Kingdomino Origins - First Play!

8th August 2023

Tuesday is here again which means we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for some gaming entertainment.

Kingdomino Origins is a prehistorically themed follow up to the most excellent Kingdomino.
Is Kingdomino Origins a Neanderthal of a game of something more civilised.

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What's in a game?
​Tiles: If you've played Kingdomino, then you'll be on very familiar ground. The rectangular tiles resemble dominos in that they display 2 halves (Or tile spaces.) and each half will display 1 of several types of terrain - although some dominos will contain the same terrain twice.

• Resource icons: These are new to the game and and most tiles will also display resource icon on each half in white which corresponds to its terrain type. I think only the desert landscape has no icons.
• Score multiplier: Some halves of the tiles will contain flame icons, these are score multipliers and go from 1-3.
• Volcano: Some halves will contain a volcano and volcanos display 1-3 craters. This is a new mechanic and more on it later.
• Numbering: The other side of each tile is numbered from 1-48.

Examples of Kingdomino Origins tiles.

Starter tiles: These are half the size of the dominos.
Standees: These are card standees depicting tents that go with the starter tiles.

Starter tiles.

Tent standees.

Totem tiles: Kingdomino Origins are introduces 2 slightly different ways to play and one method uses totem tiles which provide bonus victory points (VPs) at the game end.

Totem tiles, one for each resource type that score 3-6 victory points.

Caveman tiles: Also new to Kingdomino Origins are caveman tiles which are used in the other method to play the game and provide extra scoring opportunities. They are slightly smaller than starter tiles and each one depicts a caveman of sorts as well as icons related to their scoring. 

Cavemen clearly had a variety of careers.

Cave board: More of a large tile than a board, this is used in conjunction with the caveman tiles to display the market of caveman tokens available to be drafted and has space for the caveman tile stack as well for 4 of face-up tiles. Below that are icons which relate to the cost of drafting tiles.

A cave with a view.

Tokens: Kingdomino Origins uses 2 types of token:

• Resource tokens: These are quite small wooden tokens which display screen printed illustrations. There are 4 types of token

Fish, flint, mammoth & mushroom tokens.

• Fire tokens: Card discs are used to represent 'fire'. Fire tokens come with 1-3 flames. The reverse of each fire token shows how far it can be moved (Which is 1-3 spaces and the inverse to the number of flames.) - more on this later.

Fire tokens possess a 1-3 multiplier.

Caveman meeples: There are 2 of these in each player colour.

Caveman meeples.

The component quality here is comparable to the original Kingdomino, which is to say they're pretty good quality and the game has the same chunky plastic coated tiles and standees tokens found there.
The new tokens are also good quality The new tiles are equally sturdy feeling and plastic coated.
The resource tokens and caveman meeples are wooden and display screen printed artwork, they look excellent: Although arguably, the resource tokens are on the small side, making them a bit too fiddly to handle for their own good.
Only the fire tokens are what would be considered average being a pretty standard card tokens but even so, they're still perfectly acceptable.

Kingdomino Origins is a bright and colourful game which is something I always like. The art style used on the tiles and fire tokens has a cheerful cartoony look to it and makes it easy to distinguish between the different landscapes.
The illustrations used on the wooden components are essentially monochrome but the effect is good and it adds to the appearances the resources and meeples.

There isn't too much iconography that appears in the game. Some of it's pretty self-explanatory as it refers to the flame tokens or resources. However, the icons for resources are outlined in white which can make it a little tricky to see against the background of the icy landscape.
The most complicated iconography appears on the caveman tiles as it shows what can be scored off the tile and how it is scored. It's not overly complicated but will probably result in instances of turning to the rule book - nothing too bad though.

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How's it play?
Kingdomino Origins is a follow up to Kingdomino and for the most part shares very similar rules. I'm only going to briefly detail those rules and will list differences.
Having said that, it does also introduce 2 new game modes - Totem and Tribal which respectively add the totem and tribal tiles to the game.

Setup
Discovery mode
This is basically what this game calls the classic Kingdomino game.
Kingdomino Origins can be played like classic Kingdomino and features the same drafting and tile-laying mechanics to create a 5x5 grid in order to score points.
Read about classic Kingdomino here first. The only difference between the two being the addition of 'Volcanos'.

• Tiles: Shuffle the tiles into a face down stack. Unlike Kingdomino, no tiles are removed when playing with lower player counts, instead tiles are discarded after drafting.
  Players: Give each player the starting tiles, standee and meeple in their player colour.
• Volcanos: When a tile displaying a volcano tile is drafted, the active player will also acquire a fire token. Fire tokens have 1-3 flames which correspond to the craters on volcanos.
  The active player then places it on any empty tile 1-3 spaces away from the volcano they just played and it adds a 1-3 point multiplier ​to the chosen landscape type.
  Note: The bigger the multiplier less further away from the volcano it can be placed.

