Hello to all Kingsburg players,

as one of the designers of Kingsburg, I have been recently toying with the idea of introducing rules for a 6th player in the game, since I often receive this question from players "is it possible to play Kingsburg with 6 players?".

Until now, our answer has alyways been negative, since our playtest always stated that with 6 players the Council becomes overcrowded with dice and some player may end up with a totally wasted productive season. So, just adding a sixth player with his/her own dice doesn't work.

I then said to myself: time to change perspective. Why if the sixth player is playing with a different style? So I came up with this little "Usurper" idea.

The sixth player is a Governor like all the other players, but he doesn't use "influence points" generated by dice, instead a different ways to influence advisors.

After dice rolls, but before any player can influence advisors, he can (but doesn't have to) block one advisor, making it unavailable for this season (he cannot choose to block the same advisor in two consecutive seasons, however). The blocked advisor cannot be influenced during this season by anyone (including the Usurper)

Then, after all players have influenced advisors following the normal rules, (s)he can influence a free advisor with an influence token. The Influence Token can take any value from 1 to 13. You can add a +2 token to it, as well as using the Market. This means the Usurper cannot influence the Queen or the King.

Of course, the Usurper won't have any advantage by building the Chapel or the Church (let's say she is an atheist...), still the option to influence only one advisor but of middle/high range shoud allow the Usurper to be competitive.

I would like to have some feedback from you players, keep in mind this variant is unlikely to become officiali inserted in any expansion set, but may become an "official variant" if people like it and it works the way i am expecting it.

I think that would be an interesting innovation as a varient. not sure if the 6th will be at more or less at an advantage than the others, but play testing shoulld figure it out. For a regular 6th player, the board would have to be expanded in some way.

"The token can take any value from 1 to 13"

To anyone interested in testing the 6th player variant: please change the 13 into a 14, for now.

Can the advisors that are blocked by the 6th player from season to season be influenced if the Staff of the King/King's Envoy is used?

SockPuppet said:

I would state yes, for the moment.

That sounds like an interesting variant for 6 players. However, I had the same thought while reading your post that I think someone else mentioned. With the proposed idea, the Usurper would seems to have an advantage over the other players. Because with that setup, it seems the 6th player could influence the advisers higher up on the food chain so to speak, more often than the other players. And by making it worth 14, instead of 13, that puts the Queen within throwing distance for the 6th player. It makes the King unattainable though, but it still seems like that would make the game slightly unbalanced. However, if they can only place once per turn, that may fix the unbalanced issue. I think you'd just have to make a rule about how often the Queen may be influenced. Because in my opinion, the Queen is much better than the King. I mean, 3 VPs, 2 of ANY resource, and a peek at the battle to come. That is pretty powerful. So whats to prevent the 6th player from using the Queen every turn or every other turn or so? A strategy for playing the Usurper could possibly be to play the Queen and Duchess on alternating seasons. That would seem to be a good way to rack up VPs pretty fast. So there would have to be a limit on how often the Queen in particular could be influenced by the Usurper. That and I think making a rule that the King's Envoy can't be used by the Usurper to influence the advisor (s)he chose to make unavailable for that season would be necessary. For instance, if you allowed the King's Envoy to influence the advisor that the Usurper had selected as unavailable for that turn, that could really benefit the 6th player. If the 6th player had a market and +2 token, then it would be possible to get the Queen. Let's say someone rolled a 17, then the Usurper decides to make the Queen unavailable for that turn. Let's say the Usurper also had the King's Envoy. What would prevent (s)he from saying, "I'm using the envoy to influence the Queen," thereby royally screwing the player who rolled 17.

It's an interesting idea though. I'll mention it at my game group this week and give it a try. I'll see how it plays out and get some feedback from my friends. Kingsburg seems to be popular, because every time we play, it seems the game is full. Our group doesn't have many games that seat 6 or more, so having another game that could be played with 6 players would be nice :-)

Also, I saw someone mentioned that you would need a bigger board if you wanted to keep the normal rules. Yes, that is true, because without a bigger board, some players may not get to place at all, depending on what everyone else rolls. The only problem with that is that if you tried to just add a few more advisors on another board, it really wouldn't work. Not unless you added another element (not sure what), then it could possibly work. But just having more advisors wouldn't work. Because as it is now, the most any player can roll without an extra die is 18. With more advisors, you'd either have to add another die to the equation or something else to balance that. I think it would break the game if you just added a few more advisors without adding something else. Maybe adding two different advisors for the same number would be an option. For instance, having a few places where there are two spaces for that number, like a Duke and a Duchess. Each spot could give the same or slightly different resources. I think having two Duchesses might be too powerful, but having duplicate spots for a couple numbers might be a way to expand it to 6 players without breaking the game.

If you feel (and it may make perfect sense) that the Usurper is too strong, we could rule that the Usurper doesn't get any bonus for phases 1,3 and 5.

This would mean he doesn't get the Envoy, so he won't be able to influence the Queen too often.

Give it a try and let me know!

andreac said:

Are there any plans regarding new expansion for Kingsburg? ;-)

andreac said:

I was about to suggest this . . . I think it would definately balance a little better.

I will be looking to give this a try soon. Love Kingsburg.

Dear andreac,

Are u still looking at this thread? My play group is ALWAYS 6 players and we are most willing to try out this variant! But can the 6th player Ursurper also have a Governor assisting him from the expansion set? Considering that everyone is saying how the Ursurper is more powerful than standard players, it might help if the 6th player cannot have a Governor card, but the other 5 can. Also, what of the soldier system if the players use the Soldier Variant from the expansion? (Does the Ursurper also create his own soldier tokens to use? Or maybe he sticks to a fixed soldier amount?)

I have alternative ideas for the 6th player but will use the "Usurper" terminology you have used.

First, allow me to comment on the usurper variant which has been mentioned. I feel that having a sixth player who is exclusively the usurper is not the right way to go. It should be a rotating role. With the final three productive seasons (in year # V with no usurper due to banding together to face the biggest threat yet). In those seasons, advisor #1-6 may be doubled up, thus relieving tension in the advisors.

Now, let me throw you a radical twist. Rather than the usurper idea, I prefer to keep the variant where everyone rolls the dice.

This time, the player who goes last (the one who rolled the highest and is sixth) is the usurper...in this mode, the usurper is decided based on the dice roll and the player who rolls the highest is rewarded for doing so. The sixth player gets to double up on any advisor he chooses. It is a reward for going last and it will keep the clutter to a minimum. I have playtested this and there really are very few glitches with this. It is no less troublesome than 5 players in terms of advisor collision.