Kilia

• Designer: Lars Ehresmann
• Publisher: Huch!
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Kiel, Germany — the lively port city on the Baltic Sea — is the starting point for a project of the century: a canal from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea! As influential citizens of the city in Kilia, you participate in the construction of the canal…while trying to make a little more profit than the competition. Improve your ships, accept lucrative contracts, influence the most important people on the city council: there are numerous ways to achieve your goals, but only those who use their influence in several places can ultimately win! On each turn, you play only one card, but whether you use it to procure goods, exert influence, or build on the canal is entirely up to you! Every card can be used anywhere, but what will bring you victory this time?

To set up the game, place the council board on the table, with 5 contracts on the board and 5 action cards in the slots just below the board. Each player takes a player board, and gets one starting contract, ships, 3 coins, and one good of every color except their own player color.

The game will be played in a number of rounds – until a player has used all 4 of their scoring tokens.  In a round, each player first takes an action card and executes it, and then there is a council phase.

When you take an action card, you must take one of the 5 cards in the display below the board. The “cost” for each slot is printed above the card – essentially, how many keys you need to have on your own player board in order to take the card.  If you do not have enough keys, you instead may pay the full cost in coins as shown (doesn’t matter how many keys you are short by).  If you do not like the cards available, you may pay 5 coins to refresh the entire supply – but you can only do this before you take any cards at all.  Otherwise, you only refresh the supply of action cards at the end of your turn.

When you take your card, you may play it either as an expansion or as a merchant.  There are four expansion zones on the upper half of your player board, and you slide the card under the corresponding header – making sure that all players can see how many cards you have in the area. Each zone has a resource associated with it.  The cost to place a card as an expansion is a number of goods equal to the number of cards in that area – i.e. the fourth university card you play will cost 4 bricks to place.  You may have up to four expansions in each area (thus, a total of 5 symbols – as the first symbol is free and pre-printed on your board).  Each area gives you a different bonus for expansion:

• Castle – Cards have keys on them which increase your ability to get cards from the market. Also, when you place here, you immediately take a new contract from the supply.  The costs are the same as the action cards.  Active contracts go face up above your player board.
• University – each expansion gives you permanent advantages; take a second action card from the supply, again paying for it in the usual way, and then slide it under the university area so that you can see the knowledge at the bottom of the card.  This could give you a goods equivalent, extra actions when expanding certain areas or end game bonuses
• Warehouse – construct new warehouses along the canal – after expanding, take another card from the market and place it into one of the slots in your player board – the middle section will be visible, and you can see goods in the grid on the card. When a ship sails, it can collect the goods that are visible.
• Shipyard – exchange your current ship for the next size up – different ships have windows in different places, which means you’ll see different goods in each of the warehouses

When you play your card as a merchant, you lay it face down in one of the 6 action spaces in the center of your board.  You must start by placing cards in the lowest row, and you can build upwards as soon as a higher card can be fully supported by cards underneath.  Whenever you place a card down as a merchant, you get a one-time bonus of whatever is printed in the space you cover: coins, one good, a new contract or “smoked sprats” (these are essentially wild cards).

At any point in your turn, you can activate a merchant.  The lowest merchants only once a turn, twice for the middle level and three times for the topmost merchant.  To activate a merchant, place a coin on it and then gain one resource as shown on the merchant.  Additionally, you can always trade 3:1 with the supply.

Also, before or after your actions, you can fulfill a contract by turning in the goods shown at the top to gain the rewards shown at the bottom.   Keep the fulfilled contract face down near you as you will need to score the VPs on the card at the end of the game.

Then, check to see if you have finished any achievements – these are all seen on the main board – and if you have, you can place one of your scoring markers on the center of that achievement area. Once a player has placed their fourth and final scoring marker, the end game is triggered.

After you have finished your action(s), you refill the markets by sliding all remaining cards to the left and then refilling from the right.  The next player then takes their turn; and when all players have taken their turn, there is a council phase.

