Small fun and a good Gloomhaven single experience.
After seeing this game on TikTok, I bought it to give it a try! It has quickly become my husband and my favorite game to play together. It’s very much a co-op game (in the 2 player variant) and honestly plays like you’re having a chat over coffee. It’s so much fun, easy to pick up and not down. I imagine it will be a great “round the campfire” game this summer as well!
Don't be fooled by the Clash of Monarchs mounted map's fancy artwork. It's filled with stupid historical errors, as is the paper map that comes with the game. The designer Bob Kalinowski and map artists Wouter Woestenburg, Mark Mahaffey and Thierry Aradan are totally lazy, unprofessional, uneducated rubes who couldn't care less about historical accuracy. They have no understanding of the broader historical context/undercurrents of this period, the 18th century as a whole or even a desire to learn about them. They've never opened a single history textbook, taken a single history course or even talked to a single history professor in their entire lives. They wouldn't know a history textbook if it hit them on the head. There are no sources - scholarly or otherwise - listed in their rulebook whatsoever. They're making it all up as they go along. They can't even spell the cities of Danzig, Luxemburg, Lüttich, Straßburg, and Posen/Posnan/Posnania properly on the map. Don't bother giving them any suggestions for improvement. They couldn't care less about gamer feedback. Their minds are made up, don't confuse them with the facts. They're too busy distorting the past with their pre-conceived modern notions and anti-historical, anti-German, anti-Austrian agenda. Their light raid mechanism rules are convoluted and unnecessary and don't add to the game's enjoyment.
There's a reason this game is out of print and was never a bestseller for GMT Games and was only printed once and never re-printed in multiple editions like other games such as Wilderness War and For the People. It's not popular and it's not hard to understand why. I've never seen it in any stores nor seen anyone playing it at any gaming clubs or conventions. No one wants to play it when I ask them.
Maybe some day an educated, professional person will make a historically accurate card-driven game and mounted map of this period, but this is not it. The mapboard needs to flop.
TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW TO BOYCOTT THIS MAPBOARD AND GAME!
I would liken it to chess. It is fairly easy to learn, but the number of different strategies that you can plan out many moves ahead makes it similar.