We are proud to present the campaign of The King is Dead by Peer Sylvester. The game published by Osprey Game and  presented at the last GenCon 2015 is a reskin of the well know King of Siam, with interesting news about the board and the new Mordred Variant.

English version copies sold here will also include the rulebook in Italian. The game is language independent.

The King is Dead is a majority card driven board game for 2-4 players that lasts about 40-60 minutes.

Introduction

Arthur and Mordred: rival leaders of a fledgling nation, each slain by the other’s hand. Britain is now leaderless, fractured and vulnerable. For the good of the country, a leader must unite the Scots, Welsh and Romano-British; not by conquest but by diplomacy. Whether a loyal knight, a scheming lord, or an ambitious noblewoman, you have one thing in common: power. As prospective leaders, each player will use their power to benefit the factions, gaining influence among their ranks. The player with the greatest influence over the most powerful faction will be crowned the new ruler of Britain. You are the members of King Arthur’s court. Beware the threat from across the sea. The Saxons are coming and ready to fight.

Why join this campaign?

• Because it's a medium light game with deep strategy where you need to plane carefully your next move.
• Because comments are positive and gamers already love it. You can see below Tom Vasel review.
• Because here you can pay less than the ordinary price.
• Because the game has a great replayability due to randomness of the first Followers and you will always have fun.
• Because here you can have the game before (March) the ordinary distribution (April-May).
• Because with the Fidelity Program, for each purchase made giochistarter allows you to gain/increase a permanent discount linked on your account. 
• Because if you contribute to make the game richer unlocking the exclusive campaign stretch-goal.

The game

In The King is Dead players are powerful members of the late King Arthur’s court, vying to be declared ruler over all Scots, Welsh or Romano-British factions. The game consists in 8 turns of power struggles, one for each regions. Players use their power to change influences in the kingdom by playing Action Cards and determine which faction wins the control of the region challenged that turn. When a player has the control of a region, he removes a Follower from the board and place it in front of him, gaining influence of that faction. But when there is a tie, nobody gains the control of the region, and the Saxons invade and conquer it. The game ends when the final power struggle has been completed, or when the Saxons conquer the 4th region.

The review

The Dice Tower - Tom Vasel review

How to play

At the beginning of the game each faction has a home region where 2 Followers of the matching faction are placed. All the regions contain 4 Followers randomly drawn (exepting for the home region of each faction where 2 of 4 are already on the board). The region cards are placed face up around the board and they determine the scoring turn of the region. During the Power struggle, each player can play one of his Action Card or pass:

When a player plays a card, put it in front of him in a discarded pile. Nobody can't see the previous card, except for the last played one. All player must remember them all!

Each player has these 8 cards that once discarded can't draw them anymore.

• Playing card let you change the balance of the Follower in the region or change the scoring order of the region.
• When you pass, you’re not out of the turn, but when it’s your turn again you can play your card. When all the players pass consecutively, the power struggle ends immediately and the scoring phase begins:

Look at the first faced up region card and tell which faction has more Followers: the region gains a token of the winning faction. If any faction has the majority, put a Saxons token on the region. In both cases remove all the follower from that region and place them in the pool, then give to the winner faction a Follower that put it in front of hum. Flip face down the region card scored: nobody can change the influence of a face down region.

The game ends when…

• …after the 8^th power struggle: The faction which has control of the most regions is in power, and the player with the most Followers of that faction is crowned King or Queen!
• …you place the 4^th Saxons token on the board: the game ends immediately. The Saxons have invaded and gain the throne. The winner is the player with the most complete sets of Followers. A set consists of one Follower from each faction.

Game components

• 1 Rulebook
• 1 Map of Britain
• 1 Draw bag
• 4 Sets of Action Cards, each consisting of 8 cards
• 8 Region Cards
• 54 Follower cubes in 3 colours
• 24 Control Tokens (8 for each faction)
• 4 Saxon Control Tokens
• 4 Crown Tokens
• 9 black Follower cubes (used only in the Mordred Variant)
  
  

Stretch-goals

If correspondant stretch-goals will be unlocked we will add to your game copy 4 Axe plastic tokens, which you will be able to use instead of normal Saxons game tokens, and 4 Dragon plastic tokens, which you will be able to use instead of normal Crown game tokens.

