“The Council recognizes the validity of this coupon.” Golden; just golden

I'm just gonna say this: no one reviews a game better than Quinns...

Two reliable 9 hour gaming sessions with a dedicated group of 5 players? Never heard of such nonsense.

Another game i’d love to play but never will due to time constraints and having a consistent 5 player group.

This game looks awesome...but who is this mysterious group of 5 total people that can play a board game for 9 hours straight?! That sounds straight up mythical to me. Wish I had such a dedicated group!

Speaking of megagames, I've been thinking about getting together a large group to play this where each player is assigned to a house and each house assigns a different player to play each session. So that each game would have that moment where players just go, "my parents were dingbats" while everybody in the sidelines holds their head in shame as they go, "my kid is a disapointment..."

First game I kept getting our money low for military and my best friend wanted money high. 2nd game someone asked my friend to vote Aye, he said "for 1 coin I will", he was handed a coin. I said "oh, so is that all it takes to buy the loyalty of House Orion? A single coin?" without missing a beat he replied "A single coin is all we'll have in our treasury if your house has anything to say about it.". We fist bumped, it was one of many great moments. There was also a moment of something terrible happening and my friend went "I'd hate anything to happen to my cousin, so please vote nay...while I pass for power."

Liked for 'fading out a medieval backing track'

Realizing that this is how actual politicians deal with people's actual lives is peak 2020.

Quinns, you’ve truly outdone yourself this time. That hotdog metaphor was pure poetry.

12:16 did you mean to say “Prestige” here? You said “leading in Crave” twice.

The alternative recommendation at the end is a nice feature! I'm happy every time I get one.

"Prestige" as in "prestigious" "Crave" as in "craven" Crave is a measure of how ruthless you are, measured by how few ruths you possess.

9 hours straight?? Quinns how do i become part of your play group

I see SUSD New Video...I Click to view the video. I either agree or disagree. But I never think the quality of their content is bad. Keep up the excellent work SUSD and keep representing board games in a professional, genuine and funny way!

I used to be tempted by kickstarter projects, now i'm just buying all games Su&Sd reviews...

This was a work of art for a game review. This sounds like an amazing game and your advice about roleplaying was important... if I had 4 friends to play with I would buy this. But damn I would watch the Shut up and Sit down speed play this game. These are smart experienced players playing this game fast and wild. It would be a sight.

Just thinking about sharing the 'ban it, ban it, ban it!' experience with my friends made me misty eyed and hopeful. Great review!

This game is SOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOD! And I can totally see people hating it but for my group of friends, it's perfect. I've been a horrible scheming monster in our game and it's delightful.

This sounds like a great game to throw off all the math nerds I play with. Euro games with engineers and computer scientists sucks if you’re not one.

What you do get to do is fill in little boxes Shut up and take my money.

That “since crokinole” has a lot of weight on it hahaha

For anyone thinking about buying the game, it is pretty easy to play the game in such a way that it is replayable/re-sellable. Just use pencil to write instead of pen and don't place any of the stickers, just tape the non-stick backs to the board. For end-game stickers, simply reveal them but don't stick them to the manual (save the covers for resetting). When resetting the game, simply cover the end-game stickers with the covers via tape. Erase all of the pencil marks on everything. Put the cards back into their envelopes (all cards have markings that tell you where they go). The stickers are a bit harder since you can't put them back into the binding, but you can put them in order at least.

7:38 So Apartheid is a widely debated subject in your circle... I SEE HOW THIS IS

"the buggar is gone... and there's no mess!" Love that line.

I really love that you waited until the whole story was complete before posting the review. Other outlets tried to push the review early and kept saying they were not done yet. Good job SUSD

We played King's Dilemma through to the end, largely on the strength of this review (and in fact I purchased "A War Of Whispers" because of their review of that game). KD is very good but its not so much a game, as it is an experience. Quinn's likening it to a "murder mystery dinner party" is spot on: sure, there are goals and points and scores and things but these ultimately don't mean anything. There is a "winner" (I in fact was the joint winner at the end of the game) but after literally weeks of playing with lots of decisions, deals and betrayals, thinking of the game as a binary "winner" or "loser" is very reductive. It is an abstract, narrative heavy, roleplaying experience of various political factions running a fantasy kingdom. If that sounds like your jam, you'll love it, and I would thoroughly recommend it with the caveat that only if you can get the same group together to play consistently over a couple of months. And I can't wait for the sequel.

