Regicide
Gather your heroes (and animal companions)! We fight as a team!
Teamwork is everywhere…
People work in a team for many reasons… Sometimes to put together IKEA furniture 🪑, sometimes to play a team sport ⚽, sometimes to work on a big project 🏗, and sometimes, of course, to fight evil kings and queens so to restore a beloved land from corruption 👑!
In our first cooperative board game recommendation The Mind we asked your family/class/team to get in sync… that’s just the warmup! This week we are going to take you to a fantasy world, and all you need is a standard deck of playing cards.
In this week’s recommendation, Regicide, you and your kids work together on an epic quest. You guess it! You are going to take on the corrupted kings and queens!
Oh, the other really cool thing is, you get to kick butts with your animal companions! 🦊🦉🐿🦨
Overview
Age: 10+ years
Skill Level:
Teamwork: 10+ years
Perspective taking: 10+ years
Maths, working memory, visual information processing: 10+ years (12+ without the app)
Players: 2-4
Duration: ~20 mins
Regicide is a quick, cheap, and fantastic cooperative board game. If you are unfamiliar with what cooperative board games are, make sure you read our other two newsletters in the teamwork series (Arrows and Teamwork and The Mind).
In Regicide, a team of 2-4 players work together, gather heroes, and defeat 12 powerful enemies.
Players take turns to play cards to the table to attack the enemy. Once enough damage is dealt, the enemy is defeated. This defeated enemy will then join the players’ team on their journey! But beware! Each turn, if undefeated, the enemy strikes back, causing the active player to discard cards. If a player can’t discard enough cards as required, EVERYONE loses and the game is over!
Where to get it
Regicide is published by a small New Zealand company called Badgers From Mars. You can purchase the game directly from their website here for about NZD $20 (AUD$ 18; USD$14).
You could also click on the following Amazon affiliation link and get your copy.
As always, if you can find it at your local game store, please support them and pick up this game there!
Since Regicide is a clever design using the normal 52-card deck, you can also download the rules here and start playing it straight away.
You will be missing out on the beautiful art though! Check this out!
You might find a Black or Red Box edition, but this only affects the art on the box; the contents are exactly the same.
How to use this game
Learn the game
I always love it when there is a good quality learning video. Regicide’s publisher has done just that. In just 9 minutes, you will learn how to play the game!
If you are one who likes reading, here is the 2-page rulebook.
Tell the story
We have prepared a script here for you to become the greatest story teller in your kids’ eyes!
Alright kids, today we are going to turn into great leaders, on a mission to save our people! A sinister corruption has spread throughout our beloved four kingdoms, blackening the hearts of Kings and Queens and those that protect them. As brave adventurers we must work together using the special powers of our champions and animal companions. Overthrow the corrupted monarchs, purge them of their darkness and add them to our ranks so that life can be brought to the land once more.
In this cooperative game (for 2-4 players), we must work together to defeat powerful enemies. Each of us takes turns to play cards with unique abilities, deal damage to the enemy, and at the same time look after and protect our team. We win when all the enemies are defeated, but beware! If any one of us gets struck down, the battle is lost.
Are you ready? Let’s play Regicide!
Learning Points
With Regicide, we are going to teach your kids a key aspect of teamwork called “perspective taking”. Simply put, perspective taking is a person’s ability to consider a situation from a different angle, or someone else’s point of view. When this ability is low, a person will struggle greatly in not only teamwork, but communicating effectively or maintaining functional relationships.
In order to help you build your children’s “perspective taking” skill, here we highlight a couple of learning opportunities you could look out for, and how to facilitate the learning. We suggest you learn the game first (e.g. watch the YouTube video, play the a couple of games with your partner or friends), otherwise the situations will make little sense to you.
We have 4 players in our scenario. Kid players are Luke and Penny; Adult players are Ted and Tracy. This is also their sitting order.
Situation 1: Penny is super excited because she could play a club and kill an enemy with exact damage. However the next player Ted only has two cards left in his hands and faces grave danger. Ted could say:
“I think I could be in trouble, is there anything you could do to help out?”
Prompting children to consider others, and modelling help seeking behaviours
“Yes you could beat this enemy right now. But how are we fighting the next enemy? Do you think I can survive the next round with only two cards left?”
Highlight that it might be a bad choice (for the team) to act impulsively, and we might need to prioritise protecting our team members to achieve the greater goal.
If the situation is reversed, that is Ted could defeat the enemy easily but notices Tracy could be in trouble, he could also verbalise his thinking process to help the kids observe how we could put others’ needs first:
Ted, “Oh I really want to beat this enemy, but I notice Tracy is running a bit low on cards. I’m worried that she might not survive another round. Ok, I will choose to play a Diamond which will help Tracy to pick up some cards.”
Situation 2: Luke takes a calculated risk but unfortunately his plan fails, and the team loses. Tracy could say:
“Oh bummer, bad luck! I am not sure why you did this/played this card. Could you please help me understand how you decided to play this card?”
Remember, “perspective taking” is a skill. And just like any other skill, it needs to be taught, learnt, and practiced. Here Tracy is modelling that it is ok to not fully understand others, and invite extra information.
“I see, I could see where you are coming from now. It must be frustrating that your plan didn’t work. What do you think would happen if you chose [another option]?”
After validating Luke’s decision making, Tracy gently provides other possibilities. This helps Luke to reflect on his planning, and builds the ability to accept feedback about his own perspective.
Have you now played the games a few times and noticed that there are other cool learning moments? Leave us a comment and let everyone know!
Pro tips to game and learn
Go easy on the first few games
There is a “no sharing your hand” rule. If you are newer to games, or your children are a little younger, we suggest you play “open hand” for your first few games, which means everyone could show their cards during the game.
Note that if you do, Regicide becomes more of a puzzle for the team to work on solving effectively together. Don’t worry to much about the “perspective taking” skill at this stage, but it is still a solid practice on working together.
You could reverse back to normal “no sharing” after a couple of first wins. 😊
2 players is totally fine
We often play the game with only 2 players, and it works very well. You could give your child undivided attention, and it is easier to practice “perspective taking” when there is only one other person’s perspective to consider.
Companion App
The game comes with a fantastic application for your phone, Regicide Companion App. It makes the tracking and calculation of points much easier. On the other hand, if you choose not to play it with the App, the game then provides great opportunities for your children to use their short term memory, counting, shape recognition, and basic addition and subtraction skills.
May you see the sweet little goblin dances for you soon.
Great for travel and loud places
We’ve found that this game is great for travel (as it’s a small deck of cards) and because it doesn’t need much verbal communication you can play it in places that are quite noisy.
In a classroom (or corporate) setting
You can also take this game to work or school if you’re a teacher - it works great for young and old people alike. If you’re running it with a large group of people divide your students or colleagues into groups of 4 and give each group a copy of Regicide, or a deck of playing cards. Set a timer (e.g., 20 min) and challenge groups to get as far as they can. If they lose and still have time remaining then they can try again.
Achievement Sheet
You could print this for the kids after the first couple games. Here we challenge your kids with some epic quests!
We hope you enjoyed our second game recommendation in the teamwork series! Please help us out by giving us a rating and feedback below.
Otherwise, if you have any questions or any suggestions on what educational skills you’d like to teach your kids then leave a comment below.
Until next time, Game and Learn with Regicide! 😉