‘Tiny Epic Game of Thrones’ Mixes Dice and Diplomacy Into a Fantastic Strategic Mix
In Tiny Epic Game of Thrones players are fighting for the Iron Throne. But the way there is way more fun than the series turned out to be.
We recently took a brief look at Tiny Epic Game of Thrones on our Kickstarter Roundup. But, I wanted to take a deeper dive into this upcoming title that is bringing in a lot of great reviews. It mixes dice rolling, drafting, worker placement, and diplomacy without feeling as needlessly complicated as the source material.
Also, I’ll stop being mean to Game of Thrones. I did really like it a lot. So much so that I never actually watched the last episode. Okay, now I’m done.
It’s still currently running on Kickstarter, so if this looks interesting, check out the full campaign here.
Tiny Epic Game of Thrones Overview
While the base game of Tiny Epic Game of Thrones is a competitive game, the simultaneously-released expansion, Ice & Fire, adds a cooperative mode. But for today, we will be focusing on the core game and the competitive mode.
Ultimately, the objective for all players is to have the most victory points by the end of the 6th round.
Unsurprisingly, players will have the option of choosing which House they will play as, each with their own unique power. However, no matter the player count, there is always several neutral houses that the players can aim to gain as allies, one way or another.
The core driving mechanic of the game is in how players determine which actions they will take on their turn. At the beginning of each round, a pool of dice is rolled. On their turns, players choose 1 of those dice and place it on an action board. The dice and the action board both show the same 6 possible actions.
When a player places a die on the action board, they perform the 2 actions: the one from the slot on the board, and the one from the die. This means it’s as action draft double-whammy. Each player has to choose which board action they want to use for the round, and which dice. However, each other player also gets to perform the dice action.
There are other resources players will have at their disposal, like Plot Cards which can trigger powerful effects, Power Tokens, which can be used for combat or diplomacy, and good old-fashioned Gold. Players will need to utilize all their resources and cunning in order to reign over the seven kingdoms and take control of the iron throne for themselves.
Fire & Ice Expansion
Tiny Epic Game of Thrones follows well in the footsteps of previous Tiny Epic games in bringing the feel of a “full size” game but needing a fraction of the table and shelf space. The addition of the Fire & Ice adds additional houses, and brand new cooperative mode, enlarges the map, and more.
Both the base game and the expansion are available on Kickstarter right now and still have a couple of weeks remaining, as of writing. If you’ve never played a Tiny Epic game before, or always thought there’s no way they could cram that much strategy into such a small box, let this game be the one that changes your mind.