I was at the edge of my seat watching red wine being poured back into the bottle next to a boardgame.

Finally got a copy of this after months of it being out of stock, we have a solid four man group and I can say that even with just four people it plays remarkably well. You'd think it frequently would devolve into 2 nays/2 ayes stalemates but no. The voting system in this game is beyond good, that money and power you get from abstaining makes it a viable option even when it goes against your best interests and it's also the only way to obtain the mighty Tiebreaker token. Frequently we all actively stayed away from tie votes because we knew the tiebreaker could just break them or encouraged more discussion. "Hey I know you voted for this outcome and you COULD use your tiebreaker token to force it through but hey bud, wouldn't ya like gold and maybe House Wolftooth owes ya favor down the road?" Ah! The way it handles LOSING the vote, my goodness, you get your power BACK if you lose where if you win the vote you lose that power to communal pool. So many times I'd make a big bet, regret it, and then breathe a sigh of relief when I lost and watch my opponents begrudgingly get what they wanted but also have to put their votes back into the pool. It is a delightful storytelling engine in the style of something closer to Dungeons and Dragons that I can't get enough of. My DnD group forgoes DnD to play this instead. So glad I was able to get a copy over Christmas as a gift to myself.

Well... Now I have to buy this as well. Please keep on destroying my bank account with your quality content, I love it.

16:23 Boom Mic IV, the self-reflective reboot simply titled: _Boom_ _Mic_

Recently played and finished The Kings Dilemma. It was the best game experience I've ever had, and I'm now in mourning. We played with just 3 people but it really worked well. Over the course of the games it became more about soft power and bluffing. Before voting we would often lie about our intentions, sometimes this would result in a planned deadlock which the moderator would then exploit. Absolutely depends on the group of people you are playing with, but it can be an absolute blast with 3.

12:23 "The players that are leading in crave want a bright future.... However, the players who are leading in crave want a dark future.." Hahaa nice review, have been looking forward to this one since i saw it anounced

Got my hands on this game. We’re 4-5 sessions in by the end of session 2 I hadn’t won a single vote without just having more authority than everyone else on the board and yet still I achieved my narrative goal. I’m loving this goal

16:13 Awww man, I always imagined there's a person behind the camera in those reviews, but the mirror reveals the truth! Now it feels so lonely!

Yeah I am going to have a D&D game with this as the backdrop, Players play as the noble houses that create the Macro-Level circumstances in which the adventures have to deal with on a micro-level

Quick request, can you just review bad games for the rest of the year? My bank have said they can't offer me any more loans to fund the purchasing of board games I'm not going to play because I can't get a group together

We're at game 11 of this gem, playing one night a week remotely (there's a nice Google Spreadsheet to keep track of everything - even the board). We're having a BLAST. We DO roleplay, yes, because it's intrinsically linked to the core fun and theme of the game. I cannot recommend this game enough if you're even slightly interested in GoT, politics in general, or just enjoy bickering about literally ANY topic. Also, KILLER review!

First time seeing one of this man's reviews. He has absolute perfect melody and pacing in his lines. A delight to listen to. I am now subsribed!

15:15 My group was kinda the opposite of this. Four of the five houses we picked ranged from kinda cosmopolitan to very cosmopolitan. By around the halfway point, my wealthy farming house was openly teaming up with the weird cult house (the one conservative house) to "make the people dumber" because all this knowledge was getting in the way of me getting any of my achievements.

I never thought I would hear “Addictive” and “Political” in the same sentence

Just finished the campaign with four players. Quinns' enthusiasm inspired me to get the group together and play. It took eighteen games. The first three were energised by the newness and nature of the mechanics. The next 15.5 games were a repetitive grind in which we had no idea of how we were going to use the prestige and / or crave we were gaining, or the comparative value between the two. It was just aimless as we built up our stocks of these resources not knowing how they'll be used. The last half hour we finally learned how prestige / crave were used and so it was a mad dash to the finish. Also, we found no 'rubber banding' to level the playing field for the fourth player who joined in game three. She was also at a disadvantage the entire game having had less time to collect prestige / crave. I respect Quinns' opinions but, for our group, this was the worst gaming experience of the year.

We're halfway through, I built a trophy for the winner of each round that gets passed between us... SUCH a good game!!

