Kingmaker (Avalon Hill)

I thought I'd played Z-Man's Wars of the Roses, but I double-checked - and it turns out that I played Queen's Lancaster instead. Lancaster is set in the pre-Wars era and is a bland, overly constrained worker placement euro.

if we are now talking more general wars of the roses games depsite its kitchen sink design Crown of Roses from GMT is pretty good. It extracts the best bits from Kingmaker (the politics, and political offices) and adds them to a hybrid blockwar game CDG. I agree though it is over done. They could have cut the CDG elements and streamlined down the block bits abit. Richard III is good for a two player game, but if you want politicing, you really want more than just 2 players.

Matt your memories of Kingmaker match mine and i only played it a year ago. Its not a terrible game, but the plague cards dominate the entire thing. Its really just about collecting as many troops as possible, trying to dodge the plague and capture the House pieces.

Ever try tailoring the Kingmaker event deck to make Plagues less common? I also see there have been additions to the event deck since the game came out . Also: here. Looking at the linked event deck there's slightly more than a 10% chance of a Plague card.