Board With Each Other
A podcast that looks at Board Games / Tabletop Gaming through the lens of playing as a couple or with a regular gaming partner. Hosted by Al & Hannah, We review a game each episode.
Board With Each Other
Board With Each Other Bite Size: Episode 8 - Regicide
Can you teach an old deck new tricks? It turns out you absolutely can! In this edition of Board With Each Other Bitesize we breeze through a quick appraisal of the cooperative single deck battler and how well it works as a 2 player experience.
We hope you enjoy!
Hi everybody and welcome back to another edition of Board with Each Other Bite Size, the spinoff podcast for the main Board with Each Other podcast, where we do short, snappy reviews on lighter, shorter, simpler games. I'm your host, Al Simpson, and as always, I'm joined by my player 2, my co-host, and my lovely wife, Hannah Kelly.
SPEAKER_00:Hi guys.
SPEAKER_01:And today on Bite Size, we are going to be talking about Regicide. Regicide is a co-op game played with essentially a standard 52 card deck of cards. The aim of Regicide is you need to take down in order all uh the royal suits. So, all the royal royal suits, royal cards. So your jacks, your queens, and your kings.
SPEAKER_00:Great for the French.
SPEAKER_01:Indeed. You've got the revolution. To do so, you start with seven cards in your hand, for each place starts with seven cards in the hand. And you play cards from your hand to do the numerical value on the card's damage. You also do a special ability that is dependent on your suit. So clubs do double damage, spades reduce your enemy's attack value. Diamonds allow you to draw new cards in your hand up to seven, and hearts take cards from your discard pile and put them on the bottom of your deck. When they do so, you have to discard cards from your hand to the numerical value of their attack. So again, jacks attack for 10, queens attack for 15, and kings attack for 20. There are a couple of additional twists to this. The first is that whichever suit that the royal card belongs to basically makes them immune to you playing cards of that suit. So you can still do damage, but the special abilities won't take effect. So for example, if you've got a jack of clubs, your double damage cards will just do normal damage to them. The other twist is that if you do the exact amount of damage required to kill Sent's Royal Suit card, it gets placed on the top of your deck. So you can gain more powerful cards as long as you get the exact right amount. You can also play sets, so uh you can play uh a number of cards of the same number as long as they don't equal more than ten.
SPEAKER_00:So two twos, for example.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, or three twos. Uh if you do so, each of the suits that you played all take effect at the same time. So, for example, if you played two twos and one was a clubs and one's one was a spades, you would do eight damage to the enemy, and you would reduce their attack value by eight. Um, the final other bit of rules are that you your ace cards are animal companions, cute little animals that help you out. So you could basically pair them with any other card. They will add one to the total attack value, but they will also add their suits to the attack. So, for example, if you played a clubs and an ace of diamonds, you know, you you would get both. That is basically all there is to it. Play continues until one of the players can't fulfill uh the damage done to them by whoever it is that you're attacking.
SPEAKER_00:Or if you run out of cards, if you run out of cards, your your your um partner your partner can get you back in by say playing a diamond.
SPEAKER_01:But that's the only way by playing diamonds. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but if you end up without cards on your turn, then game over.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Also, I think technically if your draw deck runs out.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, if you you need to draw cards and they're all gone, game over as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um, I think it's fair to say the rules are fairly simple. You've pretty much said everything that you need to know to be able to play it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, however, it is fiendishly difficult to win.
SPEAKER_01:It is. Um we have never won.
SPEAKER_00:We have never won. Um, and we played an awful lot of these games, and it is just we've come so close.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we we consistently get into like the second to last king most games that we play, but we just can't quite go. Yeah, final hurdle.
SPEAKER_00:However, that's not a problem for me. No, it is something that I just keep want to keep going back to, um, and it hasn't put me off in the slightest.
SPEAKER_01:No, I mean I think I think let's go back to the the core premise a little bit with this. But there's no getting away from the fact that you could essentially play this. Well, not essentially, you could you could play this with a standard 52 tick off cards as long as you knew the rules. Um, what I find quite admirable about it is it somehow in the Euro of our Lords 2020, when this originally came out, managed to come up with a new game to play with a standard set of cards that is incredibly fun and addictive.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and I think you know, there might be some people out there who think, you know, um paying 10 to 12 quid for a game with a standard set of cards is you know overpriced or whatever. I I I gladly do that. Yeah, I think pay for the rule set basically.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think to be able to have turned, as you say, a deck of cards into a game is absolutely fantastic. And also a game that is so enjoyable and consistently makes me want to play.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that's the thing about it, it's incredibly Moorish. Um, it just makes you want to go back again for another try over and over and over again. It just scratches some sort of itch where you just like yeah, you I can't sort of put it down, it's incredibly addictive.
SPEAKER_00:So, yeah, I don't think you necessarily need to go out and buy it, but I think if you are a board gamer, it's probably worth splashing out to support the board game industry. Um, I also think the price point makes it such that it makes a fantastic stocking filler, it makes it a really great game that you can take to say, for example, the office.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um, because I play solo when you should be working.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I play solo when you should be working, but also because it is essentially a 52-card deck of 52 card deck of cards, it makes it really accessible even to the non-board gamers.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:So people will know exactly what it is that they're looking at when they see it, and they'll be able to pick it up really quickly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, which makes it a fantastic pub game, coffee shop game. Uh, takes up very, very little space to play.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, airport, airplane, yeah, where we can.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you can play on the airplane quite easily. Yeah, the airplane tray table. Um, you can play it pretty much anywhere, it fits in your pocket, like uh, you know, what's not to like.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:The other thing worth mentioning with sort of paying for it is the artwork's fantastic. It's really cool. All of the cards have every single card has a different illustration on it, um, all representing some sort of family uh fantasy creature.