Who will love it?

Players that are looking for a quick and funny game that become more intresting after each play, where you understand every time a little more how to influence the map. Easy to explain and easy to play but with surpricing plot twist.

Shipment and Payment

Payment. You can pay with credit cards, Paypal or by Bank wire transfer. Payments must be made within 10 days from the date of the order or the order will be canceled.

Shipment. Shipping to Italy costs 3.73 euro. For other world Countries shipping cost will be shown after clicking "Proceed to checkout” button on the cart. Some examples: for UK, France, Spain the cost is 13.72 euro, for Germany 9.35 euro, for USA/Canada 15.78 euro. Retailer shipping cost depends by order size and it's shown on Shipping cost page.

It’s possible pick-up your copy for free at our stand in Modena Play (Italy) or our pickup point in Rome.

Games will be delivered approximately on March-April 2016.  

Note: We strongly suggest to specify a telephone number in your profile. This helps a lot the game delivery. We will use the address specified in your GS account profile at the shipping date: this means you can change it as you wish whitin the date of shipment. 

Important Notes

Production. It must make a distinction between games printed directly by Giochix or printed by another publisher, that we can be call "indirect".

In the first case we have direct control over the printing procedures and wecan intervene quickly in case of problems, solving and adjusting if necessary. In the second case we can only interact with the publisher that prints the game without having the opportunity to act on the production process.

This means that when the games are printed by us, the shipping date thatwe indicated in the draft is fairly safe. Obviously in this case there may bedelays, and this should be taken into account, but we are confident of being able to respect the times given.

In the second case, for "indirect" games, the shipment date is only indicative. Unfortunately it can happen that deliveries suffer a delay andthis must be considered before making a purchase. Of course we will inform you immediately if something were to happen.

-> The King Is Dead is printed by Osprey Games, not by Giochix. So it is an "indirect" game.

Contents. Game specifications and contents are indicative and can be changed during final production.

Progect pages. Sometime can be there some little variances on the different language project pages on Giochistarter (Italian, French, English, Spanish, German). In that case, refer to the project English page.

Fairs. It can happens that game shipment is adjacent to a big Fair, like Essen Fair in Germany or Lucca Comics and Games in Italy. Is important to know that we will show/sell the game in these fairs indipendently by campaign participant shipment status. These Fairs are too much important and unfortunately is not possible to avoid them without destroy game chances to be a success.

Shipments. Depending on the game, we ship by Postal service, Postal service insured or by Courier (UPS/GLS/Bartolini/SDA).

We reserve the right to separate the contents of an order in different shipments or to merge the contents of different orders in the same shipment to improve shipment delivery speed and logistic managment. If that happens, there will not be any additional cost for the customer or right to any refund.

Shipments made by Courier or by Postal service insured can be tracked and are insured. Shipments made by Postal service (not insured) can not be traced and, although it rarely does, it can happen that they delay or are lost. We recommend to those who want to avoid any problem to use the insured option or an alternative method, if available

Shipments insurance doesn't cover any external damage to the box.

Please note that we will not reship any game without find what happened to first shipment. This is really easy and fast for courier option, but can require 1-4 weeks for Postal service.

If the game has not delivered because of your mistake (wrong address, recipient repeatedly absent, do not pick up the package after the passage of the courier, etc.), you will have to pay an additional shipping cost to re-send you the game. This cost will also include the return costs of the game to us. Otherwise, if we made an error, we will send it again to you at our expense. If the game has gone lost without any fault, we will reship it only if you took insurance option or Courier service. 

Please note that Postal service can be really slow in rare some case. If you want a fast delivery or simply avoid long waiting use an alternative method. 

If you live out of the European Community, customs taxes could be added. This usually doesn't happen for boardgames. Check your Country legislation to be sure about that, ad this aspect is not a our responsability.

We will no longer accept complaints related to this campaign after 12 months of its term.