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The Rose King box art
1992 Ranked #1,557

The Rose King

Two-player abstract territory game where rivals use directional cards to move a shared pawn and claim a grid. Every move can connect your holdings or help the opponent, making route planning a tense fight for the largest domain.

Abstract Abstract Strategy Medieval Area Majority / Influence Grid Movement

Players

2

Play time

Not listed

Age

10+

Complexity

1.94/5

Rating

6.81

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.3/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 4.0/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.7/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.0/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.5/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

Originally published as Texas by db-Spiele. The battle between farmers and ranchers is fairly abstract.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

Originally published as Texas by db-Spiele. The battle between farmers and ranchers is fairly abstract. A single pawn travels on a square grid. Each player has a hand of cards face up. These each have a direction and a distance. The player can either draw a card and add it to his hand, or play a card. If he plays a card, then the pawn moves the appropriate distance to an empty square, and the player places one of his markers. Each player also has judge symbols that can each be used only once. The judge lets you move onto a previously placed opposition marker and reverse it. Players score points for each contiguous region equal to the square of the number of markers. If a player is not careful, such a move may be forced, as there is a maximum number of cards that a player may hold. Contains rules for playing with 4 (in two partnerships of two players). Later republished 1999 as Rosenkönig by Kosmos, as part of the two-player game series. The republication also included a re-theming of the game. The setting changed from Texas to England, and the factions changed from farmers and ranchers to the factions of the Plantagenet family from the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) - the Lancaster (red rose) and the York (white rose) factions in a similarly abstracted fashion. Rosenkönig is part of the Kosmos two-player series.

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
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Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

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Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
2
Best with
2
Play time
30 min
Age
10+
Complexity
1.9/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
Dirk Henn

Artists

4
Tanja Donner Wanjin Gill Anke Pohl Thilo Rick

Publishers

2
db-Spiele KOSMOS

Linked items

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