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Kingsport Festival

Horror and evil from ancient times

Cults and cultists in the universe of H.P. Lovecraft – as a High Priest of a Shadowy Cult you want to dominate the town and summon alien beings and unholy gods for their gifts. Courageous Investigators try to counter this and hope to hinder the Cultist priests in realizing their intentions.

You play twelve rounds as months, each month comprises six phases – Turn Order determination, Summoning of the Great Old Ones, Rewards for the cultists with receiving gifts from the Great Old Ones, Expansion by making use of resources for more influence in town and thereby for more power; Attack in rounds marked for attacks, unexpected events are occurring and confrontations with Investigators are resolved; the last phase comprises advancing of the time marker.

The card for the chosen scenario changes rule details; those scenarios are based on Lovecraft’s stories about the Cthulhu myth, especially on The Festival. A scenario card also determines the attack rounds and can introduce a festival card. The Effects of a scenario card apply throughout the game and take precedence over the general basic rules of the game.

When twelve rounds have been played, an eventual festival card is read, resolved and evaluated. Then the cultist with most cult points wins, ties are resolved using markings for Mental Health and then for Magic, if necessary.

Kingsport Festival is well-designed, bleak and dank as befits the topic, and a dice placement game as regards to mechanics, offering quite a few options. If you like the Cthulhu topic you will like the game because of it, if you are not horror-loving, you can stick to the predecessor game of Kingsburg.

Players: 3-5

Age: 12+

Time: 90+

Designer: Andrea Chiarvesio, Gianluca Santopietro

Artist: Alan D’Amico, Maichol Quinto, Demis Savini

Price: ca. 28 Euro

Publisher: Kosmos 2014

Web: www.kosmos.de

Genre: Horror, Worker placement

Users: For experts

Version: de

Rules: de en fr it ru

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Reversed topic, you play the evil ones

Lots of background information

Harmonious design

Based on Kingsburg

Compares to:

All Cthulhu games and worker placement games with dice; Kingsburg

Other editions:

Iello, France; Stratelibri, Italy; Hobby World, Russia; Passport Game Studio, USA;

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0