"The players who are leading in crave would like..." later: "However the players who are leading in crave would rather"? Wait what? Shouldn't one of these have been prestige?

Oh wow the central mechanic really is just Reigns. It's a cool mechanic, thematic and yet simple. Glad to see it getting around.

Actual ultimate game of thrones board game, come on you can't just make me regret a war of whispers like that!

10:45 wow! WOW! Rude! What if the dog wanted to play, Quinn?

1:40 that song is also used by useful charts as their intro. It's a really cool song

Playing the full campaign of this game is perhaps the greatest board gaming experience I've ever had.

I sure wish I had friends outside of the internet I could play all these board games I keep buying on SUASD's recommendation. Oh well. At least the boxes look pretty on my shelves.

Now that myself and my friends all have kids, getting together to play games is so hard. God I wish I could play this game.

You guys are my only subscribed boardgame reviewers that make me want to buy games I otherwise wouldn't even look at. Brilliant!

Our gaming group loves this game - in fact it has become our #1 favourite game. Will there be more? Is there a part 2 coming? Or will there be a new game with the core mechanics but a new skin and story?

Quinn I’m just happy that you come dressed for your videos and make an effort with your style. The board game content on youtube is often talking heads, shitty angles, no edits and terrible terrible outfits

SU & SD Is officially my Kickstarter guiding light

10:40 A Kylie sighting! Yay.

It's only an ultimate Game of Thrones boardgame if the last part of the game is one player randomly setting fire to your apartment while another who sat most of the game out gets declared a winner.

Absolutely love this concept!! I was inspired to build something similar, a castle/island surrounded by a ring of train tracks with a wall and a moat, but never really got too far with it. Might pick that back up again as you work on this one. Can’t wait to see where this goes!

12:23 I think Quinns meant to say the players leading in Prestige will want a bright future for the kingdom since it’s slowly becoming theirs 😂

My friends and I have been playing this game and are nearing the end. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Great Review as always ... can this game handle players dropping in and out of sessions?

Board Game of the year for me, best 2019 game we had so much fun I can't even describe it with words. Pure joy.

We into our 5th game and loving it so far. Tried prequel at Essen and really enjoyed it. Best of all is by using removable stickers, it has been possible to preserve it so far!

i feel like the high stability means something like a Meiji restoration, with the King thinking the time is nigh to reclaim power from the nobles, ending the families' political tomfoolery and with it the game, but after some shenanigans, the restoration only lasts until his majesty's death and with that end comes the return of the great houses.

Ok, it is a legacy game, but damn I was nervous while he poured the wine into the bottle over the game...

Sounds like my kind of game, just a shame I'm never going to experience this. Just no friends like yours and boring life and obligations in the way..

He failed to mention the legacy aspect of this game and how it's only a one-time play. Normally, this isn't a problem but for us, it left a bitter taste in our mouth because if we wanted a specific story element to happen and it didn't, we could never go back and see what could've happened. The backstabbing and trickery would've have been a problem but for one person to buy the game only to see it go in a direction that they couldn't change, it was frustrating. Just bringing this up in case anyone has any concerns! Otherwise, he's correct in this review!

Quinns does not understand what a spike is in volleyball 0:45

I wish you'd get off the fence. Did you like this game or didn't you?

With the stickers, markers and sealed envelopes this looks like is a one time play through .. is there a way to play to make it less 'permanent' if your group of players changes from session to session ?

Bought this about a week before the lockdown. I look it at it longingly waiting for the day when I will finally play it with my game group....

Great painting at the end of the table.

I do appreciate your reviews. However, because of your positive review, I will never get to play this game. Everything is sold out, or charging $300, and this makes me sad.

I am totally with Quinn's on this one. King's Dilemma is my favorite game from 2019. I'm actually playing two separate campaigns of it with two different groups and from the very first game the two groups went along completely different paths in the branching stories and have very different houses in their councils. It's one of the rare games both groups have sat down and voluntarily opted to play two or three rounds at a time just to continue seeing what happens in it. And, like Quinn's said, it's hilarious as you try to "justify" doing really horrible things simply because, for your current house, you want a certain slider to go down instead of up. 😈 The main issue I might have with the game are that it definitely plays best if you can keep playing with the same group of four or five people over and over a couple dozen times. Because of the way the stories progress and your individual houses evolve and "check off boxes" it would be far less satisfying to have certain houses and players dropping in and out of individual games. The individual games are short, about an hour or so, but the overall time commitment might be problematic depending on the regularity of your game group. And, of course, it's a one-shot playthrough per game. So if, like me, you want to play more than once you have to buy a new copy of the game. Which isn't TOO bad considering how many hours of enjoyment you get out of each purchase, but it's certainly not something to do unless you can be SURE you're going to actually be able to play completely through it more than once. Otherwise it's a fantastic game, I can't sing its praises enough. The gameplay is good and the writing is fantastic and the decisions you make are often quite interesting. I'll be very interested to see if they do a King's Dilemma sequel or a new game with a similar system. P.S. And buy yourself a small toy gavel on the side for whoever is the Moderator each round. It's well worth the couple of bucks. 😉

