Kings Cribbage - A Review

Kings Cribbage is a game that we have had the opportunity to play with a few different groups in the past little while.  While far from my typical game choice, it was a lot of fun and the big thing for me is that it seems to have an audience with those who aren't typically into boardgames.


Kings Cribbage is essentially a combination of cribbage and scrabble.  You use tiles to create cribbage hands on the game board.  After the first turn, all of your future hands must tie into the tiles that are already laid on the board.  Each "hand" consists of up to 5 tiles, but the scoring can get quite high as you can create or add to multiple hands in a single play depending on how the board plays out; however, each tile laid must contribute to the scoring in that hand, which can sometimes limit you.  There are bonus points for laying all 5 of your tiles in a turn, or creating a 5 tile hand of the same colour (only two colours, dark and light in the version we played).  One of the more interesting twists is that the 6 and 9 are interchangeable (just turn them upside down!) making them surprisingly useful.

Board at the end of a game of Kings Cribbage

If you have played much cribbage before (ie. so you know the scoring rules) it is relatively quick to pick up, but I found it took a few games before you start to see some of the bigger scoring combinations due to the uniqueness of the 6/9 rule and being able to make multiple hands in a turn.


One of the biggest appeals for this game for me was that it can draw card players into boardgames.  My father, who always seems to be busy whenever a boardgame comes out (anything from scrabble to monopoly to anything else) got this for Christmas, and always seems willing to play.


Kings Cribbage isn't in our collection, and I am not in any particular rush to add it, but it is a game that I will be wiling to play whenever it is around.