A colorful close box that says "For the Queen," which has five femme presenting characters arranged on the cover. There is also an image of the box open, with the cards inside. There are examples of what the Rules and Questions cards look like, and there are two queen cards, one showing a woman wearing a purple business suit, and another showing a celestial queen with a glowing crown.

A new version of the roleplaying card game For the Queen is upon us, and as I prepared to write this review I thought, “I just wrote a review for this game.” Then I realized that it’s been almost four years since I wrote this review, and the enormity of the progress of time, how long I’ve been writing reviews, and how close death is to claiming me all hit at once. I’m better now. Composure is back. So, let’s take a look at the new edition of For the Queen.

Disclaimer

I am working from a review copy of the game provided to me by Darrington Press. My previous review, based on the initial publication run of the game, was based on a copy of the game that I purchased myself. One of the first games I picked up when I finally resolved to run games via VTT was the digital version of For the Queen on Roll20. I have played this game quite a bit and have even gotten a few rounds of play for the new version under my belt as well.

For the Queen

Publisher: Darrington Press
Game Designer: Alex Roberts
Editor: Meredith Katz
Cultural Consultant: Cai Kagawa Game
Production Manager: Alex Uboldi
X Card: John Stavropoulos
Graphic Design: Matt Paquette & Co
Artists: Arlei Dormiendo, Arthur Riel Cabezas, Brady Evans, Caitlyn Kurilich, Céline Vu, Cheseely Li, Chelsea Ortega, Constance Bouckaert, Denis Freitas, Eleonor Piteira, Esther Tejano, G.C. Houle, Hamahmeyo, Jeong Kim, Kelsey Eng, Lemonjuiceday, LABillustration, Lara Georgia Carson, Lauren Covarrubias, Malia Ewart, Maxine Vee, Nicole Gustafsson, Karina Pavlova (WeirdUndead), Silly Chaotic, Tasia M S

Consulting the Deck

This edition of For the Queen contains all the content of the previous edition, except the art on the previous run. All the queens have been reimagined and reinterpreted. The original game had 82 cards, while the new edition comes in at 91 cards.

The previous version of the game had a top slide deck box, meaning that you pulled the cover off from the top, and if you grabbed the deck from the top, the bottom of the box would fall out. This version is designed to look like a book and has a magnetic clasp to seal the box shut.

All of the Queen cards are now double sided, with one of the cards having each of the queens’ “names” and artist listed. Each card’s name is a descriptor of what kind of queen they are, for example, one card is the Carnival Queen.

The previous edition of the game was already an attractive game with great artwork, especially the queen cards. This version of the game manages to push the envelope further, with an amazing box and a wonderful set of new artwork for all the queens. You need to see it for yourself, but if you ever looked at your copy of For the Queen and wondered, “what would a computer program, cyberpunk, or murderous prom attendee look like as a queen,” this deck’s artwork answers that for you.

The cards break down something like this:

  • Game Content Card—1 card
  • Queen Cards—13 cards (25 illustrations, 1 list of queens and artists)
  • X-Card—1 card (X on each side)
  • Rules Cards—17 cards
  • Question Cards—60 (including “The Queen is Under Attack”)

If 17 cards of rules feel intimidating, don’t worry, the cards are meant to be read out loud to set the stage and explain how the game works. Each card has a short paragraph of explanation on it.

What’s the Deal?

I’ve played this game with my former game group at the local game store and at various conventions. For a new review, and a new edition of the game, I wanted a fresh perspective. Once a month on Saturday, I run a D&D game for my daughter, my daughter-in-law, and their friend – all in their late 20s to early 30s. I asked if they would be interested in playing the game, and I got an enthusiastic yes from all of them. The concept was already selling the game for them.

For comparison, I also brought along the previous edition of the game. I wanted the group to have a chance to see the difference between the editions. I asked them not to consider the dinged-up corner on my first edition box, where I launched it out of my backpack at a convention. After we took some time to look at the cards from both boxes, and we decided where we were going to set up the game, we started.

If you haven’t played the game before, I’ll summarize it the way I did for my Saturday group. Each player takes a card from the deck on their turn. There is a prompt asking you questions that range from who you are to the queen, how you feel about actions the queen has taken, and how you feel about other players. You improvise your answers to these prompts, and as you are answering, you get a general idea of who you are. Other players can ask follow up questions when you answer a card, but you don’t have to answer them.

While there is no formal process for creating a character, an image starts to take shape the more questions you answer, which helps to inform the next question you are asked. I’ve seen people get a general idea about who they are by the end, and I’ve seen people weave some deep narratives based on the prompts. There is a single card in the deck that says “The Queen is Attacked,” and when that card is drawn, you decide, based on how you have answered the questions, if you will defend the Queen – and that’s how the game ends.

If there is a prompt you are uncomfortable answering, or one you just don’t want to answer, you can touch an X-Card, and the prompt card gets discarded. If you don’t want to answer your prompt, but you don’t want to X-Card it, you can pass it to the next player, to see if they want to answer the prompt.

The box for the game For the Queen, across from the X-Card opposite the box. In the middle are a stack of question cards, with a discard pile on one side and the image of The Witch Queen on the other side.Game Number One

To decide on which queen we were going to use, I held up each card, then showed its opposite side, and asked everyone to vote on which side we would keep. Once we decided on which images to have face up, we narrowed down our options from there. We settled on The Witch Queen, in large part because my daughter-in-law wanted to boop the dragon in the picture. This became very important. One of the players said, “she’s so cute, we’re probably going to make her into a monster.”

