Pax Renaissance

Disclaimer: This short review does not attempt to provide a thorough rules explanation. For that, I would suggest this video. All I'm interested in exploring when I write about board games is WHY I like games, and HOW they make me feel. As such, this review is sparse on rules information and heavy on me trying to explain why this game feels cool to play. If you are looking for an "objective" take on the game's pros and cons, there are other great reviews here. I believe all forms of art are subjective, and that applying a numerical value to them is inappropriate unless only attempting to convey a subjective desire to engage with the object. Under those parameters, Pax Ren is a 10/10 for me.

Pax Renaissance is a tableau builder.

But it's a PAX game, so of course, it's much more than that -- but at its core, Pax Renaissance is about purchasing cards from a market, and playing those cards to your tableau. The cards you play to your tableau will provide you with actions and allow you to manipulate the board state in ways that will secure your chance of victory.

Thematically, in Pax Renaissance we play as powerful bankers, using our money to manipulate the world around us. Of course, we want to come out on top -- and we will fully take for granted that these swings of arrogance come at the expense of others. Our money will fund holy wars, conspiracies, revolutions, beheadings, and military campaigns -- and we will count our riches in the background.

.

Pax Renaissance features a map centred on the Mediterranean Sea. The map stretches from England to Egypt. On that map, 3 factions -- Muslims, Catholics, and Reformists -- exercise control over different regions.

Through the purchasing and playing of cards from a central market, players will manipulate these factions, causing their control to ebb and flow, and carve out new frontiers. Some games may see the Islamic kingdoms taking over Europe - others might see political infighting and revolutions in England and France - still, others might see globalization and trade prevail in the face of beheadings, and violent regime change.



There are two decks of cards in this game -- an East and a West deck. In each deck, there are two comet cards seeded into the bottom portion. When these cards flip into the market, players are able to purchase them and activate any of the 4 victory conditions. This takes careful consideration, because activating a victory condition doesn't mean you claim victory. Activating a victory condition means that you just gave everyone else at the table an equal chance to snatch that victory out of your hands.

There are 4 victory conditions in Pax Renaissance. They are Renaissance Victory, Globalization Victory, Imperial Victory, and Holy Victory. I'll give a brief breakdown of each victory condition -- because it will give you a decent overview of what a player can accomplish during a game of Pax Renaissance.

Renaissance Victory: To win the Renaissance victory, a player needs to have a republic under their control. A republic can be created by a successful vote within a monarchy. Several straw-man attacks on your own kingdoms, including peasant revolts will also flip your kingdom from a monarchy into a republic. Renaissance Victory also requires the player to have more "Law prestige" than any other player

Globalization Victory: Globalization victory requires a player to have more concessions than any other player and also more "Discovery Prestige". Concessions are put out in a few ways, but mostly when a successful regime change happens. I assume this represents your interests being secured by the new power-that-be - in exchange for your financing their armies and intelligence networks.

Imperial Victory: Simple, have more Monarchies under your control than any other player. Monarchies can be controlled through many regime-change events, including Coronations, Campaigns, and Holy Wars.

Holy Victory: This one is a little more complicated, it requires a player to have more prestige in the dominant religion - which means more pieces of that faction exist within their own theocracies (theocracies are created through successful Holy Wars)



What do I think?

The eschewal of victory points in favour of specific win conditions means Pax Renaissance can narrow its focus. It is a battle over a few specific things, and the consequence of this means that Pax Renaissance becomes a tense, zero-sum game, where one player's advantage is often an active disadvantage to everyone else at the table. This way of entangling player objectives and forcing them to fight -- directly -- over the things that matter to them, creates a much more satisfying way to secure victory than "whoever has the most points". Pax Renaissance is a battle of wits, not of optimization.

.

Pax Renaissance does something else I really love in games: it provides an emergent narrative that is generated by player actions, not by flipping over cards with events on them, or by consulting page 50 paragraph 5 in a tome of pre-scripted encounters. Everything that happens in Pax Renaissance happens because the game gives you the proper tools to do so. Whether you use them or not, and to what effect you use them is up to the players. The result is a narrative that will never be replicated, and to me, this has an effect similar to games like Agricola or Underwater Cities. In farming games and city builders, even if you do poorly, there's satisfaction in looking at your board -- at the thing you've created. In Pax Renaissance, it's less of a thing, but the feeling is still there. The history that you create is impactful.

And at the centre of all of this is just... cards. Cards that you buy from a market. The fact that such a simple mechanism can give birth to an experience like this is nothing short of incredible. The cards are everything. Each one is unique and, in certain circumstances, profoundly game-changing.

And there is an inherent drama in the cards that is impossible not to love... When the comet cards that are seeded into the deck flip, there is always a feeling like the table gasps. Everyone has to, very quickly, take stock of their current position, and re-evaluate their goals -- and their opponent's goals. When the comet cards come out, you might suddenly need to pivot your strategy. It might mean abandoning what you've been working on in order to deny your opponent the win. Much like other games in the Pax Series -- and also, the COIN series -- the flipping of these pre-seeded cards creates a dramatic tension that looms over the tempo - an eschatological spectre dragging victory on a rope.



