One of my top ten, possibly top five games of all time is Valeria Card Kingdoms (VCK). It is a fun game of dice-chucking and monster-slaying with great artwork to boot! Following up on the success of this popular game, a prequel was released called Villages of Valeria (VOV). Within this tableau-building game, you will construct buildings, cultivate resources, and attract adventurers to make your village the next capital city of Valeria. On Kickstarter currently is the first expansion to VOV entitled Landmarks. Let's talk about the basic game and what the expansion brings to it.
Setup
1. Give each player a Player Aid Card and Castle Card. The Castle Card is the beginning of your Village.
2. Pick the Starting Player, giving them the Action Selection Card and Active Player Token.
3. Form the Bank from a predetermined number of Gold Coins based on player count. Then, give each player three Gold Coins.
4. Shuffle the two decks of Adventurers and Buildings, forming a separate pile for each. Then, deal each player six Building cards.
5. Deal five Building cards face-up in the center of the table and put the deck face-down next to them.
6. Deal five Adventurer cards face-up above the Building cards and put the deck face-down next to them.
7. Each player, in turn order, then plays one Building card from their hand as a Resource at no cost. This card is slid upside down under your Castle Card.
Game Play - On your turn you will Replenish (taking all the Gold Coins on your Resource Cards and keeping them as yours) and take one of the following five actions:
1. Harvest - Draw three Building Cards into your hand, one at a time.
2. Develop - Discard one card from your hand to add one other card from your hand to your Village as a Resource.
3. Build - Pay the cost of one Building Card from your hand to add it your Village as a Building. Then, draw one card into your hand.
4. Recruit - Pay one Gold Coin to the Bank to add an Adventurer to your Village.
5. Tax - Take one Gold Coin from the Bank and draw one Building Card.
After performing your one Action, all other players (in clockwise order) may follow this action to gain a weaker version of your Action. For example, instead of drawing three cards in the Harvest, the follower draws one card. The game ends when one player's Village has a predetermined number of Adventurers and Buildings. All follow actions are completed and victory points are totaled. The person with the most points wins!
1. More Building and Adventurer cards - This part of the expansion is called "more of the same," and I mean this in a good way.
2. Architects - These cards are dealt before the game starts and provide a secret end-game goal, i.e., one point for each Holy symbol on your Buildings.
3. Landmarks - On the follow action, you may now Acquire a Landmark instead of following the main action. There are five types of Landmarks, with each requiring you discard a specific card(s). Landmarks aren't buildings that trigger the end of the game and provide a scoring bonus if you have a set of all five or if you have the most of each type of Landmark.
Review
Villages of Valeria is a tableau-building game that has elements of games like Puerto Rico or Eminent Domain with the follow mechanism. What I like best about this game is that you have to spend gold to build your Buildings. When spending this gold, you can spend them on your Resource cards or other players Resource cards that makes for an interesting decision you will build. Do I wait to build until I have the necessary Resources or do I give my opponent some gold and possibly speed up their engine? Another element I like from this game is the discard feature. When you discard cards from your hand, they don't just go into a pile to be shuffled if the deck runs out. Instead, you place them on top of the row of building cards where you choose, potentially blocking your opponent from getting cards they want. Every time I play this game, it is over before I want it to be, which makes me want to immediately play it again. This is the hallmark of a great game!
So why would I want an expansion to come along and possibly bloat a great game? Because, it actually doesn't over-complicate an already great game. The extra Building and Adventurer cards merely add more variety without introducing something new. That's a winner in my wife's book, who hates basically all expansions on principal. The Architects give you something to focus your strategy on before the game begins, which is a welcome addition when there are so many choices early on. Lastly, the Landmarks give you a follow action to perform when you can't or don't want to follow the main action. They also give you another way to score points in a game that is already tight on scoring.
This is a fairly seamless expansion to incorporate and one that I would include from the very beginning when teaching new players. If you already have the base game, this expansion is a no-brainer purchase. The only decision you'll have to make is if I want to spend $10 extra dollars on a bigger box with vibrant art on it. If you have never played the game before, there's a pledge level for you as well, whether you want a Standard or a Deluxe edition of the game...Seriously, get the Deluxe! Highly recommend this game and expansion!
No comments:
Post a Comment