Queen by Midnight: Quarter Past Review

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Queen by Midnight: Quarter Past Review

The Cardboard-Based Characteristics

Queen vs Queen

These days deckbuilders are ten to the dozen, not only that but they are now getting mixed with other mechanics and being blended into hybrid-style games too. From things like Dune Imperium and The Lost Ruins of Arnak to Dominion and Moonrakers, deckbuilders are a big part of board gaming and when done well, they are very addictive. Queen by MIdnight is not one I have heard of and it’s expandalone, Quarter Past is what I am reviewing here. Grab your deck, pick a Queen and let fight!

Queen by Midnight: Quarter Past is an expandalone to Queen by Midnight. It is a game where players pick a queen, build decks, and try obliterating each other in various rounds of combat and card play. Due to it being an expandalone, it can be played as both an expansion for the first game and as a title in its own right. Having not played the first game, my comparisons will be light if any at all. This new edition has new Queens, decks and a few new mechanics to get your claws into.

Getting into the Action

The setup is not extensive, grab a Queen and their respective cards, grab a few components and set up the Bazaar. The Bazaar is your market of sorts that evolves over time. You have three decks that correspond to different times of the day and the shop gets tastier as time goes on. Speaking of time, the whole game revolves around a clock, this clock ticks on an hour after every round and as you get to certain times of the day, changes the deck used in the Bazaar. It’s a unique mechanic, which keeps the market and gameplay fresh and brisk.

Your turns are simple, do as much stuff as you want from a list of usual ‘deck-building’ and ‘duelling’ shenanigans. Play cards, buy cards, refresh markets, that sort of stuff, all standard fare. What makes this game unique is that each Queen has their own deck and two classes a piece, how these pieces fit together makes the tapestry of Queen by Midnight unique amongst its peers. Once you have played, bought and done all your actions, the turn passes to the other player. Once the other player has done, the hour ticks forward and the game rockets on to its inevitable crescendo.

Buying and Attacking, Deck Building and Duelling

Choosing which cards to buy and which cards to play is where the meat lies in this one, you can only buy cards that match your Queen’s two classes and with a mixture of your own deck, your own set of cards to buy and a communal market, the choices and tactical options are vast. Everything from reaction cards, attacks, currency cards and summons can be used and there is a plethora of weird and wonderful things to play with in this box. It will certainly take a fair few plays to explore it all.

Each queen has a major and minor attack value in each of their classes, using the right attacks from the right class will benefit you massively, as does raising these levels to maximise your damage output. Various cards and abilities will raise these levels making each future attack more potent and increasingly devastating. Preserving your health and healing is also important, this is a duel after all. Using traps and reactions will also help you survive and hit back. These kinds of games are never always about attacking and it may just be a good defence that will win you the game.

Lovely Art, Weird Tracks……

From a component and artwork standpoint, I loved most of what’s in this box. The artwork is beautiful, the components are well made and nearly everything works perfectly. I say nearly everything because the tracks for both health and your clout were a little bit fiddly and slightly irksome. I had to really pay attention when adjusting these two tracks and while it was not game-breaking, it was just enough to be slightly annoying throughout the game.

A Unique Blend of Two Genres, That Works!

My thoughts on Queen by Midnight: Quarter Past are mostly positive, while there are better games in both the mechanisms on offer here, both deck-building and duelling, the mixture of the two in this game is quite unique. There is a lot to offer in the box with four unique queens, several decks and multiple tactics to experiment with. The art is beautiful and the options are plentiful. If you are in the market for a unique deckbuilding head-to-head game, you could do a lot worse than Queen by Midnight.

Rapid Reviews Rating

4 out of 5

4