Queen By Midnight: Quarter Past Review - More Princesses, More Problems

It's now been a little over a year since I played Darrington Press' Queen By Midnight. Taking part in a deckbuilding battle royale where the victor walks away the titular Queen By Midnight this game showed off unique mechanics and a gorgeous cardboard craft clock that serves not only as an impressive setpiece but manages core game mechanics. Now with the standalone expansion, Queen By Midnight Quarter Past, four new Princesses join the fray.

What is in Queen By Midnight Quarter Past?

Contained within the box of Queen By Midnight Quarter Past you'll find complete instructions for how to play the game (including boxes that specify what's new in this edition), a flat clock for turn tracking, boards and tokens for each of the four Princesses, specific decks for each Princess, and a deck of Bazaar cards broken up into three time segments.

If you have played Queen By Midnight, then setting up and playing the game will come as no surprise. Players each pick which of the Princesses they wish to play as, gathering up the relevant character board and deck. Then, the clock is laid out and set up with Bazaar cards. Once everyone is ready you roll the dice to see who goes first and begin playing your cards.

While in the original game the clock was a massive structure that doubled as a dice tower that you would build and place on a spinning platform the clock included in Quarter Past is a flat clock. While less intricate it does promote the idea of Quarter Past functioning as a 'travel' version of the game, while the larger box can stay at home.

A quick gameplay overview

Working to develop their decks players will use cards to increase their Clout, the primary currency in the game, and purchase new cards. Cards can be purchased from a Princesses specific Vault, which will contain abilities unique to the Princess, or they can be purchased from the Bazaar which offers a more generic, but useful nonetheless, variety of abilities.

If you'd like a more in-depth overview of how the game is played then be sure to check out our review of the base game

Each newly purchased card is sent to the Archive, this game's equivalent of a graveyard, when it will be shuffled back into their deck to then be used against other Princesses.

The game is a constant balance of spending and regaining Clout, as your deck grows in size you'll quickly learn you can't just be spending Clout freely as your ability to regain it will return less and less frequently. Alternatively, leaving too much Clout on your board does leave it in a place where it can get stolen by another's card effects.

The deckbuilding alone is a lot of fun but after each player has completed a turn the clock will increment by one. At certain key times, like 5 o'clock or 8 O'Clock important events can happen such as the Bazaar cards being swapped out for a deck filled with more powerful abilities, or the hand size limit is increased.

The game ultimately ends after the clock reaches 12, or if only one competing Princess remains. This does a good job to keep a cap on the events of the game and to limit just how much power creep can occur.

Drawing At The Start Slows The Game Down

One of the largest issues that I've found with Queen By Midnight is that as long as you have clout you can be activating cards, in most scenarios, especially in the early game you'll be spending down your entire hand before the end of your turn.

Sitting at the table with nothing in your hand isn't anything I have an issue with, but not knowing what I'm going to draw next will mean I have no clue what any of my options are for next turn.

At the start of each player's turn momentum always slows. A fresh hand of cards are drawn, effects are read, Clout is increased, and the six purchasable cards may be reviewed.

This will mean that unless you're playing with a group that knows their Princesses' abilities inside and out that you are limited in how much time you can be strategizing, or you leave the table waiting on you for your move (while they too have no clue what they're going to do next).

The new Princesses and their abilities

As the name implies Queen By Midnight Quarter Past sees four new Princesses joining. This expansion includes Azil With-A-Z, Elise LaKraken, Kahurere Skyfisher, and Qasima Al-Basar. Each comes with their own unique mechanics and playstyle that let you mix and match against other players for strange situations.

Azil With-A-Z is a reference to Alice in Wonderland, with the ability to Shrink and Grow. By changing her size she also alters one of her Classes between Brawler and Schemer. Her abilities are incredibly strong, but as you can only perform certain abilities when a certain class you can also end up being stuck unable to deal damage.

I had a lot of fun playing with Azil, there's an important aspect of needing to plan your moves as far out as you can. If an ability would deal damage, but then cause you to shrink, what can you then do in that state? Do you have a way to grow again? It was very satisfying when everything fell into place.

Elise LeKraken is a Schemer/Caster character whose core mechanic is to banish her own cards. This would all be a power play to then unleash ultimate abilities near the end of the game to flip the game in her favour.

It was interesting that LeKraken worked almost as a sleeper character, but knowing her mechanics and targeting her early could also be an easy downfall depending on the number of players and how dedicated they were to knocking competition out of the game.

Kahurere Skyfisher is a Brawler/Schemer whose mechanic is in traps. She has a variety of cards that can be placed in other players Archives. When activated those cards might gain a benefit to the Princess, such as getting to draw a card, but it will also provide a boon to Skyfisher.

Whether it be ways to steal Clout or also be able to draw a card there's a lot of good that can be done for Skyfisher on another player's turn, not to mention the inclusion of a card like this is their deck might mean it takes them longer to draw a card they're actually interested in getting.

Strangely the card we saw the most from the Skyfisher was to be able to steal 4 Clout. This is a large amount of Clout to be able to freely obtain, but when early turns comprise of gaining a lot of Clout and then spending it down to zero we most often ended up in situations where there wasn't any Clout to steal effectively rendering that card useless.

If Elise LeKraken is a sleeper the opposite of that is Qasima Al-Basar, the Brawler/Caster. This character doesn't start extremely strong but with some smart purchases will not only be dealing consistent damage, but will also grant themselves permanent damage boosts. A hit of three or four damage might not be much early on, but when the pace doesn't even stop but she's now hitting with eight damage you're going to be in trouble very quickly.

While Skyfisher seemed to have a narrower range of effectiveness the engine that is driving each of these decks is wildly different and a lot of fun. Further fleshing out the availability from the previously released Princesses the idea of "there's a playstyle for any kind of deckbuilding player" is even more true than before.

I think one of the best compliments I can give for the game is that it feels like getting to play Magic The Gathering, without the need to build a deck and strategy from the ground up. That being said there's still a lot of building as you weigh up purchasing cards from the Vault and Bazaar.

Is Queen By Midnight Quarter Past Standalone or an Expansion?

Yes.

Everything included in the box allows you to play Queen By Midnight from start to finish with four players. As an expansion though all of the Princesses available in this box can be played with any of the six previously available Princesses.

While Skyfisher seemed to have issues when facing off against Azil, it might be that there's another Princess that she has a definite advantage against.

To add further to this being an expansion Errata Cards for the base game have also been included in this update. These cards should be swapped out with cards that appear in the base game to better balance the experience.

Queen By Midnight Quarter Past Review | Final Thoughts

I genuinely enjoyed the original game when I played it so I was excited to hear that there would be an expansion. The triple versatility allowing it to add more characters for fans of the base game, be a smaller entry point for new players, and even serve as a way to send updated cards allows it to achieve it's goal perfectly.

Of the four new Princesses I'm a little iffy on Skyfisher, but had a blast seeing what the other three were able to accomplish.

If you were a fan of the original game then this expansion is a no brainer, and if you don't know the original but are looking for a fun and deep deckbuilder where the game naturally scales as time goes on then I'd highly recommend checking this out.

The copy of Queen By Midnight Quarter Past used to produce this review was provided by Darrington Press. All pictures included were taken by the reviewer.