Which of the three Sword of Arthur buys is worth its price?
On the demo server's figures they are almost level: 94.45% for the 125x Bonus Game, 94.47% for Full Power at 200x and 94.50% at 500x. Full Power's card shows a Sword marked 5, the top of the 3-to-5 range, and every Power Reset refills to the opening count. AboutSlots says the 500x card fixes Arthur as the expanding symbol; his smallest expanding win is 15x the bet, against 5x for any other. Our three 125x rounds returned €36.50, €123.00 and €57.50.
A Sword that substitutes only until the free spins start
King Arthur's crowned portrait heads the paytable, and two of him on a line already pay €1.50 on our €1.00 stake; three, four and five pay €10.00, €25.00 and €100.00. Thunderkick's page writes 3×5, rows first, for five reels, three rows and 10 paylines read from the left, and rates the volatility Very High where several listings say High.
A crowned helmet follows, €25.00 for five down to €0.50 for two, and our capture of the rules stops there. The server's answers add a breastplate and a shield, each also paying €0.50 for two, while the cards from A to 10 need three.
Its rules describe the Sword as a symbol that "acts as both a Scatter and a Wild symbol, replacing all symbols in the Base Game", and three Swords anywhere make a scatter win of €2.00, while four pay €20.00 and five €200.00. A Sword helped make 120 of the 331 winning lines in our log, worth €139.00 together.
The blade went missing once the free spins began. Not one Sword landed in 80 free spins from our seven natural rounds or in 22 from two purchases, so no free spin had a wild and no round was retriggered. The captured rules give no reason.
Three, four or five spins, read off a blade drawn from the stone
Three Swords or more start the Bonus Game. The rules promise 3, 4 or 5 free spins, with one symbol picked at random, any but the Sword, to expand for the whole round. Its multiplier begins at x1 and shows in a badge beside the reels.
All ten of our Bonus Games began with exactly three Swords, yet the count varied: five spins in four natural rounds, four in one and three in two, then 4 and 5 in the control purchases. Nothing in the rules we captured or our log ties it to the Swords on screen.
A symbol expands only when it forms a paying combination. Shields grew from two reels, cards from three, and the reels need not touch: on the first free spin after spin 90, Jacks on reels 2, 3 and 5 filled them and paid all 10 lines, €0.50 each.
Each expanding win adds x1 and refills the counter to its first value
The Power Reset page reads: "After each Expanding win, the multiplier increases one level and the number of Free Spins is reset to its initial value." Initial means the opening count. Our rounds that opened with three spins went back to three after every expanding win, never to five.
The server pays each expanding win at the badge's multiplier, then raises it. Spin 326 ran the ladder furthest: shield wins of €5.00, €10.00, €15.00 and €20.00 at x1 to x4, €100.00 at x5 from three reels, then €30.00, €35.00 and €40.00. The badge sat at x9 for the last five of 21 free spins, and the round paid 260.5x.
Of our 80 natural free spins, 45 paid nothing and 26 brought expanding wins worth €580.00. Ordinary lines, which the multiplier skips, added €9.50. No ceiling is named in the rules we have, and x9 was the highest badge we saw.
125x, 200x or 500x: three prices for one Bonus Game
Our frame of the buy menu, at a €1.00 bet, holds Bonus Game at €125.00 and Bonus Game (Full Power) at €200.00, the second under a question-mark tile and a Sword marked 5. A third card is cut off, and the server prices it at 500x and names it after Arthur. Thunderkick's game page mentions no buy.
Figures in the table come from the demo server, which runs the 94.34% version printed on Thunderkick's page and in the rules. A casino may set up its own version, and where a market bars feature buys none of the three cards is offered. All three sit slightly above the base game, as do both BET+ modes, priced 1.7x and 3.5x the stake and rated 94.40% and 94.43%. The rules screens we saw do not cover them, and we left them off.
| Option | Price | At €1.00 | RTP of the buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bonus Game | 125x | €125.00 | 94.45% |
| Bonus Game (Full Power) | 200x | €200.00 | 94.47% |
| Third card, 500x: Arthur as the expanding symbol (AboutSlots; the card is cut off in our capture) | 500x | €500.00 | 94.50% |
One 125x purchase was filmed, and its blade stopped on 5 under an Ace.
Four resets were not enough to recover the price. The two control purchases of the same card returned €36.50 from 9 free spins that began at 4, and €123.00 from 13 that began at 5, helped by Kings on four reels worth €60.00 at x3. For €375.00 in all, the three purchases paid back €217.00.
