They say that when you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. Not every battle for succession has to be so bloodthirsty, though; A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King is a friendly, casual little board game that appeals to the schemer in all of us, without being too complex. An empire toppling masterwork for the ages it ain't, but for $9.95 at Amazon US, it's a cheap and tempting medieval morsel.
As you'd imagine, many of the best Game of Thrones board games are complex, multi layered affairs full of strategic mechanics, wargaming, maps, territory, and even economic concerns. Not so here. You're not going to send out armies to ravage the realm, or pull off a masterfully sinister scheme.
Instead, A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King is a dead simple representation of a key GoT theme: winning support from as many of Westeros' powerful families as possible, and gathering their banners to your side. A variety of familiar characters from each of the great houses of the Seven Kingdoms are arranged randomly into a six by six grid (missing only the Martells; Dorne is sadly absent).
Alongside this cast of kings, lords, and courtiers comes Varys, who also gets positioned randomly in the grid. Each turn, you'll move Varys once, in a straight line across the board, as far as you like; choose one great house; and collect every card he passes over from that house.
As the game goes on, you'll each collect your coterie of knights, lords, and ladies, and whoever has most cards of a particular house on their side gains that house's banner. The game ends when there are no more moves to make, and the player with most banners wins. Simples.
Hand of the King is very light and accessible, with games comfortably wrapping up within half an hour, but (as noted by Dice Tower's video review above) there's still a decent amount of tactical fun to explore, with options for counter plays to stymie your opponent, and replayability from the re-shuffled map of characters in each new game.
It'll never be the main course in a gaming banquet - but at under ten bucks on Amazon, it's an extremely reasonably priced appetizer for your board game nights, or perhaps a palate cleanser between chunkier titles.
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If you fancy investing in a fuller-formed board game of the highest possible quality, check out our recommendations on the best board games of all time - or our run-down of the best strategy board games in particular.
Lovers of Fantasy Flight Games' much heavier duty classic, A Game of Thrones: The Board Game, should definitely also check out the upcoming tactical board game Lost Lumina, which nails the same combat as GoT, despite being fully playable in under half an hour. It's one of our most anticipated new board games of 2025.