We took the bottom third of the deck, shuffled “The Queen is Under Attack” in, and started the game. Because of how the table was laid out, it was easier to make sure everyone could reach the X-Card if I pulled the card from the original edition and placed it on one side, with the new X-Card on the other side. Once we had the placement of the deck sorted, we started playing. The group asked me to pull first, since I’ve played it so many times before.

From the first card that I drew, I started going deep into answering from the perspective of a vulnerable individual, to the point that one of my player’s mentioned, “you’re in therapy mode right now, aren’t you?” Maybe.

In addition to my emotionally compromised character who was defensive for how the queen talks about his family, we had someone that had killed 42 men, and only disappointed the queen when she failed to kill 43. We had another character begin to emerge that kept the queen’s menagerie of animals but was never allowed to touch the dragon. She was also kept in a cage and eats people. Our final character had her freedom curtailed by various means, is similarly bound, but does not, in fact, eat people.

When “The Queen is Attacked” was drawn, we found out that the keeper of the menagerie was a demon who can turn into any creature she touches, which is why she wanted to touch the dragon. She did not defend the queen. Our killer was a sell sword looking to avenge her father, who did not defend the queen because the queen was complicit in covering up who killed her father. Our bound but not human devouring character was an old friend of the queen now in indentured service, who did not defend the queen in hopes of regaining her freedom. My character did defend the queen, because I was from a disgraced noble family that had to flee our homes, and when my loss of station meant I couldn’t marry the queen, she still provided a place at court for me.

That was a lot. One of the highlights was my daughter asking her friend if she was Inigo Montoya, at which point she answered, “damn it.”

Question cards in the middle of the table, with a discard pile on one side, and the card with the image of the Undead Queen on the other side. There is an X-Card sitting to one side, above another card that reads "The Queen is Under Attack. Do You Defend Her?"Game Number Two

From previous playthroughs, it was my experience that having different people draw the same cards, while envisioning a different queen, leads to a much different experience. I was excited to play through a second time, and so were the other members of my Saturday D&D group. We looked through the other queens that we hadn’t used yet and selected the Undead Queen. “We’re totally going to make her into a sweetheart, I bet.”

The second time through, I think we had our creative neurons firing, because almost everyone started coming up with a deeper backstory after just a few prompts. We had one prompt passed on, and then X-Carded, but it was mainly because it just didn’t work for what either player wanted to answer, rather than causing a safety issue. Still nice to have the X-card available if it had been the latter.

The further the game went, the more it seemed like we had two, maybe three, people related to the queen, and two others that had practiced magic with her in the past, and possibly in the present. One had saved her life, and another had feuded with her publicly. I kept her tomes of necromantic spells at hand for her, as well as her other magical implements. “We went really high fantasy this time around, didn’t we?”

By the time the queen was attacked, we found out that she had taken in one character, a refugee of the lost royal line that the queen’s father had wiped out. Another character was the queen’s mother, and the queen had killed her father to free her mother from him. Because the queen mother was from the previous royal line, that meant that our refugee and the queen mother turned out to be cousins. Our other character was the princess, who had refused to marry someone to forge an alliance with another country, meaning her mother then had to do so. Through my answers, we determined that the queen was operating under a curse, so she had to learn both dark and light magic, and as her apprentice, I was deciding which path I was going to take. I was the only one who didn’t defend the queen when she was attacked, because I wanted her to be free of the burden of balancing light and dark, because I had seen how much the dark magic pained her to use.

Apparently we are incapable of generating maximum drama. We all had a blast, although I pointed out, we only made the Undead Queen a qualified sweetheart, not an unmitigated one.

Accolades from the Group
 This is a great game to play in general, and a good option on those nights when you have nothing prepared, or a player is missing. 

Everyone in the group enjoyed the game immensely and said we could play it any time and they would be happy. They liked that the prompts pushed them to think about things and answer questions that forced an emerging picture of themselves and the queen. They loved the artwork for the queens and started coming up with ideas about the queens from the pictures alone. They all agreed that they would buy additional cards that were just new queen artwork.

Setbacks Along the Path

There were two things the group agreed on, neither of which were major issues. Because we used X-Cards on both sides of the table, they thought it would be a good idea to have at least one additional X-Card to help with making the card accessible to everyone seated at the table. The other criticism is that when they compared the game to the previous edition, they noticed that the queens were not double sided, meaning you could see all of them together, at a glance. The new artwork is amazing, but half of the queens are hidden from view, depending on which side of the card you are looking at.

Strongly Recommended–This product is exceptional, and may contain content that would interest you even if the game or genre covered is outside of your normal interests.

The last time I reviewed this game, I thought it was amazing. Now that I’ve had the chance to play it even more over the years, and after seeing the new packaging and additional artwork, I’ve only grown more fond of it. Unless you really are not comfortable answering guided, but pointed, questions, it benefits almost any roleplaying enthusiast to have a copy of this game. This is a great game to play in general, and a good option on those nights when you have nothing prepared, or a player is missing. It remains one of the ultimate “bring this with you to a convention for impromptu gaming” products.