Daniel (@dungeondive) inaugurates his “Take a Look” format — a casual overview rather than a review — by unboxing City of Kings fresh off the Kickstarter boat. It’s a fantasy adventure game with a distinctly euro streak: light worker placement, action selection, and resource management wrapped around a tower-defence conceit where heroes protect the titular city while venturing out to explore, gather, and fight. He’s struck first by the presentation — vibrant, cartoony art on a mountain of thick cardboard, roughly fourteen sheets of tokens and tiles, plus a novel time-tracker dial. He mounts his recurring soapbox for standees over miniatures: cheaper, faster to produce, and (unpainted) better-looking than grey plastic. Mechanically he flags the systems that give the game variety — a ~100-card quest deck, seven branching stories plus twelve standalone scenarios, sprawling grid-based skill trees on oversized character sheets, and randomly-generated enemies whose stats and abilities are drawn from bags each encounter. He praises the well-organised rulebook and quick-reference guide, a rarity for Kickstarter, while noting the box ships with no insert and a couple of miscoloured tokens. He appreciates that the box honestly flags multi-handed solo play. His early verdict: gorgeous and generous, if a touch more euro than his usual fare.
Daniel would rather have a stack of standees than a box of grey plastic. Where do you land — do miniatures earn their cost, or would you trade them for more cardboard and a lower price?