Kleos Review

Kleos from Azure Horizon Games is an area control game where players take on the role of a Greek God. Every god has a champion from Greek lore that leads their group of heroes and mythological beasts. On your turn, you will move, attack, or recruit legendary companions. You'll earn glory for almost everything that you do and at the end of the 5th day/round, whoever has the most will be victorious.

The Good: Kleos does area control really well. Because there's only a handful of spaces that will score you points after each round, all of the action funnels into those spaces which means you'll get lots of combat and lots of interesting plays. The components are nice as well. Every card has unique artwork, the minis are high quality, and even the hoplite meeples are unique. These act as your minions and your scoring marker. There's also the Zeus deck which is powerful action cards that you only get when you're 5 points behind.

The Okay: This is a game that is dependent on dice rolls and random card draws for a lot of what it does. There's a fair bit of mitigation that can be done to help your luck but if you don't have that then you'll be relying on a lot of luck at times. In my first game, I couldn't recruit anything to save my life for the first couple of days. I eventually got some cards that let me re-roll to help me out a bit so I was able to even the odds somewhat.

The Not So Good: At two players, the area control aspect isn't quite as strong. Especially in the first round or two. You'll be guaranteed to have control of at least one spot and as long as you plan ahead a bit you can control most of the board without much pushback. It plays perfectly fine at a lower count but for the best time you'll want more people.

Final Thoughts: Kleos is a really nice game that packs in a lot of strategy in a relatively small box. With 5 different gods, you have a lot of options each time you play the game and with an expansion on the horizon I hope that means even more characters are coming. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Kleos. I have a couple of people in mind that I want to introduce this game to.

Thanks to Azure Horizon Games for providing me with a review copy.