Pax Renaissance is a game of eking out advantages. About controlling the tempo, and taking risks in order to secure your position, even if it's only one rung up the ladder.

It's a game of point and counter-point, a theme that the game explores with several dichotomies: East and West, Republic and Monarchy, Tolerance and Fundamentalism -- but, despite what the footnotes in the rulebook might present, how Pax Renaissance handles these dichotomies is more dialogic than dialectic - there is no synthesis of ideas here, no happy ending, but a fluid exchange of ideas that serve to explore our concept of power, and how it influences the world around us.

But most importantly: the game is very fun. When your opponent seizes control of the Ottoman Empire only to be hit with a behead card that kills his King and leaves the empire in a weakened state, it's not only funny, but it feels good. It scratches that schadenfreude itch, like the way you might imagine a civilization game does. But in its essence, Pax Renaissance is an anti-civ game. And as much as Phil Eklund might hate this, Pax Renaissance feels like a post-modern take on the civ genre. Because instead of representing England, The Ottoman Empire, or the Papal States, we represent a rhizomatic web of interests in a world that is deeply entangled by our meddling.

The King is Dead (Second Edition)

The King is Dead: Second Edition

Review by Ethan Reyes

You know the feeling when you meet someone special? When the fog-of-war clears, and leaves you trance-like, unable to think of anything else – a sort of shell of your former self? Like a body’s cells replacing themselves every 7-10 years but not with new cells, no – with thoughts. Nothing but thoughts.

The King is Dead (hereby forgoing the “Second Edition'' subtitle) is my new board game crush. My new always-on-my-mind box of cubes. And just like its mechanisms, it has played a subtle game of influence over my heart. 

Let me explain why I feel this way.

Sidenote: I’m not interested in writing detailed rules teach, there are plenty of how-to-plays available for this game and most others. The rules I will be explaining provide the necessary context to understand why this game is so special.

The King is Dead is an area influence game, where the British, Scottish and Welsh battle it out over 8 regions, each region being resolved per round in an order known to all players. On a player’s turn, they will play cards from their hand which have a variety of special effects, all of which influence the power balance of the 3 factions on the board, represented by colourful cubes. When each player passes, the faction with the most cubes in a given region will win influence over that part of the map. 

This repeats 7 more times, and once all regions have been resolved, the player with the most influence in the winning faction will be crowned the new King of Britain.

So, here is the first twist:

Whenever you play a card, you resolve its effect on the board, then you remove a cube from anywhere on the map. Why would you do this? Well, to summon them to your court of course - thus granting you increased influence in the faction you chose. 

But (you might say), wouldn’t removing a cube from the board weaken the position of the faction you just essentially invested in?

Answer: Yes

This inverse relationship between board presence and court influence is a fascinating tight-rope display, acting as the peak of this game’s design. But like a peak, things can easily fall apart if one is not careful. Choosing which cube to remove, like everything else in this game, is important.

The Second Twist in The King is Dead is this: each player has an identical set of 8 action cards in their hand that they will use to influence the board each turn. But once you use one of these cards, it is discarded for the rest of the game. And so the excruciating decisions just became more excruciating. The most important and central point of despair in The King is Dead reveals itself:

Regret.

Regret at not saving that one card that would be soo useful right now.

Thus, the cards become your most important resource, and one that only dwindles. Careful management of them is key to success. 

The third twist is simple: If a region ties during the resolution of a round, it becomes unstable. If three regions become unstable, the French invade, and the end-game scoring conditions change. Now, instead of leading the most powerful faction in Britain - the new King will be the one who can unite the land against the French by having the most complete sets of cubes in his court.

 And that’s basically it.

The central points of tension in this game: that being the card management and the inverse relationship between your court and the strength of the factions on the board create a game ripe for creativity. It reminds me a lot of Torres by Kramer & Kiesling – specifically the open-handed variant where all your action cards are available and visible at the beginning of the game. Once again, these action cards are a one-time-use deal. Once you use them – they’re gone. So timing, and creative use of your abilities is everything – but it will never be enough. 

The King is Dead boils down to just that: Decisive moments. Moments that make you feel like a power broker, wheeling and dealing in intrigue and back-room deals. Each action you take plays out a crucial moment in a tug of war that exists as much on the board as in your mind. 

For an essentially "themeless" game to evoke such a feeling, is a special thing indeed. 

The King is Dead is an easy 10/10 for me, as in, I love this game and will actively suggest playing it to my friends until they play it with me.

Caveats: I have only played the two-player and three-player game. Both were fantastic but I think two players is where this game shines the most. I feel like The King is Dead would come the most alive if you play it several times with a dedicated opponent. The opportunities to develop a meta within The King is Dead are strong and begging to be explored.