Queendomino

Queendomino is the successor in line to the Kingdomino’s throne! Kingdomino won the Spiel des Jahres in 2017, and Queendomino followed, hot on its heels. Both share similar gameplay, and both are Bruno Cathala designs, published by Blue Orange Games. Queendomino, though, is the bigger, longer, deeper game of the two. Why? Extras in the form of a new terrain, coins, knights, wooden towers, buildings, a dragon, and the queen, herself!

The heart of Queendomino remains familiar to those who’ve played Kingdomino. You’re creating a kingdom of domino tiles. It’s classic tile drafting, and then tile placement, obeying enclosure restrictions. These dominos have varying terrain types on them. There’s wheat fields, forests, lakes, grazing grounds, marshes, and mountains. Players place their previously drafted tile into their kingdom. (At least one edge has to match a terrain type present in your kingdom.) Then they draft their next tile. Those two actions are mandatory, but there’s three extra optional actions you can now perform!

On your turn you can use a Knight to gain tax from the domino you placed. Count up the quantity of contiguous matching terrain and gain one coin per square. The Knight then gets added to that tile.

Some of the dominos feature a new red terrain. You can place the building tiles on top of these in an overlay mechanism. You’ll need to buy those buildings though, paying coins. You earn the goods stated on the tile – these could be more Knights, or Towers, for example. (They’re worth it for their extra end-game scoring bonuses, too.) You get to place Towers onto Buildings straight away. Got the most Towers? Then you gain the Queen, and she lowers your construction costs. Don’t like the buildings on offer? Or don’t want your opponents to get a valuable tile? Bribe the dragon to change up the buildings!

Queendomino is a standalone game; you don’t need Kingdomino to play this. You can combine them both, though! Queendomino alone can cater for 2-4 players, but if you combine it with Kingdomino, it allows a four-player game with 7x7 grids. Or, up to six players can join in the fun, keeping to traditional 5x5 grids!

Player Count: 2-4 Players
Time: 25 minutes
Age: 8+