Löwenherz (German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 for "Lionheart") is a German-style board game

German-style board game

German-style board games, frequently referred to in gaming circles as Euro Games or Euro-style, are a broad class of tabletop games that generally have simple rules, short to medium playing times, indirect player interaction and abstract physical components...

 designed by Klaus Teuber

Klaus Teuber

Klaus Teuber is a German designer of board games. He won the Spiel des Jahres award four times, for The Settlers of Catan, Barbarossa, Drunter und Drüber and Adel Verpflichtet. He retired from his profession as a dental technician to become a full-time game designer in 1999. , he lives in ...

 and published in 1997 by Goldsieber in German and by Rio Grande Games

Rio Grande Games

Rio Grande Games is a board game publisher based in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. The company primarily imports and localizes foreign language German-style board games.-History:...

 in English. A revised edition, titled Löwenherz: Der König kehrt zurück in German and Domaine: Land, Wealth, Power, Prestige in English, was subsequently released in 2003 by Kosmos

Kosmos (game publisher)

Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH & Co. is a media publishing house based in Stuttgart, Germany, founded in 1822 by Johann Friedrich Franckh. In the nineteenth century the company published the fairy tales of Wilhelm Hauff as well as works by Wilhelm Waiblinger and Eduard Mörike.The "Friends of Nature...

 in German and Mayfair Games

Mayfair Games

Mayfair Games is a publisher of board, card, and roleplaying games. They also license German-style board games and publish them in English throughout the world...

 in English.

The players in both games take on the roles of regents in a kingdom in disarray - in Löwenherz, this is as the old king is dying, while in Domaine it is due to an unexplained extended absence. Players seek to secure territory under their control before either the king dies outright (in Löwenherz) or returns (in Domaine).

The game is considered to be one of the three "brothers", as Löwenherz was born from the same idea that brought forth The Settlers of Catan

The Settlers of Catan

The Settlers of Catan is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber and first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag as Die Siedler von Catan. Players assume the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop their settlement while trading and acquiring resources...

and Entdecker

Entdecker

Entdecker is a German-style board game designed by Klaus Teuber and published in 1996 by Goldsieber in German. Although the game won 2nd prize in the Deutscher Spiele Preis, many gamers were disappointed with the game after the success of Teuber's previous game, The Settlers of Catan...

. Like the other two, Löwenherz is critically acclaimed, the original edition having won the Deutscher Spiele Preis

Deutscher Spiele Preis

The Deutscher Spiele Preis is an important award for boardgames. It was started in 1990 by the German magazine "Die Pöppel-Revue", which collects votes from the industry's stores, magazines, professionals and game clubs. The results are announced every October at the Spiel game fair in Essen,...

 and the revised edition having won the Schweizer Spielepreis

Schweizer Spielepreis

The Schweizer Spielepreis is a Swiss board game award, awarded since 2002 in three categories: Family games, Children's games and Strategy games...

while finishing fifth in the Deutscher Spiele Preis.

Throughout this article, Löwenherz will be used to denote the original edition while Domaine will solely refer to the revised edition (although it is still called Löwenherz in German).

Gameplay

Both games are played on a modular board, using randomly-placed smaller boards. These boards form a grid pattern, and the kingdom in question. At the start of the game, players place castles with the objective of scoring points by sectioning off areas of the board using walls (in Löwenherz) or boundary markers (in Domaine), each section containing only one of their castles.

In Löwenherz, the main part of the gameplay is by bidding on action cards. Each action card contains three actions, in which each player chooses one of the three. If two or more players choose the same action, players negotiate to determine which player may perform the action. Domaine has each player having a hand of three action cards, which players can either sell for money or played for a price. Actions include the following:

• Placing walls and boundary markers
• Expanding a closed region into other players' closed regions
• Placing knights to protect closed regions - players may only expand to other players' regions if they have more knights
• Collecting money (in Löwenherz only)
• Drawing a politics card, which give the player other abilities (in Löwenherz only - Domaine incorporates these into the action cards)
• Removing an opposing knight from a neighboring closed region and replacing it with one in the friendly region (Domaine only - this is a politics card effect in Löwenherz)
• Preventing two neighboring regions from expanding into each other (Domaine only - this is a politics card effect in Löwenherz)

Points are scored according to the closed regions they control. Certain squares on the board are worth more than others, and, in Domaine, may generate additional income for the player.

The game is over either when a player achieves a prescribed amount of points (in Domaine, at which point the king is said to return), or when an action card is drawn that ends the game (in Löwenherz, a special action card depicting the death of the king ends the game, while the game ends in Domaine when all action cards have been drawn and players run out of cards to play). The player with the most amount of points (or with the most money in case of a tie) is declared the winner.

External links

• Domaine on Mayfair Games' site
• Online tutorial of Domaine