Karak II
- David Breaker
- 9 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Time to collect your weapons and strap on your armour; there is a Dark General on the horizon that needs slaying. Albi's Karak II is a standalone game designed by Petr Miksa, with art by Roman Hladik. It follows on from its predecessor Karak, which took brave adventurers deep into the crumbling walls of Castle Karak to explore and plunder its depths. This time, our adventure takes us to the surrounding areas of Castle Karak, and there is an evil villain to slay...
The 2-5 players will need to explore, collect resources, and build their cities and armies to defeat the monsters that inhabit the land under the Dark Generals' rule. The aim of the game is to defeat the big bad, but the winner is the player who collects the most Soul Stones.
Karak was designed as a family-friendly game, and Karak II aims to do the same while moving up a notch in complexity. The game's rules are still straightforward, with each player taking actions each turn, such as exploring or gathering resources from the area where their hero is located. When you explore, you draw a monster from the bag and need to roll the dice to resolve the combat. At the start of the game, you'll normally only have your hero die but as you build and develop your city, you will be able to recruit soldiers to your army, which will give you more dice to roll, allowing you to defeat harder monsters and get greater rewards.
The game is quick to learn and play, but it also has some good engine building, allowing you to achieve more during the game. You can collect items and spells to increase your strength, but also very powerful amulets that will give you unique powers. This, sadly, is where one of my main criticisms of the game comes in. You gain these items by defeating monsters, but these monsters are randomly drawn from a bag. You could be rather unlucky and keep drawing out high-strength monsters, meaning you keep losing the fights. Meanwhile, other players can be luckier and draw the low-level monsters and can easily kill them. This means their engine builds up quicker, and as we found in one game, one player was able to kill one of the monsters that gave the reward of an amulet, and the amulet they drew meant that they were always producing more resources. They had a huge advantage over the other player, who spent their first six turns losing every fight! One simple fix for this would be to remove the high-level monsters from the bag until a certain point in the game, meaning that players can make progress without being hamstrung based on luck. It's a simple house rule that we'd recommend.
Overall, Karak II is a fine game with some simple yet fun mechanics. It plays quickly and is easy to pick up and teach. Your decisions each round are easy to plan for and feel impactful. You can readily teach this to kids, and I believe most children will enjoy the experience. Definitely a good family and children's game for those who love the thrill-seeking idea of sword and sorcery.
(Review by David Breaker)
