Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done

In Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done, players journey Eastward across Europe to retake the Holy Land, conquering, and building the infrastructure necessary to support their conquests along the way.  If you’ve seen Knightfall or remember playing Age of Empires 2, then you know what we’re talking about.

Crusaders is similar to Trajan in that both feature a rondel and mancala mechanic. In Trajan, you move your bits around the rondel and then perform the action you stop on.  In Crusaders, you conduct your action first, then move your bits to set up the pattern for your next turn.  The inversion makes for a faster-playing game.  Also, the game timer in Crusaders is simply a bank of victory points that is claimed by all players during the game, which somewhat eases the burden on the player responsible for timekeeping as compared to Trajan.

 

Summary:

We had a lot of fun! It was a super close game and each player took a different path towards the Holy Land.

Chuck played as The Order of Montessa (a.k.a., The Black Knight). He started the game with an extra knight on the board and received a bonus to his travel actions. He focused on mustering a formidable army and filled the ranks atop his player board, virtually ensuring success against any defender. I like to think of him as a deliveryman and exceptional fighter. He ended the game in a dead heat with The Knights of St Lazarus for killing the most Saracens. Final score: 65.

Shannon played as The Knights of St. Lazarus, named for the Patron Saint of Lepers. Like the gunsmiths in Princess Mononoke, it would be a mistake to underestimate this group; their leader wants to take over the world. He started the game with three of his six actions on their upgraded side, at the cost of having to remove one of his mancala bits from the game (11 total).  He focused on building barns to enhance his army mustering actions and received an end-game bonus for deploying all his knights and castles. Final score: 75.

Lee Ann played as The Order of Alcántara. The name of this chivalric order is derived from the Arabic word “El Kantara”, meaning the bridge.  In the region of Spain from which this order hails, there is a classic Roman bridge with an arch at its center dedicated to Emperor Trajan. Since Seth Jaffee, the designer of Crusaders, has written that this game was inspired by the boardgame Trajan, I was glad that she chose this faction. She started the game with an upgraded action wedge and an extra mancala bit (13 total). Her strategy involved building great castles and conquering a variety of tribes. She earned extra points at the end of the game for defeating one of each of the three different battalions and for defeating more Slavs than any other player. King Henry the Fowler would have been proud! Final score: 76.

Peter played as The Knights Teutonic, which bestowed upon him the option to move his mancala bits in either a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction. This provided more versatility to pre-load actions that leveraged his relative strengths. He chose to build churches to enhance his ability to proselytize and influence others. Although mustering an army and crusading was a challenge, he managed to conquer a few outlying tribes early in the game and even received extra points at the end of the game for “converting” the most Prussians. Final score: 77.

Gameplay was accompanied by some era-appropriate “bardcore” music courtesy of Algal the Bard and was finished in about 75 minutes. Because the game finished quickly and we were inspired to stay in the same geography, we added a player and all played a game of Ticket to Ride: Europe. Two players made it as far as the walls of Constantinople, but only Peter made it to the Holy Land by completing all 5 of his tickets and claiming the European Express bonus for a total of 146 points. Five players made for a hectic board!