Kingdom Come Deliverance: The Board Game was only revealed a month ago, but it’s already one of the hottest demos at Gen Con. A Czech Games Edition rep tells me, in fact, that play slots sold out before the game had even been revealed – people were that keen to try the publisher’s next game.
This means I didn’t get to sit down for a full medieval survival session, but I did get an extensive preview of the game behind the scenes. Big genre words were thrown around, the kind that pique my interest. ‘Eurogame’. ‘Deck-builder’. ‘Thematic’. ‘Sandbox’. Kingdom Come Deliverance is all of these things.
Life in Bohemia begins as a lowly peasant. All you own is a simple knife and some spoiled meat. You have several depressingly empty skill tracks that make survival (and points-scoring) unlikely. You want many things – more wealth, more fame, more stories – but you only have five days to get them.
Each day is split into four phases: morning, noon, evening, and night. In those first three, you can take any number of free actions and one main action. At night, your main action is for resting and recuperating. Nothing gets done properly without a good night’s sleep.
There are a variety of main actions, but all resolve the same way. Take hunting, for example.
To take this action, play a card from your hand with the appropriate hunting symbol. You then draw cards from the top of your deck to see how many success symbols you can pull. The number of cards depends on things like the quality of the weapon you wield and how well fed you are. Some cards might also give you extra successes in exchange for another resource, like taking a wound.
Wound tokens are placed in your inventory, taking up space. And, if you successfully hunt the rabbit, the pelt and meat takes up inventory space too. You can sell some of your inventory to merchants for cash, which is handy for buying weapons, horses, and more.
Or you could just steal the things you want. That’s another card-based main action, along with fighting and socializing. The five finger discount risks adding detrimental cards to your deck, though, so there are penalties for letting your itchy fingers stray too often.
Publisher Czech Games Edition tells me this relatively simple system creates several strategies for traversing the world – and scoring points. Points come from several places; cash gets you some, as does placing beds around the map to represent your influence.
You’ll have a personal player board that, when you take time to increase your action-related skills or place beds, makes you better at your day-to-day tasks. You don’t have to specialize in everything to win, though I’m sure the hardiest euro players will still find ways to spin every plate.
You’ll also earn points (plus skill track boosts or other rewards) for completing quests. Everyone starts out with two personal quests, which you can ignore or pursue, depending on how appealing they are to your particular points salad palate.
You’ll earn more personal quests as you journey across the board. Three corners of the map also feature cities, each with its own storyline that affects all players. CGE says to expect 10+ storylines in each game, and one playthrough won’t be enough to explore them all.
These overarching narratives change the experience slightly every time, keeping things fresh. One day you’ll be collecting flowers for a wedding, and another you’ll be trying to cure a plague. Theme and variety are as plentiful here as smelly peasants in need of a wash.
There are many other small touches that make the map feel alive. Visiting cathedrals gives you the chance to gain powerful cards for your deck. If you like, you can spend time reading or chit-chatting at the inn. Food spoils if you leave it in your inventory overnight.
It certainly feels authentic. CGE also assures me the designers, Vlaada Chvátil and Tomáš Holek, have worked hard to create a strategic and balanced board game, where any chosen path could lead you to victory. I’d need more testing time to tell you how true this is, however.
Pre-orders for the game are open until August 16, with copies expected to arrive between Q4 2026 and Q1 2027. If you want to chat more about the best board games, hit us up in the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
