Nigel Tao

Fruit Salad Domino

Kingdomino is one of my favorite board games. There’s 48 custom dominoes (all 48 are used for a 3 or 4 player game, 24 are randomly selected for a 2 player game), 4 starting tiles and a bag of meeples. Its box is a pretty common size for tabletop board games, but that size is annoyingly bulky when traveling and backpack space is limited.

Blue Orange Games, the publisher, have released a 2 player print-and-play Kingdomino variant, using 24 dominoes: a little more tactical and a little less luck-of-the-draw. It rebalances the tile distribution slightly, re-using 20 of the original 48 but it also has 4 new dominoes.

In a happy coincidence, 48 + 4 = 52, the number of cards in a standard deck. Make Playing Cards are one of a number of companies that will let you upload 52 (or 54) images and print you a set of cards and they provide the 2:1 aspect ratio for domino cards. The resultant deck is about 1/16th the volume of the original Kingdomino box, or 1/8th if you also carry the bag of meeples instead of using coins, keys, bottle tops, etc. The backs of the unused cards are re-purposed as starting tiles.

If you’d like to print your own copy, you can download the “Fruit Salad Domino” images that I made. They don’t have Cyril Bouquet’s luscious artwork from the original Kingdomino game, but some generously licensed photos-of-fruit (from pexels.com) does the job.

The printed cards also have classic suit-and-value marks in the corner, such as 8♥ and K♠. They aren’t used by the Kingdomino game, but it means you can also use these cards as a regular deck of playing cards. Again, this is more useful when you’re traveling than when you’re at home.

Buy the original Kingdomino too (and discuss it on Board Game Geek). It’s beautiful (and a great game)!

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Published: 2021-01-03