Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done

Today's review is of the 2018 release, Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done. For 2-4 players, it takes 40-60 minutes.

Overview

You are the head of a militaristic order in Medieval Europe. Your goal is to have the most influence by building (banks, farms, castles, and churches) and crusading (against Prussians, Slavs, and Saracens). To do those, you'll have to muster troops, move your knights, and manage your resources strategically. Once all the orders get too powerful, King Philip will shut them all down. Will you be on top when he does?

game in progress; image from here

In Crusaders, your turn is simple:

- do an action

- upgrade a wedge (turn it over, which gives you two possible actions instead of one in a future turn)

You have a wheel that dictates how many of which action(s) you can take during your turn. The actions- travel, muster, build, crusade, and influence- are each shown on wedges. Each wedge starts with the 'one action' side up and two action tokens. On your turn, you choose one wedge, implement the action(s) based on the number of action tokens on it [so two action tokens on a 'travel' wedge would enable you to travel two spaces], and move those tokens one at a time (in clockwise order) on the following wedges in the wheel. Over time, you'll find some wedges accruing many tokens, while others are empty. So choose actions wisely, as what you do now affects what you can do in the future.

As players build or muster, they'll unlock bonuses to different actions. Building a bank, for example, gives a player one extra build bonus. If they have two tokens on a build wedge, they could then build something that costs three (using the two wedge tokens plus the aforementioned build bonus). Each build, muster, crusade, or influence action also grants influence points. There are a limited number of those (200 for a three-player game), and once they're gone, the game is over once all players have had the same number of turns. Highest influence wins!

Review

Hooray! I finally got to play this! I was gifted it before the pandemic, and then life shut down for in-person gaming. I really like this game. The action wheel (called a rondel) was fun. Turns moved rapidly. The rules are clear and straightforward. Each military order has different abilities and the board has 'modular' components to mix things up. This is a bit of a 'points salad'-type game, meaning most things you do will earn you points in some way, but you need to manage your turns efficiently to be successful. A few times, I found myself pinned into unwanted actions based on how my action tokens were distributed on the rondel. Though I don't yet understand the game well enough to discern a winning strategy, there is a lot of good here. Recommended.

Rating: A