It's more than a year since we featured Knights of the Hound Table (We Ride Games) on Board's Eye View. Click here to check out our original review.
Since then, designer Kenny Chapman has continued to develop the game so that next week sees the launch on Kickstarter of an expansion that adds an extra dimension to this light card drafting deck building game. The expansion takes the form of two sets of cards, notionally Corgis and Huskies. These add more hound cards to be shuffled into the hound deck and two more hero cards to add to the barracks - again all with cute art by Claudia Dillard. These are welcome additions but on their own they might seem like more of the same. The substantive difference is that the expansion also introduces a small deck of nine Banner cards: three each for the three different colours on the hound and hero cards (red, green and blue).
Adding the expansion means adding a simple Banner phase at the start of each round. You reveal the top card on the Banner deck and apply the specified modifier depending on the cards you've played this round. These are of greater value the more cards you have matching the colour of the Banner.
The 'Banner phase' adds another fun element but it might initially feel like just a further ratchet up of the luck quotient: after all, you don't control the cards you draw. Remember tho' that you start each game with card drafting... At the start of the game, you will perhaps now have some regard to the impact of the Banner cards in making your card drafting selections... Keeping track of how many red, blue or green Banner cards remain unflipped may also have an impact on your mid-game choice of hero cards...
The cards for our preview copy of the expansion weren't a precise match with those from the original (they were fractionally larger). That doesn't matter a jot for the Banner cards (always treated as a separate deck) but for some folk it would jar in relation to the cards shuffled into the hound and hero decks. We're assured, however, that this will be sorted in the finished version.
Breaking out Knights of the Hound Table to test out the new expansion reminded us of how much we enjoyed playing this light card game. The expansion adds an extra element but thankfully without over-complicating the game or overextending its filler-length playing time. Click here to check out the Kickstarter.