I demoed it at Gen Con then ordered it through amazon when I got home. It was really easy to get into with familiar building concepts from real-time strategy video games.

One thing that was unclear to me, and even after looking at the resource on this web site- what exactly does the expansion add to the game? The version I played had it incorporated in, but the guy running it didn't say what parts of the game it was.

Bonesaw said:

The province mat in the basic game has 5 rows instead of 7.

Alternate building rows, Governors, Events and the Soldier Tokens are the other features introduced in the expansion.

Pleased to hear you liked the game!

I was fortunate enough to get in a full 90-minute, four-player game at GenCon. I think the Event cards are the strongest and most game-changing aspect of the expansion and I agree that it is an awesome game.

The expansion rather much fixes the main issue of the game: repetitiveness. Once you become familiar with the game, you know exactly which rows you should aim to complete and in which order - and from that point on it's mostly luck and little brains to achieve that (especially with 4 or moer players). The expansion ensures that each game require an emphasise on different rows and allows you to more freely choose your building strategy. And, of course, the Governour cards add for diversity.

Yes, I agree, the expansion does change the game so there isn't that repetitiveness issue. Before I got the expansion, I pretty much played the same strategy every time. With the expansion, it changes it up enough so I have a different strategy each time. The five elements of the expansion are the Destiny cards, Governor cards, expanded province mat, replacement rows for the province mat, and the soldier tokens.

In the base game, there are no Governor cards. The Governor cards are nice because some can be pretty powerful. One of my favorites is the Duke, which allows you to move your dice from the highest spot on the board to the Duchess. Of course, you can only move there if the Duchess hasn't been taken by another player. The Duchess is my second favorite spot on the board (the queen being first). So with roles like that, sometimes players will purposely take those spots so you don't benefit from them. The nice thing about the Duchess is that you get any two resources of your choice and a plus two token. So thwarting a player who is playing the role of the Duke for the game can become more of a strategy for the other players.

Also, the nice thing about the expansion is that you have a province mat of seven rows instead of five. So there are more options on what you can build, changing that aspect of the game. In the base game, I usually would build the same buildings game after game. My strategy for buildings really didn't change. However, with the seven province mat, that changes it a bit. Also, there are replacement rows for the province mat. At the start of the game, you randomly draw two replacement rows, and have the choice of replacing one, none, or both of those rows on your province mat. So you can have different combinations of buildings each game, thus possibly changing your building strategy.

The Destiny cards are drawn at the beginning of each year (round). They can have various effects, that affect that year only. The effect can be neutral, positive, or even detrimental. The effect of the Destiny card applies to all players. Some of the effects they can have include things such as changing what advisors can be influenced or make players pay certain resources at the end of that year or suffer consequences, etc. For instance, there is a card called The King is Sick, which when drawn, keeps the King from being influenced for that year. And if this card in drawn a second time, the King dies and the game immediately ends.

The last part of the expansion is the Soldier tokens. Rather than rolling a white die and adding that many troops as reinforcements for all players, each player secretly chooses one of their numbered Soldier tokens and then reveals it to all players at the time of the battle. The number on that token indicates how many additional troops that player gets. So in this case, there is less chance involved by doing it this way. At the end of the game, the leftover token(s) count as victory points. This can possibly mean the difference between winning or losing if its a very close game. One thing to note, is that if the King dies and you have extra Soldier tokens, they ALL are counted as victory points. Normally, at the end of year 5, when the game normally ends, you would only have one Soldier token to count. But if the King dies, the game could possibly end after only two years, leaving you with four Soldier tokens. This situation actually came up a few nights ago at my game group. We drew a second The King is Sick card at the beginning of year 5, which ended the game a round early. At that point, I was one point ahead and with the totals of the two Soldier tokens, I tied with the player who was in second place. At the time, there was no clarification in the rule book regarding what you would do in this situation (whether you counted all tokens or not), but it is clarified on the BGG forums.

Basically, with the expansion, it makes Kingsburg more of a gamers game than a gateway game. The expansion is definitely worth buying. If you like just the base game of Kingsburg, you'll definitely like it even more with the To Forge a Realm expansion.

I just ordered this bad boy yesterday. Should be arriving tomorrow sometime. I also have our local gaming store ordering me in a copy of the expansion as well.

Considering how much fun our gaming group has been having with Revolution . . . . we are all going to eat Kingsburg up. This is sure to be a game night favorite.

Got this one for Christmas, haven't had a chance to play yet. Looks really good. Probably going to pick up the expansion pretty soon.

I have had my eye on this one for about a year. I saw it being played at a con. Only thing stopping me is a rather full board games shelf already.

What can you guys tell me that might get me to finally pick this up?

I've heard good things about this game too.

I just played this game for the first (and second) time this past weekend, and realyl enjoyed it. We only played iwth the base game, but I loved the bidding aspect for which advisors you control, and that you need to know which die results your opponents have rolled so you can get the most effective use out of your own bidding dice (such as, if no other player rolled a 2 or less, the first two advisors can be safely gotten in the later rounds of bidding,(well, unless someone has a market).

Definitely a fun game, and one I expect to pick up in the near future.

It's definetly one of the best games out there to show people what a Work placement game is like. I have gottem many people hooked on other titles that play the same after they have seen just how much fun games like this can be. I would defintly have the expansion though as it really adds things that the base game was missing.