Stats:
No. of players: 2-4
Amount of time to play: 45-60 min
Age requirements: 14+
Set-up time: minimal

Nobility is the first expansion for War Chest. It adds new four units and royal decrees that you may proclaim to help you dominate your opponents.

War Chest Nobility Rules Description:

This post assumes you know the basics of how to play War Chest. If you don’t, read my overview and review of the War Chest here. This post is going to focus on what new elements the Nobility expansion adds to the game.

There are four new units in this expansion; the bannerman, bishop, earl and herald. The game also comes with seven decrees and adds the proclaim maneuver.

When you start the game you select three random decrees and set them by the board. On your turn you may discard your royal coin to proclaim a decree. Each decree may only be used once per game each player (or team). Decrees let you take a specific action, for example, redeploy a unit from anywhere on the board, attack with a friendly unit on a location you control, or take an eliminated unit from the box and add them to your supply.

Some of the new units interact with the new proclaim maneuver like the earl. When you control a location with the earl you may immediately use any decree without marking it used. The harold may maneuver after you proclaim a decree.

The bishop and bannerman do not interact with the new proclaim maneuver but are powerful in their own right. The bishop let’s you recruit and then move or attack. The bannerman lets you move an adjacent enemy one space after it maneuvers.

Nobility includes a few replacement parts too. There are new hex-shaped control tokens. The original ones were round and hard to see if under a unit. The royal guard gets a new card too. Now its tactic let you discard your royal coin to move up to 2 spaces to a location you control.

Quick Review of War Chest Nobility:

Nobility is a really good first expansion for War Chest. It is not necessary to own, but once you have played a lot of the original board game, this expansion adds some variety and new elements to it.

The components are excellent and in line with those in the base set. The cards and chips are durable and the replacement control markers are a nice touch. The box includes another chip tray that can be added to the base box. This makes that box much better. The rules are easy to read and understand too.

Proclaim is an interesting new maneuver and increases the usefulness of your royal coin. The decrees themselves can be hit or miss depending on the game. Sometimes they can help you gain an edge but other times the situation need to use one never comes about. It is low overhead to add them, so we always do. Even if they are not utilized at least they are not over-powered.

All the new units are fun to play. The earl and bishop are the ones I like the best. I thought the bannerman would be the ultimate setup unit. Able to move enemy units to their death, but it that was harder to pull off than I imagined.

The new royal guard card was curious to me. You can read more about why the designers edited the unit here. I thought the unit was fine before, but we weren’t employing the short-bag strategy.

If you enjoy War Chest and have played a lot of it, pick up the Nobility expansion. The new elements are easy to introduce into the current game and add some variety to the game play.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 6 out of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 3 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6