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Tales of the Arthurian Knights

Tales of the Arabian Nights was first published by West End Games in 1985, tho' the 2009 edition published by Z-Man Games is better known. It was a storytelling adventure game themed around the Arabian Nights stories, with the emphasis very much on the narrative flowing from players' encounters. Like the Tales of the Arabian Nights games, WizKids' Tales of the Arthurian Knights is co-designed by Eric Goldberg - this time partnering for the all-important story with Andrew Parks. Tales of the Arthurian Knights is categorised by BoardGameGeek as a 'reimplementation' of Tales of the Arabian Nights but that really doesn't do this game justice: it's certainly more than just a Round Table reskin with art by Mirco Paganessi, Medusa Dollmaker and DavidSchneiderArt.


The underlying design of the two games is similar. The 2-4 players have a character - in this case a knight from the court of King Arthur - and they are moving their character around a board (in this case showing the British Isles and the northern coast of mainland Europe) and triggering encounters with the aim of collecting victory points. An encounter takes you to a particular numbered passage in the accompanying Book of Tales that advances the narrative and will usually offer the player a choice of actions. Along the way, your character will be able to level up their skills, giving you a higher chance of passing skill check die rolls. Your character can also develop a 'status', giving them a particular positive or negative attribute.



If you've previously played Tales of the Arabian Nights, you'll notice that Tales of the Arthurian Knights feels altogether more streamlined. Whereas the earlier game had two different victory point currencies, Arthurian Knights just uses one ('destiny points'). The skills in Arthurian Knights are always available to everyone: if you haven't advanced a specific skill, your skill check will just rely for on the unenhanced number you roll on a six-sided die. Some status cards remain applicable for the rest of the game but most in this game have an in-built timer so the advantage or disadvantage they give you expires after a set number of turns. And whereas Arabian Nights has always risked running overlong as a game, that's not the case with Arthurian Knights, which is designed to be played over a very finite 12 rounds (ie: 12 turns apiece).


We've especially liked the way in which Tales of the Arthurian Knights streamlines the randomised encounters. Most turns you'll be drawing a random Encounter card. If it's a location card, it will refer you to a four-digit passage number in the Book of Tales. You'll need to travel to that location, and whether you do so in the first, second or third 'Age' (ie: which turns 1-4, 5-8, 9-12) determines the numbered paragraph you get there. Milieu encounter cards carry a two digit number for each terrain type: to generate the relevant four-digit passage number in the Book, you just pair those two digits with the corresponding two digits on the card for the Age you're in. Likewise, character cards give you a two-digit number that you combine with the two-digit number from a randomly drawn Feature card. This all works so much more smoothly than the relatively fiddly matrix charts in Arabian Nights.



Tho' players have choices to make, this game is at least as much about the narrative, and we've been impressed with the quality of writing in the 380+ page hardback Book of Tales. For sure all the 1700+ numbered paras are mostly flavour text but it's well-written and mostly immersive - especially if you approach the game as a tabletop RPG (role-playing game). The Feature cards add an adjective to describe the character you encounter and you'll find the numbered paragraph you're taken to reflects the descriptor. The one dissonant element was in the random encounter cards drawn when on a sea location: we'd have liked to have seen a discrete deck for sea encounters to have avoided text that told us of approaching riders and the like while we were at sea. From our plays so far at Board's Eye View, it's seemed to us that some skills come up more than others: if your encounters match ours, then we'd definitely recommend advancing your Hunting skill.


The sheer size of the Book of Tales and the randomising system for character and milieu encounters means you're certain to find yourself in a different story every time you play. The game comes with some in-built variants tho' and it can be played either as a competitive game (who amasses the most destiny points by the end of turn 12) or as a cooperative or solo challenge. If you're expecting a game of deep strategy, look elsewhere: there are judgement calls over where you travel to and which skills you develop and which you roll against but you're almost always still at the mercy of lucky or unlucky die rolls (tho' often even failing a skill test gives you some compensation for your efforts). There's a high luck factor too over whether location cards require you to travel to a nearby or very remote location: given that for much of the game you are ordinarily limited to moving just three spaces (more only when you've sufficiently advanced your Divinity, Romance and/or Villainy marker) it can be frustrating to turn over a location card that asks you to travel to Orkney in the far north when your character standee is currently at the southern end of the board.


Whether you're playing competitively or cooperatively, Tales of the Arthurian Knights is a game you should play primarily for the narrative experience. Approach the game with that mindset and you're in for an enjoyable sojourn in a mythical version of Ancient Britain. And your table doesn't need to be round in order to play!


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