The Duke Kickstarter Coming to Close

The Duke is a game that I heard about yesterday.  Somebody pointed me in the direction of the Kickstarter so I decided to check it out.  What I found really piqued my interest.  Allow me to post the summary to give you a better idea:

 

The Duke is a dynamic, tile-based strategy game with an old-world, feudal theme. It features high-quality wooden playing pieces and an innovative mechanic. The game takes moments to learn but hours of play to master. Levy your troops and maneuver them about the game board. If you end your movement in a square occupied by an opponent's tile, you capture that tile. Capture your opponent's Duke to win!

At first glance this sounds a lot like Chess.  Which is awesome.  There is a reason Chess is still around.  It's easy to learn and offers lots of different ways to approach the game.  From what I can tell, The Duke has all of this going for it and more.

Gameplay takes place on a 6x6 square grid.  You and your opponent each place your Duke and two support pieces on the board and then game play begins.  Your turn is a simple affair: you can move one of your pieces or blind draw a tile from your supply and place it on the board adjacent to your Duke.

Easy enough.

Each piece has its movement pattern/restrictions.  Sounds like Chess again right? The twist comes from the fact that each wooden piece has two sides with two different movement patterns printed on each side.  After you move a piece you MUST flip it to the other side.  At any time you can check the other side of your own pieces but you can NOT check your opponents pieces.  This makes a huge impact on the game.  Learning and remembering what your opponent is capable of and how to respond in turn adds an enjoyable layer to the chess-like formula.

The pieces look like they are going to pretty high quality as well.  Here's a few:



The game also seems plenty expandable.  If the stretch goals of the Kickstarter are any indication, the folks over at Catalyst have plenty of ideas for expansion tiles to shake things up.  Even integrating some licensed properties like Conan and the Three Musketeers .  Yea.  Guilty.  The Conan tile really got me look into the game more.

Catalyst Game Labs have the full rulebook available for download if you want to check it out as well as a print and play version of the game.  As of this writing there is still 64 hours to go.  I figure this is more than enough time to give the game a test and see if it's worth it.

Check out the Rulebook and Print & Play Version.  If you like it you still have time to Become a Backer.