SPEAKER_00:And I think they've got they've got different variants of the deck as well. So there was a blue one, there's a red one.
SPEAKER_01:The red one can't they did a reprint, which I think was red.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, did they? Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, one of the tricky things about this is its availability. Um it's I think gone through its second reprint, but it they don't produce a lot of them. Yeah. Um, we managed to pick up a copy of UK Games Expo, but I think it's not the easiest thing to come by at the moment. At the moment, it's out of print again.
SPEAKER_00:What I'd also say as well, it comes in a really nice laminator plastic box. So you're not going to get a dog-eared box. So if you are porting it around, it's not going to get it.
SPEAKER_01:It's designed to be carried around.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think actually that's a really nice touch. They put a little bit of thought into it.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, they have. Um, yeah, it it's annoying that it's it's quite difficult to get hold of, you know. Um, it's a shame because I've I feel like this is one of those that just should sit in Waterstone's affidative, you know, it should be up there with the all the rest of the small box games.
SPEAKER_00:However, I do imagine if you didn't really know what you were buying and then you ended up spending£12 on what was essentially a pack of cards, you might be a little bit pissed off.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but I we are here to tell you not to be pissed off to spend that 12 grand on the back of cards.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:I just think it's worth supporting the designer who's again managed to come up with something with a basic deck of cards, which is fairly knobsmacking. Um and uh w one of the things I'm really interested in is he's turned this into a fully fledged legacy game. See he has. Again, very hard to get hold of. It was a Kickstarter, and I think a Kickstarter only. Um, but I've heard great things where he takes the basic rule set at the outset and then just adds more rules as you go through a fasting.
SPEAKER_00:Are you gonna break our rule and are we gonna go down a Kickstarter channel?
SPEAKER_01:No, Kickstarter's finished, unfortunately, because you don't know how good these things are before the Kickstarter is finished.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean we could always do a yeah, anyway, see if we can get on the blow.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like it will come back around. Um, but I'm definitely curious. I'm really, really curious because the the the basic gameplay is so yeah, I'm always curious about that. But the basic gameplay is so Moorish and so addictive and so well designed. Yeah, probably. I mean we're probably already on several. As I was saying, the basic game is so well designed, and the basic rule set is so satisfying and so enjoyable to play. That adding extra campaign gobbins onto this just sounds like it'll really be like a petite. Um giving you an excuse to play, come back and play more and more. So I think that's one I definitely want to keep an eye on.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so how long do we feel about the whole two-player versus up to four?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's up to four. I think this would scale really neatly from anything to two to four because essentially, because the the thing you're attacking attacks you back, there's no difference between the number of players.
SPEAKER_00:So doesn't mean they get tougher?
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_00:With less players or with more players?
SPEAKER_01:They don't get tougher, they don't do more damage because they're attacking everybody individually.
SPEAKER_00:I would however, what I will say is managing your deck and managing your hand size does become quite problematic if you aren't thinking about it. Yeah. So therefore, with more players, it may become more diluted and diluted. And whilst I don't think we've ever lost a game because we've run out of cards to draw, I do wonder in four players, you might have to worry about that a bit more.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and you might have to be careful. A lot of the times when you play really high value diamond cards, you're kind of like, oh, let's draw back up to our hand size. Whereas if you've got four people around the table and all gone out to two cards, you might actually chew through a lot of the deck in one turn. So I think there's probably extra tactical nuances to it. But I think those tactical nuances will just change depending on how many players you've got, but there will be nuances. I think the core game will work just as well between two and four. I can't speak to solo, I've never tried it solo, but this strikes me as one of those great sort of solitaire replacement things. I imagine this is actually quite a good thing if you want to kill some time.
SPEAKER_00:Designer, go and talk to Microsoft, replay solitaire.
SPEAKER_01:Be the new killer Windows 2025 app. Mindsweep. Renew Mindsweep. No, but I uh this I I imagine this is actually I'm not a solo gamer. This is one of the few that I'm like, oh maybe if I wanted to kill some time, I'd actually play this solo. Because I'm my youth I used to play solitaire, I get it, you know, like it's quite cool, uh sort of time killer. But yeah, it's it's just a really surprisingly excellent experience. Um, I have I have no criticisms. Um you talked about the the fiendish difficulty. I think that's a good thing. I think if this was your classic modern co-op win one and three, it would get old quickly. The fact that it's such an almost impossible nut to crack to win makes the longevity the shelf life say for me. Yeah. So I like that aspect of it. And um, I just think it's a mini masterpiece of design. It's actually one of my favourite small box games.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, better than seesaw and paper?
SPEAKER_01:No, not better than seesaw and paper, but it's up there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It is up there.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So how would you score it overall?
SPEAKER_00:Do we score these? I think I think we do score.
SPEAKER_01:We always score these.
SPEAKER_00:I think we've had this argument previously.
SPEAKER_01:Probably. We always score them. But just an overall score.
SPEAKER_00:Just an overall score. Um, well, I'm for what it is, I would score it in eye.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna go with a solid eight.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Highly recommend it if you want something to stick in your back pocket when you're out and about and you know, meeting like-minded board gamers and sort of crack something out quickly. You can't do much better than this. If you can get hold of it, rent them all.
SPEAKER_00:Bring it to Windows.
SPEAKER_01:Bring it to uh Hannah just thinks you need to, you know, bring it to Windows as the new like gaming app for the modern age. Because everybody because everybody has phones now, so you know everybody's also still playing Minesweeper. So old.
SPEAKER_00:So old.
SPEAKER_01:On that depressing note, thank you very much for joining us. Um, if you enjoyed what you've heard today, but you haven't tried our deep dive monthly podcasts, uh, please do so. And we hope to see you again soon. Until next time, be good to each other, have fun, and play Lots of board games.
