Gone Cardboard: Queen’s Ransom, Coming from Z-Man Games

In addition to Mountain of Inferno and Tien Zi Que – described earlier on BGN – Z-Man Games has announced another small card game for release in either March or April 2010. Queen’s Ransom is from designer Kevin L. Jones, and contrary to what the title suggests, players are neither ransoming a queen nor paying said ransom. Instead they need to discover who kidnapped the queen and where she’s being held so that no ransom needs to be paid. Queen No Ransom? Yeah, the actual title is better.

In Queen’s Ransom, three suspects and three locations are presented to the players, with pairs of evidence cards (of value -3 to 3) placed face-down next to each suspect and location. Whichever suspect card has the highest sum of evidence cards next to it is the target the players must identify; the same goes for the location card.

Players start with a hand of money cards and special action cards, and on a turn, a player can (1) pay the jester’s current asking price to peek at one evidence card, (2) use a special action, such as the one shown below, or (3) pass. At the end of a turn, the player draws a card, and after each player has had a turn, the jester’s asking price for info changes. Any player can make an accusation at the end of her turn, checking the evidence cards secretly to verify whether she’s uncovered the queen or botched the investigation.

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