When Kingdom of Solomon (KoS) was released by Minion Games back in 2012, it was good. Solid worker placement, interesting thematic framework, and folks generally enjoyed it if you go back and watch or read those who reviewed it. Now Wisdom of Solomon (WoS) is wrapping up its Kickstarter campaign to reimplement this title with Funhill Games – and if you liked Kingdom of Solomon, you’ll like this one too. You could also go in just because you like what Funhill Games is about. We wouldn’t blame you for it, as they’re also giving folks the opportunity to get in on the second printing of Kings of Israel – not only the first game we ever gave the InnRoads Approved Seal, but the game that inspired us to create the seal in the first place. It’s a fun experience made my competent people, and it’s worth your attention.
As a review – that would pass as adequate. It tells you all the basic information. Gives the new title, the new publisher, and then just throws up its hands, saying, “If you liked it before, you’ll probably like it again. It does all the stuff you liked about it before.” But adequate is hardly something anyone goes looking for when they want to know about a game. There are too many games and too many people like myself trying to sell you on how great those games can be for adequate to even begin to tell the story. The game’s original designer is back on this one, but did anything change under development at Funhill Games? Has six years of design trends and industry shifts in the game market had an effect? Adequate doesn’t even begin to talk about our unique perspective here at InnRoads, where Kingdom of Solomon was one of the titles that got bandied about when we started looking for games like this. Does Wisdom of Solomon match up? Did it meet our expectations?
Kingdom of Solomon was a solid experience from what I have seen, but I wouldn’t know. I hadn’t even heard of it before somebody wrote to me about its potential. I had to do some research on Board Game Geek just to prepare to talk about it here. When word of the remake hit me, I had the impression that a game that had an ok release to generally positive reviews would just re-release the old title. Pretty up some of the artwork. Maybe get an editor to take a fresh look at the rulebook before calling the printer to let marketing and Kickstarter hype carry this one home. That, you see, would have been an adequate response, and it would have had adequate success. It may be my niche, but I probably wouldn’t have been the only one would have been in on it even if it was just a fresh look on the old game. So when the folks at Funhill got in touch with me to see if I’d give it a review, what could it hurt, right? And no, I wasn’t disappointed.
Left: Kingdom of Solomon
Right: Wisdom of Solomon
Let’s begin with the easy comparison’s first – Wisdom of Solomon does indeed put a fresh coat of paint on the bones left by KoS. A quick side-by-side comparison of the board shows that this game is looking to throw more of its art and design behind making this game grab attention on a table. Whereas KoS used darker colors and utilized text boxes to signify a lot of the worker abilities, WoS has lighter colors, and there is not one space on this board that isn’t recognizable by a symbol alone, allowing the iconography and artwork do the talking as opposed to text. The simple act of changing the backdrop of half the board from a void filled with text boxes to a marketplace outside the temple helps to solidify the theme that the players are all governers trying to curry favor with King Solomon himself by shrewdly conducting business affairs and building up the temple.
A lot of the rules have been changed, streamlined, added in or removed to make this an overall better experience from its predecessor. I loved that Wisdom of Solomon carried over the concept of trade networks, where players can slowly build up their connections in different regions so that one worker placed in a region could suddenly be gathering the resources of many via a web of roads and customs houses built up over time. However, they opened that up significantly. While the number of customs houses in a region is still limited based on players, more than one player can occupy the spaces, allowing more than just the first few players to construct buildings and weave their Network together – leading to the tangible joy of laying down one worker and picking up a fistful of resources. Rules that were unnecessary and cluttered up the experience – such as making sure you had different resources to make each different portion of the temple or keeping track of who was the high priest that round and the bonuses that came with that – are cut down in WoS and simplified.
The first time I played Wisdom of Solomon, I was against a player who had never played anything like a worker-placement style game. He was so unfamiliar with the concept that I had to break down what those words even meant. I would have been slow to put Kingdom of Solomon before him, because I don’t know if he’d have been able to fully get behind what was happening or buy into the theme. On the contrary, by the time our game of Wisdom of Solomon was over, I may have beaten my inexperienced opponent – but only by two points. The game has a lot of interesting parts that work together, and understanding the timing can be infinitely more important than making points in the moment. The trade networking makes building more exciting. The fact that you can only play fortune cards – powerful cards mostly with one time effects – when you put a worker on certain points of the board makes moves that might seem silly at the time worth considering in order to position yourself for later moves. The fact that temple bonuses grant resources and abilities that can change the course of a round, if not the entire game, in an instant come with the heavy cost of all your remaining workers makes it a tense decision. And a player can’t just wait to be the last one to go and grab up the powerful bonus while avoiding the weight of the cost, because those bonuses are no longer accessible once there is only one player with moves remaining. It tempts everyone to jump on that chance, only to spend the round watching everyone else build up their empire.
The designer and publisher of this game didn’t want fine. They weren’t satisfied with adequate. They wanted to make something that was already good even better, and they succeeded. This is a great worker placement game, whether you’re familiar with that genre or new to it. It challenges the players to make interesting choices that have weight to them and rewards long-term networking and planning. There may be some who might look at the theme and wonder if it’s something they can get behind. Trust me, as a guy who is sent biblically themed games regularly – it’s easy to be a bit apprehensive, especially if that’s not naturally your thing. But I will say that one of the key elements to the InnRoads Approved Seal is that theme might be biblically based, but the game has to be fun, challenging, and worthwhile even if the player has never cracked open a Bible or has any desire to do so. And I’m happy to say that we’ll be adding Wisdom of Solomon to our list of games receiving that seal. It succeeds on every level as far as we’re concerned. Solomon himself would be proud.
At the time this review is posted, there are SEVEN DAYS left on the Kickstarter. As far as I’m concerned, you would not be amiss getting in on Wisdom of Solomon or Kings of Israel. Not only are you getting good games, but you’re encouraging a designer and development team that are not satisfied with just being good enough when they probably could have been. That’s worth celebrating.