Totem mode
Setup for this mode is almost identical to discovery mode except it uses the resource tokens and totem tiles for extra scoring.

• Resource tokens: When tiles are revealed during the drafting phase, resource tokens which match the icons on that tile are placed on to it.

​Tribe mode
The 3rd and final game mode add a little more complexity with a whole new 'layer' of scoring added to the mix.

• Caveman tiles: Unlike the previous 2 game modes, the tribe mode uses the cave board and caveman tile.
  Shuffle the caveman tiles into a face-down stack, then draw 4 and place them face-up on the cave board. this is a drafting area.
• Resource tokens: As with totem mode, resource tokens are placed on tile and can  be acquired by players but now, they have the option of using resources to acquire caveman tiles.
• Totem tiles: The totem tiles are NOT used in tribe mode.

Onto play
Discovery Mode
This mode plays almost identically to the original Kingdomino. It features the same gameplay of drafting tiles and selecting a new one, then adding them to a personal playing area to create landscapes and score those landscapes according to their size and the multipliers they contain.
Volcanos simply add extra multipliers which players can add to their personal area.

Totem mode
This mode introduces a couple of extra concepts to the game.

• Volcanos: Totem mode introduce 1 extra rule regarding volcanos and fire tokens: If a fire token is placed on to a tile space with a resource token, that resource token is destroyed and discarded out of play.
• Resources: When a player acquires a tile, they also acquire the resources on it. Resources stay on a tile until the game end unless destroyed by fire.
• Totems: A player who has the most tokens of any single type of resource, also acquires its related totem tile. A player may have more than 1 totem tile and it is also possible for a totem tile to change hands over time if an opposing player later gains more of type of resource.
• Game end: At the game end, it is scored identically to the discovery mode with the addition of a couple of extra scoring criteria.
  Resources: each resource token on a tile earns an extra victory point.
  Totems: Whoever controls a tile gains its listed value as bonus VPs. Thus totems are worth 3-6VP each.

Tribe mode
This mode introduces a touch more complexity to the game (Although there's not much complexity to begin with!).

• Volcanos: As with totem mode, fire can destroy resources, fire can also destroy a caveman tile.
• Caveman tiles: After drafting a tile, the active player may choose to also spend any 2 different resources from the resources in their playing area to acquire any 1 of the 4 available tiles.
  Alternatively, they may spend 1 each of all 4 resource types to go through the face-down stack and take a caveman tile of their choice, shuffling the stack into a new face-down stack.
• Placing caveman tile: After acquiring a caveman tile, the active player must place it on their playing area. A caveman tile can be placed on any empty tile space, that is a space with no tokens or resources on it.
• Game end: At the end, the games scores as per Kingdomino.
  Caveman tiles will score additional VPs as per their scoring criteria., usually this will be dependant what is found on the tile spaces surrounding them.

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Overall
A prehistoric caveman setting is as good a theme for a game of Kingdomino as any. The landscapes have been suitably 'reskinned' and the resources are appropriate (Who knew mushrooms were so important to cavemen....).

I like how Kingdomino Origins keeps the original game in here along with the other modes.
​Mechanically, the base game here is almost identical to the classic Kingdomino so there's not much I can add here in that regard.

The 2 other modes (particularly the tribe mode) provide something slightly different to the game. Namely, alternative avenues to VPs and this is done without changing or impacting the game or to it's detriment - which is good. Often these additions don't actually add anything to a game.

​Why are these extra scoring methods good?
Typically in Kingdomino, the best way to score VPs is to create the biggest possible piece of a single landscape type then add as many multipliers to it as possible. The challenge essentially comes from doing this as effectively or efficiently as possible.
The new modes reward players for having more diverse landscapes and gives them scoring alternatives.

Totem mode gives players the opportunity to gain totem tiles which score extra VPs. Sure if a player gets a lot of tiles of a single landscape they'll probably get the totem for it but at the cost of allowing their opponents to get the other ones.

Tribe mode is where this is most apparent because in order to gain caveman tiles, players need 2 different resources which can only come from different tiles and if they want to go through the stack, they'll need 1 each of all 4 resources!
Then when placing cavemen tiles on to their playing area, they'll need to consider the positioning to maximise the scoring opportunity.
While I admire the elegance of classic Kingdomino, I think this is an excellent iteration of the rules which results in an alternative way to score VPs that provides players with more meaningful decisions to make and only a negligible increase in complexity.

If you've already got some version of Kingdomino or other, I'm not sure I could recommend this unless you're a completist or you really like it and want to see how the gameplay has evolved.

However, if you've never played Kingdomino before, this is definitely a good version to give a go.