In the Council phase, first all scoring chips placed this round are moved to the highest numbered space remaining for that achievement.  Everyone who completed an achievement in this round will score the same amount.   Then, all players remove the coins from their merchants and return the coins to the supply.  Finally, the ships set sail – players push their ships from one end of the canal to the other.  At each stop on the canal, if you see goods in the window of your ship, you collect those goods.  When it gets to the other end, flip the tile around so that the bow is pointed in the other direction; your ship will move the other way in the next round, and since the position of the window has changed, you’ll get different goods on the way back.

If the end game is triggered (because someone played their fourth scoring chip), complete the current round and then play one final round – the only change is that ships do not sail in the final round.  If players succeed at more achievements, simply use a good in the player color to denote this and move that ersatz scoring marker appropriately in the final council phase.

Then score the game:

• Points for Achievements
• 3 points for every card under the expansion zone of your own color
• Points from fulfilled contracts
• Points for specific goods if you have University cards with end game bonuses (note you can still activate merchants for this in the endgame)

The player with the most points wins; ties broken in favor of the most goods left over.

My thoughts on the game

Kilia was on my list of games to check out at Spiel 2025, though I wasn’t sure about it from my research – it was from a new designer, so I didn’t have much to go on.  It’s been awhile since Huch! had published a game that resonated with me, so that was another factor.  After getting a demo of the game at the Wednesday press exposition though, I was quite excited to get my copy to the table.

The game has a nice engine building setup on the player board.  You have four different things you can build – card access, special abilities, ship size, goods availability.  Each of them are important to your overall success; but the order in which you choose to improve them ends up depending on your strategy as well as on what the game allows (i.e. can you pay the costs for the upgrades).  Further, the slightly asymmetric scoring pushes each player to develop the skill in their player color as each of those steps is rewarded with a VP bonus at the end of the game.

The market can be an unforgiving place – you can take any card for free if you have enough keys, but if not, you have to pay the full coin cost for the card slot.  Keys feel very important because many of the actions allow/require you to take a second card from the market, so you have to budget for the costs of two cards on many of your turns.

Once you have the cards, it’s important to remember that you have to pay for the improvements, and gathering resources is therefore just as important.  Improving your ships increases the number of goods you get from each stop of your ship’s travels as does adding more port cards to your board.  Some of the special abilities allow you to use one good in place of another, and this will lend you some much needed flexibility. As you can see, all of the expansion choices are good – but there are times when the timing might work better for some than others.

Placing a card down as a merchant is a decent temporizing maneuver, and if you choose your cards wisely, this can give you a good source of resources to buy.  As you build your pyramid higher, getting to use the upper cards more times per turn can help you overcome the costs of the final expansion steps.  Of course, to remind you of the importance of ships and port cards, you’ll also move your ship after each turn, and you’ll pick up the goods you see in the ship windows – and those come for free!

Underlying all of this is the race for achievements; many of which revolve around the improvements.  These will score the bulk of your points during the game.  Contracts will likely be the next largest source, and the contracts are interesting because they often give you back resources or even other contract cards – so you can use them to not only score points but also recycle your resources into others.

Kilia is taking us closer to 90 minutes right now, but I suspect that’s because we’re still learning the nuances of the game.  It definitely feels like it’ll be a nice meaty game in the one hour range when we’re all familiar with it.  The components are great, and I do really like the multi-layered board.  Overall, this has been one of the best surprises from Spiel 2025, and Kilia is a game I suspect will keep hitting the table this winter.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Joe Huber (5 plays): I’ve been really enjoying Kilia so far – I particularly enjoy the ship movement, which feels very thematic and is a mechanism I can’t recall in other games.  I do still have a concern with the game, though – a poor mix of cards available early can significantly limit one’s options, and occurs randomly.  The smoked sprats help some with this, but I’m not convinced they help quite enough.  It’s not a deal-breaker, but I worry it might limit my long-term enjoyment of the game.

Dan B (2 plays): I like it, and although I agree with Joe that the card mix can limit your options, I’m not sure how big a problem that is. While building an engine can clearly work I did very well in my second game with lots of merchants and contracts and not all that many cards played as upgrades.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, Joe H, John P, Dan B
• Neutral.
• Not for me…