Card Game Review: Of Knights and Ninjas

Of Knights and Ninjas is a new card game now up on Kickstarter. In OKaN, you are a noble lord trying to steal the gems of the other rival kingdoms.

Each player begins with five gems, and may only win by owning ten gems total. Each turn, a player will draw two cards, then play a card. Characters such as Knights and Peasants can either attack a kingdom, using the number at the top of the card to steal that number of gems, or they may be used as a reaction when the same is done by another player to block incoming attacks. While normally you may only attack or defend using a single card, peasants can be stacked up together to aid one another.

You may also fortify using castles and archers, which are placed in front of you to act as a barrier that other players have to get past to get to those tasty gems. The only way to get through a castle is via ladder, which allows your characters to ignore the castle walls, or use a catapult or dragon to destroy the castle. Ninjas can also sneak over walls on their own.

Blue Fox Games provides a helpful how-to here:

When you’re playing with multiple players, it’s easy not to notice when a player is getting close to their goal of 10 gems until the last moment. Then, in a Munchkin-like fury, the other players will all rush in to try to steal away the leader’s gems and bring back balance. I love when this happens, as you players ally together.

The art throughout is very cute, very evocative and charming. I also really like the layout of the cards, keeping it very simple. However, with almost every card having some sort of special rule, those rules aren’t found on the cards itself. You need to use the rulebook quite frequently. The Princess card reads “Respond,” but it’s not unless you flip through the rulebook to remind you that her response is to charm and block the attacks of knights and dragons. It makes sense, and is evocative of the setting, but I wish those rules were simply printed on the cards. The rulebook will be getting passed around the table frequently as each player will want to know what the cards they have do without alerting the other players. After a few games, everyone should be able to remember and things will run smoother.

I also found the ninja incongruous. In a setting that’s all medieval, the ninja stands out as nerot fitting into the setting. There isn’t an “east meets west” theme to the game, it just has a single ninja in it surrounded by western european medieval tropes. It’s not a huge deal or anything, it just seemed odd to fit a ninja in there.

Overall, I actually really enjoyed the game. It’s a quick and simple game with a lot of opportunities for strategy. You can watch as you build up your plans and watch them all collapse to someone else’s strategy and luck. The simple nature of it means that expansions can fit easily into it to make for exciting new options. It’s a great small-box game for your shelf.

You can join in the Kickstarter here, which is more than funded, and has been very successful so far.

Dice Monkey was sent a copy of Of Knights and Ninjas for review.