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G@mebox author Dorian Feuerbaum writes about the game:
Who hasn't experienced this? You see a game cover and are immediately fascinated by the visuals. That's exactly how I felt about Crown Of Ash by CORAX GAMES. The color scheme and combination of strong gloom and bright colors immediately caught my curiosity. In terms of gameplay, we're dealing with a mixture of worker placement and area control, but it stands out on one feature in particular. But more on that in a moment.
This medium-weight game by Richard Lawton plays in 60 to 120 minutes and was illustrated by Vadim Mishin and Rafael Nobre. The number of players is interesting as the game can be played by one to four players. An area control game for one player, that is not a skirmisher? As a non-solo player, the following thought immediately occurred to me: does this mean that the game is also good for two players? That would be quite a rarity for the genre.
Let's start with a brief outline of the gameplay.
In each of the four rounds, we place one of our four workers and trigger one of four actions. After we have (optionally) bought a soldier card, it is the next player's turn until all workers have been placed. Now the players' territorial ownership and a few administrative tasks take place.
![]() The actions themselves relate in part to the areas in which the worker placement fields are located. Now the area control aspect comes into play. In each of the six normal areas, there can be an owner who receives a bonus for the “Collect resources” action as soon as another player uses this space. The resources themselves are determined by the buildings located there. New buildings from the display can be paid for with gold using the second action “Build a building” and built in a player's own or empty area. Overbuilding existing buildings gives bonus victory points each round for the player who owns the area. For both actions, we can protect the own area that we used with soldier cards. These have a combat value of one to six. ![]() If we now want to attack one of our opponent's territories and, ideally, take it over, we have to perform the “Attack” action. The attacker plays soldier cards face down. Both players play one of five possible combat cards. These have a corresponding combat value or allow a random value via a die. They also offer a bonus for winning or losing the battle. But be careful! These cards are only returned to the hand after the “Resting” action or as soon as all five of the player's cards have been used. In general, the loser of the battle must place their used soldier cards in their card graveyard. The remaining action just mentioned is “Resting” and allows you to take back the battle cards early. In the advanced version of the game, we can place our ability token back on the active side to make the individual abilities of the selected faction usable again. To increase the tension between the players, the citadel is located in the middle of the game board. The ruler of this area receives an increasing number of victory points each round. ![]() After the fourth round, victory points are awarded for the soldier cards purchased during the game. These have one of four possible colors and must match the color card received at the start of the game for victory point scoring. As mentioned at the beginning, we were surprised by the gaming experience with two players. Of course, there is more going on with more players, but the duels with two players were consistently exciting. The game scales down very well for two players with simple means and manages to provide a gameplay feeling appropriate for the genre without a simulated third player. Our games with three players were also convincing without causing any noticeable downtime. ![]() The game generates long-term motivation more through the motto: “Easy to learn, hard to master”. Content-wise, there could be more on offer here, but this would probably only distract from the core gameplay, so we haven't yet had our fill after our games so far. The back of the game board is more in-line with this style, but lacks any added value in terms of play. All in all, Crown of Ash convinces with...
Within the strong and diverse genre of area control, you should look somewhere else if…
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