player here has one two three complete sets and this player only has two so this person wins in the case of a tie as indicated here the tied player who most recently played an action card is the winner thematically these sets of followers represent your ability to actually unite the factions in order to repel the invaders and this alternative end game condition creates a tension as you play because if the game is going to end in a coronation you're better off having a bunch of influence over the strongest faction only but if you think an invasion is coming you're going to want to instead diversify your control so there's lots to think about there and with that we've covered all the rules for the regular game but there's also cards included for an advanced mode of play which makes use of these 12 cunning actions that we removed during the setup to include the cutting actions in your game during setup after giving players their hand of 8 action cards then remove all the scottish welsh and english support cards and return them to the box then you'll shuffle the 12 cunning action cards and deal three of them to each player face down in order to complete their hand of 8 cards each cunning action card is unique and that means that every time you play with them you'll know most of what the other player has in their hand but not everything and cunning actions are played just like any other type of action you resolve their effect as much as possible placing it in your discard pile and then you add a follower from the board to your court we're not going to go over each of these cunning actions in this video but they're all explained in detail at the back of the rule book there are also included rules for playing a four player team game where you'll work with a partner but those rules i'll leave for you to discover on your own otherwise that's how you play the king is dead second edition if you have any questions about anything you saw here feel free to put them in the comments below and i'll gladly answer them as soon as i get a chance you'll also find forums for discussion pictures other videos and lots more over on the games page at board game geek and i'll put a link to that in the description below and if you found this video helpful please consider giving it a like subscribing and clicking that little bell icon so you get notification anytime we post a new video but until next time thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 36,188

Keywords: Instructions, Tutorials, Osprey Publishing, Learn How To Play, Learn, Rules, Play Throughs, Tutorial, Game Rules, Instructional, The King Is Dead, Tabletop, Peer Sylvester, Board Games, 2nd Edition, Watch It Played, Board Game, Miniatures, How To Play, Card Games

Id: V2fJQsYCl7Q

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020