Why Arthur on the hilt triples the smallest expanding win
Expanded reels count on all 10 lines at once, so the paytable sets the floor. Every symbol below Arthur pays €0.50 a line for its shortest win, which makes the smallest expanding win €5.00 at our stake before the badge. Arthur pays €1.50 for two, so his floor is €15.00, and three reels of him would pay €100.00 at x1 where three of shields are worth €20.00.
That arithmetic is the case for the 500x card. It leaves out the part that sets the price, how often Arthur lands compared with a Jack, which no screen shows. The server's answer is its return figure, 94.50%, only 0.05 points above the cheapest card for four times the stake.
Full Power, as AboutSlots describes it, changes only the count: with a five-spin opening, each reset hands back five spins, where a three-spin round gets three. Our four natural rounds that opened with five paid 19x to 260.5x, the two that opened with three 35x and 8x. Six rounds are far too few to price a 75x surcharge.
A session that ended ahead, paid for mostly by expanding reels
Thunderkick's demo paid back €942.50 on €750.00 of stakes over 750 paid spins at €1.00: 125.7%, far above the listed 94.34%. Most of it came from seven natural Bonus Games, about one every 107 spins. A sample this small cannot test an RTP.
- 750paid spins at €1.00 in the demo
- 125.7%of the stakes paid back
- 260.5xbest round, free spins included
- 7free spins rounds triggered
Just under a third of spins paid (31.3%), the median win was 0.5x the stake, and the longest losing streak stopped at 20 spins. The best ordinary spins, 658 and 693, paid 11.5x each from two Arthur lines; on 658 both lines had a Sword in them. The base game returned €353.00 in all, 47.1% of the stakes.
Free spins brought the other €589.50. The balance sank to its low, €4,941.50, on spin 89; spin 90 brought the first Bonus Game. Spin 125 added 156x and spin 326 260.5x. The sixth round, on spin 544, lifted the balance to its high of €5,286.00, and the run finished at €5,192.50.
Sword of Khans had the same blade, and no Power Reset
Released in 2019 and reviewed here in its Reborn build, Sword of Khans has the same Sword as Scatter and Wild, three of them for the Bonus Game and a random expanding symbol. After that the rules part ways, with a random 5 to 15 free spins, retriggers from two Swords, and a multiplier only when the chosen symbol is picked again, up to x3. No source calls the Arthur game its sequel.
Arthur's game runs on short rounds that resets keep going. It lists 94.34% to the 95.36% of Khans, and its cheapest buy costs 125x where Khans asks 80x; both cap at 10,000x.
Our view: the base game hands out small wins often and the Bonus Game does most of the paying, so a bankroll here should be able to wait a hundred spins or more for three Swords. The 125x card is the cheapest look at the Power Reset, Full Power pays to avoid a three-spin start, and the 500x card is a bet on Arthur's paytable. By the server's figures none returns more than 0.16 points above ordinary spins.
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Some answers are read off the rules screens; others rest on our ten Bonus Games or a named source.
Does the number of Swords decide how many free spins you get?
Nothing we saw suggests it. All ten of our Bonus Games began with exactly three Swords, yet they opened on five spins six times, four twice and three twice.
Do Swords help during the free spins?
Not in our rounds. None landed in 102 free spins, so nothing was retriggered, and the counter grew back only through the Power Reset. The rules give the Sword its Wild role "in the Base Game".
Do ordinary line wins get the multiplier too?
No. The rules limit it to expanding symbols that win on the expanded reels, and in our 80 natural free spins the ordinary lines, €9.50 in all, were paid at face value.
Which symbols became the expanding symbol in our rounds?
Jacks in four of our ten rounds, shields in three, and a Queen, a King and an Ace once each. Arthur, the helmet and the breastplate never came up. The shield rounds paid 98.5x, 156x and 260.5x, our three best natural ones.
What does Full Power mean on the buy menu?
It names the middle card, Bonus Game (Full Power), priced €200.00 on a €1.00 bet. Its art shows a Sword marked 5, and AboutSlots says the round starts on five spins. We did not buy it. The server rates it at 94.47%.
Which other Thunderkick slots use a Sword that is Scatter and Wild?
Sword of Khans from 2019, reviewed here in its Reborn build, and Sword of Shoguns from 2023, which has its own review here as well. Both pair the same blade with expanding-symbol free spins, and each game keeps its own figures.