The Princess Bride: I Hate to Kill You - A Game of Dueling Swordsmen

In this quick five-to-ten-minute game, players roll dice to score hits and play cards to manipulate those results. Published by Sparkworks, I Hate To Kill You is a Princess Bride-inspired game that is fast, fun, and extremely light.

Gameplay

Both players take six dice: two red, two orange, and two yellow. Both players also choose one of five characters and take that character’s deck of ten cards. Each round, both players roll all their active dice. Next, they simultaneously choose a card from their hand to play. Each card has a number, and the card with the lower number is resolved first.

Card abilities include rerolling one of your dice, getting one discarded die back, forcing your opponent to reroll one of his dice, etc. Each player also has a bluff card, which has no ability other than it is returned to your hand after it is played. All other cards, after their abilities have been resolved, are discarded.

After card abilities have been resolved, each player counts up how many sword symbols they rolled. Depending on the color of the dice, some dice can roll double sword symbols. The player with the most sword symbols wins the round. The losing player loses one health, and the winning player must discard one of his dice that rolled a sword symbol (although a player never discards his last die). In the event of a tie, no player loses health, but both players must discard a die. You then begin a new round. The first player to lose five health is defeated.

Review

The Princess Bride: I Hate to Kill You is a tight, fast, back and forth game that nicely captures the sense of a quick, dirty duel, and then bows out without overstaying its welcome. There is a good bit of luck — sometimes the dice just won’t be on your side — and you don’t really need to overthink your cards too much, but it’s so fast that the depth is just about a perfect fit.

The player who delivers a hit is the one who has to discard a die. This does a good job of keeping both players in the game, while having to choose which dice to discard can also affect which card you choose to play, as you might want to reroll in an attempt to save your better dice. The fact that you first roll and then play a card, adds just the perfect amount of strategy, as does trying to predict which card your opponent might lay down.

Two characters have identical decks, which is useful for learning the game, while the three other unique decks ensure that you can introduce a little variety as you get to know the cards and gameplay better.

The components could have been a little slicker. The art style from the box cover would have been nice to have on the cards rather than the simple movie stills, and the dice could have been a bit heftier for more fun rolling them. But the game does fit with its theme well — we liked how each character is balanced with their decks representing their characters in the movie, and the idea of a back and forth duel is nicely represented.

The Princess Bride: I Hate to Kill You is not likely to be anybody’s favorite game as it’s extremely light. But it’s a surprisingly fun two-player filler that's easy to play several rounds of, and if you are a fan of the movie can you have a lot of fun with the quotes while playing.

Pros: Different character decks, quite fast, thematic

Cons: Components could be a little nicer, will be too light for some players

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.