Royal Bastards Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Royal Bastards, a political satire area control game published by Flamestryke Games. Royal Bastards has players competing as bastards vying for royal approval to claim the crown of the land.

Being upfront, Royal Bastards is a game that I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I thought of it. When reviewing games, often I get a feel for what I think right away, but this one has been different. It is political satire against a fantasy backdrop, which seemed like it would be a home run for me, but I ended up spending almost two months trying to organize my thoughts about it. Ultimately, it’s not the sort of game I might have tried on my own, but here we are!

It is a game for 2-4 players and it plays in under an hour. The best experience is with 4 players.

Royal Bastards is, if nothing else, a perplexing game. The core gameplay is a form of area control and influence. It has some wrenches thrown into that with an unusual thematic layer on top. The goal is to be the player with the greatest amount of “Royal Approval” by the end of the game, gained from controlling territories each round.

Each player is one of eight “bastards” which are all parodies of contemporary political figures, such as Joe Sleepy, Barry, and Willie “the Slick” (Presidents Biden, Obama, and Clinton, respectively). Each of these has a home territory, an ability, and a number of stats. The board is modular, and is laid out with magnetic hexagons (these are certainly one of the highlights of the game, they are very slick) in an arrangement of the players’ choosing before the game.

Play occurs over eight rounds, and most of the rounds follow the same pattern: draw phase, movement phase, and contest phase. Each player completes each phase