So it's the board game version of the video game Reigns?

SUSD Review Warning: Quick, buy this game before it is sold out everywhere.

Lately when I see a game shoot up the hot track on BGG it's because of you guys

Oh god, I know I would absolutely love this game. However, I know that I see all the people I could play this with maybe once a year. Still, I'll probably buy this, and let it collect dust while looking at it every once in a while to daydream of the good times that could've been.

As of this comment my group is about halfway through the campaign, this review is pretty spot on. Very enjoyable with 5 players.

Oh boy, there's so much British banter in here that I feel my crumpet moisten. The only thing more tragic is I can't seem to get hold of this game anywhere! Rawrrr! I will certainly keep an eye for it however. It sounds incredible.

After coming off of a week-long CK2 binge, hearing the background music had me freaking out thinking i left the game on.

How well d'you reckon this would work if you had the same houses but one or two different players representing them? I think I can get enough people to play this but I don't think I can consistently get the same five.

Your reports are great, as always. But if I keep seeing drinks next to the board, I'm going to have a heart attack. Greetings from Buenos Aires.

I feel like we need a gameplay of this! It would be awesome if you could release the video of your group's games. Great review, as always!

This review was so hilarious I can't even xD

one minute ago gang. But also interested how there's now a bunch of GoT-esque political intrigue games cropping up Edit: This looks very fun... but no way I'd consistently get people together to play this :(

Pouring wine back into the bottle while the game is still unpacked all around it 🤔😥😲 But thanks so much for the video! Laughed all the way through and ordered straight after finishing it

After finishing 2nd risk legacy, where games sometimes can snowball to be finished in 3-4 turns, lead to every turn of discussions of 10mins to a 45 mins discussions, deals, convincing etc. This kings dilemma feels perfect for our group.

SU&SD are my new favorite Reviewers.

That shot at 6 minutes. ooooo cinematic glory. feels good.

Every god damn review, I'm searching how to buy the game, and I hear the turn in the review and get cold feet. EVERY TIME.

My Dilemma is I need friends to play this with

Amazing! I literally just stopped listening to you guys talking about this game on your podcast and idly flicked over to KZfaq to find the video newly uploaded 😁

We just got it and o boy do we want to play it. The only thing stopping us is getting those 5 players. Three is easy, four is doable, 5 is...

I do love SUSD reviews, they are certainly entretaining and instruccional. Now with regards the Kings Dilema, my opinion is that the game is VERY repetitive and it has a major flaw which is the way you score. The problem from my perspective is that the story makes no sense when you are trying to score as much as you can. The card you select at the begging of the game forces you to move the sliders in a certain way and thus all the voting makes no sense at all but trying to move the sliders in a certain direction So there is really no discussion on the table it is just deciding which direction will help me win and after 6 games, it became quite boring. The story is great and also interesting to see how it evolves, but since it really doesn't matter because it is not tied to how you score, after those games, nobody cared about the story. If you and you team of players dont care about winning then maybe the story might be intriguing. But if you care aboout game mechanics and winning, this is very basic and fails where a lot of legacy games fail by becoming super repetitive in a very short time.

As an Italian I feel offended by that wine thing you did

Great review. The game looks like one I would love to watch, but I really can't get into playing these sort of games. I'm not someone who is good at the whole bringing out characters or getting into the manipulation. Maybe with the right group I could get into it, but that isn't today.

I'm excited about the play of this game, but it not being resettable kills my interest. Sidereal Confluence feels like a great alternative for hardcore wheeler-dealers.

I would love to see this guy and his friends play this game

Thank you for the great review! This game is right up my gaming group’s alley! I have to ask, wasn’t there supposed to be a new podcast put up yesterday?