Roar: The King of the Pride Review

Everybody’s got a little wild side to them, and in today’s featured board game you can let it run free. Just remember, the past can hurt. But, you can either run from it or learn from it. Long live the King!

Roar: King of the Pride is an area control worker placement game for 3-6 players. Roar is designed by Erica Bouyouris and Daryl Andrews and published by IDW games. The game features stunning artwork by Vincent Dutrait.

In Roar, players control one of six Lion species all of which lived in Africa at some point. Each player chooses a species of Lion to play as and takes all the really awesome Lion meeples that make up their pride. One of the coolest features is the Lion meeples. They even have different sculpts for the male and female lions.

Then each player places two males and two females into the zones that match their lion’s color. Each zone has a gazelle pictured with a number that represents how much food that zone generates assuming the zone has a female Lion present. Female lions do most of the hunting while the male is mostly there to mate and protect the Pride from outsiders.

Once the areas are set up, each player draws four secret objective cards and must choose at least one. Any uncompleted objective cards are worth negative points at the end of the game. Next, the player who can make the most convincing lion Roar goes first. The player who is last in turn order places a hut representing human encroachment.

Lions may never move into these zones, however, they may sneak past at the cost of a lion. Players can sacrifice one of their male lions to increase their pride’s ancestral strength, making their males stronger when attacking. Then each player takes two actions of their choice.

There are a few different actions players can take in Roar. They can take a move action and move each of their lions up to two zones. They can attack an adjacent Pride and force them out if they have stronger pride strength. They can also breed. If they have a male and female in the same zone they can roll the breeding die to see how many babies they’ll make.

Then the player puts the baby chits facedown, not showing the gender to the other players. Players may also draw two secret objectives and take either one, two, or none of these. Another action is to Roar. In this action, a player can steal one of their opponent’s female lions and add it to their pride if they are stronger than them.

After all, players have taken actions for the round everyone checks for starvation. Each zone with a female creates the amount of food on the numbered gazelle. Players must add this up to feed their pride. Males require two food, females require one, and babies and cubs require none. Then players age their babies by flipping them to show the gender and cubs become adults. To show cubs becoming an adult, players replace the chits with the correct gender meeple.

This cycle repeats until each player has placed and removed a human hut marker showing the years that pass based on the players count. A pride is scored based on how many male lions and female lions and how much food production it has. Players are also scored for each secret objective completed and lose points for those that were not completed. Ties are broken by ancestral strength.

Roar: King of the Pride is a very fun and interactive game. The component quality is amazing, and, who doesn’t love Lion meeples? Plus the artwork on the cards and the board itself are simply beautiful. If you are looking for a worker placement game with some area control that’s a bit on the lighter side, then we highly recommend this game.