The real fun begins in Take the Throne (from Deathtrap Games) when the game moves above the cards laid out in front of you. Where the player holding the throne at the time gives it a minute before they reveal their card, and you see the chatter move from gentle conversation into full time king maker mode, and you are sitting there watching live negotiations and promises and schemes and plans and pie crust agreements. Meanwhile, you are secretly hoping that the card you’ve placed down in front of you is enough to sneak in that extra point and move you closer to victory. That is when the game comes into it’s own and before then is just play pretend and window dressing, far too polite for what is going on here. This should be Game of Thrones rather than polite Disney Kingdoms and is all the better for it.
Imagine Love Letter, except you’re telling someone to pack their stuff and leave with every single card you play, rather than try to get them giddy and smiling and you’ll get the idea. You’re maybe wondering if you’ve missed the introduction, but at this point it would be nothing more than filler, just designed to up the word count and the search engine optimisation and hopefully encourage you to read on and decide if Take the throne is worth fifteen minutes of your time. You should be concentrating on sharpening those knives because you can be guaranteed that everyone around you is slowly dripping water onto their own personal whetstone.
I say Love Letter but what I also maybe mean is rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock. As the challenger you have five different cards to play at your disposal, and make the choice to charge, or attack or sabotage, or feint but not actually Spock, which would make it an entirely different kind of game altogether. There is that choice and with that comes all the delights of a mini analysis paralysis, where in the first couple of rounds, you’re playing cards just to get a feel of what everyone else might be doing, but as other players climb toward that magical winning victory point total, you have to stop and wait.
Most of the time you’re waiting for the current ruler to reveal their card, before it travels round the circle of players and instant actions happen, followed by after effects. I say current ruler because in Take the Throne, the throne is taken and exchanged and even given up depending on what cards are played. This has the delicious effect of changing who plays first and who plays last and whether certain cards should be left in your hand for another day. So it is not unusual for your cards to switch between pointless and useful and game changing. All the while the current ruler has their own deck to try to hold on to the throne and gain two victory points or lose it and let the opponent gain one for taking power. Sometimes however it is worthwhile gently abdicating and disappearing off into the night to fight and reclaim the throne another day.
Play Take the Throne with three players to give you a taste of what is on offer. As with similar games in this kind of space, the minimum player count normally results in a watered down version of the potential fun on offer, and it becomes clearer the more you play that cards like the Charge card work better at four or five players. Higher player counts will only increase the amount of mind games that are likely to be played and are more likely to give you moments where the crown can change hands more than once in a single round. If you’re reading this, you’ll probably have a good idea of who you want to play Take the Throne with. I’m not sure how much it would fair if the entire game was played out just based on the the mechanics alone without the communication. It’s such an important part of the game that it is encouraged in the rulebook, so be warned if your own group prefers effects and results to stay within the text. This is not a heads down, thumbs up kind of a game.
Don’t let my concerns dampen things too much. There’s touches of cleverness, and even a hint of brilliance in some of the design choices. Players decks only refresh if the throne changes hands, so passive play can reduce the number of aggressive cards very quickly, and so for everyone concerned, usurping is always going to be the favoured tactic. Sometimes you’ll end up needing to let someone win in order to refresh you own deck. The unique deck for the current holder of the throne is always something to be treasured because you are likely to spend very little time with the hand of six cards and are even less likely to play them. It opens up a longer learning game for the ruler role, and makes it the slightly more special when you have plonked your royal bum down on the chair. It is perfectly feasible to play an entire game and not have a chance to play all of the cards on offer, which encourages you to get Take the Throne back to the table.
So, Take The Throne is definitely good, and if you get the right type of players involved who are happy to bear arms but not grudges, it has the potential to be great. I feel that the card mechanics work best when there is the full compliment of four or five players, as that is when you’ll see certain cards played more sparingly and other cards will come into their own. It passively encourages above the table play, and is best enjoyed in the company of people you feel comfortable in verbally jousting with. There’s some clever mechanics intertwined into a game where you only chose from five cards, and it’s not afraid to make you think thoughts of revenge and regicide. Pleasantly surprised by this one.
Find out more by going to https://www.deathtrapgames.co.uk/
This first impression piece is based on the retail version of the game provided to us by the designer and publisher. We were not paid monetary compensation for this review. We give a general overview of the gameplay and so not all of the mechanical aspects of the game may be mentioned. As with most first impressions, we try to capture how we felt after playing the game a couple of times. The majority of the games that we are play are going to take a reasonable number of sessions and playthroughs to fully understand every possibility that they offer. We hope this write up gives you an idea of whether or not this game is something that you will consider playing or even add to your collection. Even if we don't like something, hopefully it helps you to decide if it is something that you should find out more about. We always suggest you check out a gameplay video to give you a better understanding of the game as it is played. If you would like to support more content on the blog then please consider backing us on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/werenotwizards
