Cover Your Kingdom is a Pun-Filled Card Game of Bizarre and Magical Creatures

You’ve just been given your very own magical kingdom — only there’s a lot of kingdom and not so much magic. So you’d better get busy filling it with fantastical creatures.

Cover Your Kingdom is a follow-up title to the popular card game Cover Your Assets that features some truly creative and original animals, creatures, and monsters. It’s a treat to look at, but how does it play?

Gameplay

Each player takes a kingdom board, each of which is divided into two sections: highlands and lowlands. The deck of creature cards is shuffled and everyone is dealt six. Most cards are clan creatures. Two matching clan creatures can be played to form a clan. Some of these are highland creatures, and when they create a clan will be played on that section of your kingdom, while some prefer the lowlands and others are happy going on either section. There are also wild creatures which cannot be paired by themselves, but can be paired with another creature to form a clan. Finally there are free creatures which are played for their special abilities.

On your turn you must take an action and may choose to take a second one (either the same action or another). You can form a clan, in which case you take two matching clan cards (or one clan creature and a wild creature), stack them, and place them on the appropriate section of your kingdom. If you already have a clan on that section, you will rotate the new clan horizontally and place it on top. The next time you place a clan on that section, you will place it vertically, and so on.

You can attempt to recruit a clan, in which case you indicate a clan on top of its stack in an opponent’s kingdom and play a matching or wild creature card. The opponent then gets a chance to play a matching or wild card. If he succeeds, you may play another one yourself. Whoever runs out of matching cards first loses the clan, and all cards played join the clan in the winner’s kingdom. Other possible actions on your turn include: adding a creature from your hand to a matching clan in your kingdom, playing a free creature for its special ability, and discarding a card and drawing a new one.

At the end of your turn, all players draw up to six cards. The game ends once the deck runs out and all players have run out of cards in their hands. Players then count up the point values of all the creatures in their kingdoms and the player with the most points wins.

Review

Cover Your Kingdom plays fast, has lots of player interaction, calls on you to constantly be paying attention to other kingdoms and what cards are played when, and provides lots of take-that opportunities. There is also a memory element to the game, as some abilities affect clans on the bottom of a stack, and your opponents are not obligated to disclose what these clans are before you play.

The artwork is just a huge amount of fun, with the cards packed full of tons of puns and amusing creatures that are still all family friendly. The components in general are good quality and the cards made from a nice material that should last well.

There are also a lot of rule variants offered. There are methods for simplifying the game, as well as how to add complexity and additional scoring bonuses or abilities unique to your kingdom. This makes Cover Your Kingdom really flexible from game group to game group.

We appreciated the large player count, but with a full game of eight players, you’d likely run into a little too much downtime. This is especially true since you can only steal clans from kingdoms two away from yours when there are 6 players or more.

If you enjoy set collection card games, you should check out Cover Your Kingdom. It’s got a great personality and clever twists to the genre. Also, you just can’t go wrong with a pun!

Pros: Artwork and component quality, player interaction, and of course puns!

Cons: Too much downtime at higher player counts

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.