Enthrone: Ascendant Simulacrums

We’re always looking for great two-player games at The Family Gamers. While we’re always going to advocate for playing games with your entire family, the nuclear family’s foundation begins with the couple. So, when we saw Enthrone from Smirk and Dagger, with its eight gorgeous statues and its quick two-player format, we knew we had to give it a go.

Enthrone was created by Sawyer West and a game is intended to last 20 minutes or less. There’s no reading or numeracy in Enthrone, but the strategy pushes the age limit to 10+.

Setup

I love a good, quick game to set up. Lay out the board and set a statue pawn on each of the red Lion spaces. Deal three identity cards to each player, who must select one and discard the others face-down.

Set out the Action board, shuffle the eight action tiles face-down (arrow side up), and place them on the action track. Then flip them over.

Gameplay

Winning and Losing

The goal of Enthrone is to win by either moving your selected identity pawn to the center Regalia space, or by eliminating the pawns of your Quarry – identified at the bottom of your identity card. You also win if you eliminate your opponent’s pawn.

You can lose Enthrone if your pawn is captured or a fourth pawn is removed from the board during your turn and your quarry is not eliminated.

Movement

On your turn, choose one of the top five tokens on the Action board as your active identity. Move the token to the bottom of the track, sliding the other tokens up to fill the space. Move the pawn corresponding with this token to an adjacent space. Spaces connected by a jewel are considered adjacent.

If the token was in one of the top two spaces, you may use this pawn to capture another pawn. Do this by moving that pawn into the space of the other pawn.

After capturing a pawn, flip its token on the Action board over. It is now an arrow pointing down, which means that it acts like a copy of the token below it (and moved to the bottom as usual). This effect chains, too. Multiple downward arrows means a single pawn could have two or more tokens a player could use to move it.

You can win by moving your pawn onto the center Regalia spot. But to do this, the pawn token must be in one of the top three spaces of the Action board.

Play continues until one player wins or loses, as explained above. The rules are simple but the strategy is not!

Impressions

Enthrone bills itself as “A timeless strategy game of intrigue, guile, and deduction for two”. Frankly, that description nails this game. Enthrone begins with a nervous standoff. Each player knows three identities: their own and the two they’ve discarded. Everyone else is an enemy, and each pawn has three other identities that want them dead.

The Strategy

The layers of deduction overlap quickly in Enthrone. Because the game immediately ends when a fourth pawn is taken, neither player is motivated to take early swings unless they’re going to directly benefit their character. This means every aggressive move must be carefully planned. There simply isn’t space for too many distractions.

Unlike a perfect information game like Chess, Enthrone requires its players to be alert throughout the game. Players should be constantly evaluating the board, trying to identify their opponent. At the same time they need to calculate how to move their pawn to the Regalia. Moving tokens down on the action track keeps players from moving a single piece too many times, too. This further complicates the ability of either player to achieve their goals too quickly – or spill the beans on their identity to their opponent.

I love the layers in this game. It starts a little uncomfortable, but that’s okay! This friction drives players to be curious and weigh different possibilities in their minds. In this way, the player aid are invaluable! I’m constantly comparing my opponent’s actions to the eight capture combinations and trying to deduce who I think they are.

Of course, focusing on this to the exclusion of the simple progression to the middle of the board is a mistake as well. It’s only four steps from the Lion to the Regalia after all.

Layering this strategy and deduction into the soup of Enthrone is exactly why it shines as a timeless game.

The Style

But that’s not all. The castings for the statues in Enthrone are absolutely gorgeous. You would be forgiven for thinking that anyone’s normal copy of this game is some kind of luxurious deluxe edition. The detail is simply exquisite, with a unique dirty-looking wash that makes the pawns look like tarnished marble. Everyone stops to stare at these pieces.

The board and the tokens are no slouch, either, with rich stained glass styling filling the boards with lush colors.

We did find that it could be a little confusing identifying which statue went with which icon, occasionally. Familiarity with the game resolves this, but the icons on the front of the statues are a bit too small. Finally, the slots in the insert are similar enough that it’s difficult to tell which statue goes where. Any kind of iconography in the insert would have helped.

But really, these are nits we’re picking here.

Anitra didn’t love Enthrone, but that’s purely because she’s not the chess-playing type: there are too many options that need to be tracked. For her (and many other folks), a simpler chess-like game such as Onitama offers a limited move set on a given turn. This controls the available options and makes those kinds of games more palatable.

But if you’re a fan of chess, or Shogi, or any other strategic board game with deduction, multi-phase planning, and other layered elements, Enthrone absolutely deserves a look. And, let’s face it, a stare. Because this game is a real looker.

Get your own copy of Enthrone directly from Smirk and Dagger, on Amazon, or at your friendly local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a promotional copy of Enthrone from Smirk & Dagger for this review.

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