I originally planned to do an Unboxing of this, but to be frank there’s not really much in the box to warrant doing so — there are 100 cards (6 different types), a selection of Gold and Glory tokens, 4 x Player Aid cards, a small wooden sword representing the first player, and a 16-page rulebook.

I received Pendragon: Glory of the Round Table (just Pendragon hereafter) several weeks ago, having backed it on Kickstarter at the tail end of last year — I assume this is why it’s listed on BGG (boardgamegeek.com) as designed / released in 2025, but clearly it was never going to be available until the middle of 2026. Ironically, I actually got the Print’n’Play PDFs around March-time of 2026, and raised several concerns about the rulebook back then — I was reassured that the rulebook will get revised before final publication, but that clearly didn’t happen because the rulebook seems pretty much unchanged, and is woeful, to put it politely.

Pendragon: Glory of the Round Table (2025)

Pendragon is designed by Channing Ogzewalla for 1-4 players, published by Pine Box Entertainment (under license from of it?), and I believe it’s Channing’s first card / boardgame design (according to BGG) — I have no real issues with the design of the game, but I do believe it’s let down significantly by what feels like rushed production and a shoddy rulebook. That said, the artwork on the cards (provided by Emily Gilbert and Daphne Gragera) is generally excellent throughout, and really in keeping with the Arthurian theme, which is a major saving grace.

In this game, players are Knights (or Dames) with an accompanying Squire, and will have three main statistics each rated at 2 or 3: Strength, Constitution, and Appeal (Charisma?). They will also have an income stat which is the same for all characters (+3 Gold) — this is your base income at the start of each round.

Each round, the lead / starting player will reveal a unique Quest card that will have a designated stat symbol (either Str, Con, or App), a Glory value, and a Green Tower value — the latter is only used in the Co-operative or Solo game. The Quest will also have some text that might make things more difficult for players, temporarily change certain stats, or otherwise shake things up a bit.

Players will then compete to have the highest Quest stat value(s) by playing Possession and Event cards and adding further cards towards their Cause in an effort to win said Quest — those cards can include Passion cards which could fundamentally change things for both the player playing the card and everyone else around the table…

The Dame(s) or Knight(s) contributing the most or highest relevant Stat will get to claim the glory points for that Quest, and the starting player moves on for the next round. Players replenish their hands with more cards, and play continues until one of them achieves a set amount of glory (6-8 points, depending on the number of players) and thus declared the winner.

I confess that as yet I haven’t played this with other players, but I have played the Solo mode a lot and really wasn’t impressed. Indeed, so much so that I made a few of my own changes to the rules which seemed to make things more manageable and achievable while still providing for a pleasant back-and-forth battle to overcome the Quests presented. It’s also worth noting there are only 13 Quest cards in the game (something else I mentioned when the Print’n’Play rules appeared), which run out very quickly if you play the solo mode as written, especially since ‘failing’ a Quest can become repetitive if you don’t have the right cards in your hand…

You can read more about my solo rule suggestions on the relevant BGG page under “Some Alternative Solo Rules…” in the Rules section of the Forum for this game (I posted this a few weeks ago, actually), or you can go directly to that BGG page using this link: Alternative Solo Rules

Niggles Everywhere!

I really wanted to like Pendragon, but the Solo Rules aren’t my only complaint, unfortunately…

(1) The Rules overall are very poor — the first half of the rules explain (very well) what the different types of cards are and what the stuff printed on them means, without even trying to suggest what you’re actually trying to do in the game. It’s in the second half of the rules that you learn how phases work, what things do, etc. (in just three pages!). Alongside this, there are two pages of terminology(!), a single page of co-operative and solo rules, and two pages that attempt to explain the Round Order which largely just repeat what’s already been covered in the Playing the Game / Phases section.

(2) The back page of the rulebook also has a completely pointless Glory Tracker on it for use in co-operative and solo play, especially since there are Glory tokens available for all players to help keep track of this anyway. You will probably also have to reference the rules regularly for clarification when you first start playing, but in truth only really need to know how much Glory you need to win the game (and how many Quest cards you need to reveal at various levels and player counts), neither of which is hard to remember.

(3) The production feels rushed — apart from what seem like ‘tacked on’ solo and co-operative rules (alongside that Glory Tracker on the back page), I noticed one of the cards spelled the word “Morals” as “Morels” (which may have some vague ‘olde world’ connection for all I know, but certainly looks like an embarrassing oversight), and the box cover suggests there are 27 of each token (Gold and Glory) in the box, but there are actually only 23 and 22 respectively… The little wooden sword token marking the first player is also listed as a ‘Sword in the Stone token’ on the back of the box, but there’s certainly no stone anywhere to be seen – it’s just a small wooden sword. Little niggles, perhaps, but nonetheless suggestive of a rushed production overall in my personal opinion.

(4) The box insert has an interesting finger cut-out in the middle, but it doesn’t go deep enough to allow full access to the cards on either side, and because they are relatively thin cards anyway it’s all too easy to scuff and mark the sides of the cards every time you try and pick them out of the box, regardless of how careful you are.

(5) The backs of each type of card also use the same base graphic frame, only changing the colour and letter in the middle to distinguish between the cards, which does the job perhaps, but just felt like more cost-cutting to me.

I appreciate these are all pretty minor niggles and you may think I’m being a bit ‘picky’ perhaps, but my opinions are obviously my own, and I think I was just hoping for something better. To be clear, I am still looking forward to playing this with more players, although I think it’ll probably shine a bit brighter as a competitive game than it does as either a solo or co-operative one — there are simply not enough Quest cards (or variety thereof) to make those latter modes feasible.

— Alex Bardy, 25Sept26