King of the Valley

About this board game

King of the Valley is a strategy game for 2–4 players, with an approximate play time of 60 minutes, in which rival kings compete to earn the highest reputation.

Begin with a 5×5 grid of character tiles, your king on a different tile from every other player, and 2 gold in reserve. Each turn, you may first acquire a character from the hill by paying its listed cost, then move your king orthogonally or diagonally across the grid to claim a character tile.

Movement offers an important tactical choice. You can stop on the character you want, or move across a line of 2–3 identical characters and stop on the space beyond them to collect the entire group. Add your recruits to your personal castle board, where their influence helps determine your final reputation.

• Acquire characters from the hill for 2–10 gold.
• Use influence from different character types to unlock kingdom bonuses.
• Collect specialists for immediate bonus actions, including the priest, wizard, and tax collector.
• Manage the grid and hill as empty spaces are refilled from one selected hill column.

Characters with 1–5 influence can be turned face down together to claim kingdom bonuses worth points and coins. The 0-value jester can stand in for a character of your choice, though it remains worth 0 influence, creating another consideration when assembling your castle.

As the hill changes, new characters become visible and future opportunities emerge. When the hill can no longer be filled completely, the game ends. Add influence from your collected characters, then score bonuses for knights collected in the same order, farmer and farmer’s wife pairings, and kingdom bonuses. In King of the Valley, the player with the highest reputation earns the crown.