Taifa: Intrigue and War in Medieval Spain is a card-driven game from Worthington Publishing, designed by Victor Catala, Alex Folch, Jesus Peralta, and Ignacio Torres Siles, set during the fractured 11th-century era of El Cid. Uniquely, it supports anywhere from zero to six players – bots can fill any empty seats – with each side controlling one of the Muslim taifas or Christian kingdoms competing to expand their territory through cunning and conquest across four turns.
Each faction plays from its own deck of historically flavored event, troop, and response cards, so the Christian kingdoms and the Muslim taifas genuinely feel different to run, even though there’s no board-spanning economy or standing armies to manage. It is a fast, roughly two-hour game that trades the weight of a full-blown wargame for eurogame-level accessibility, while still keeping a strong sense of the period’s shifting alliances and constant maneuvering for control of the Iberian Peninsula.
Take a look at the video below to see it in action:
Have fun!