Era of kingdoms: Review

Era of Kingdoms: Review

Information:

Mechanics: Tableau/Kingdom Building

Player Age: 8+

Player Count: 2 to 4 Players 

Time to Play: 20 - 40 Minutes

Game Designer: Michael Erisman

Game Artist: Jeff Porter

The Game:

The objective of the game, is to build the best kingdom by gaining the most victory points. Game play is continuous until a card named “Age of Enlightenment” is drawn from the deck. Once this occurs you have one last turn to finalise building your kingdom before the game ends and victory points are counted.

Cards:

The cards come in the form of three separate decks; the Basic, Intermediate and Advanced deck. As the names suggest, players start by drawing from the basic deck and once their kingdom has advanced enough, players can then draw from the more powerful decks.
Each card is made up of several key components as seen below:

1. Name of the card.
2. Type of card - land, person, victory or event (more on these later)
3. Card level -ranging from 1-4 (used to upgrade your kingdom)
4. This are the resources needed to build this card
5. Stack icon - comes in two forms:

•  The letter B for Base which can be built anywhere at no material cost

•  An upwards pointing arrow which means this card needs to be built on top of a card of the same material colour (yellow, blue, purple, green) as an upgrade

6. The amount of victory points the card is worth (only the top [visible] card of any stack will give you victory points

7. The amount of resources that this card will give you every turn

~~~~

Now let's delve further into the card types:

Land: There are eight potential building spots on your player board and this is will be your main source where resources are obtained.

Victory:  This card type has no quantity limitation and will score you different points if you gather certain requirements by the end of the game.

 

Person: There are three spots which hold person cards separate to the land placement board. These cards are used to gain resources and to defend your kingdom when an attack event is played.

When an attack event is played, the attack values of all person cards are combined and is used to then attack each opposing player.
If the attack is greater then the defenders total defence (seen in a shield in the bottom left corner of each card) then the defending player must give the attacker one of their riches. If the defence is equal or higher, nothing happens. Person cards do not die although they can be replaced at any time by their player.

Event: These cards have one-time game changing effects that can be played on a turn as a player action. The event cards that ignore this rule include "festival of .." and "help for .." cards that are played immediately once drawn. The player with the most or least (depending on the card text) of a resource will keep this card as one victory point at the end of the game.

Riches: These cards are given to an opposing player in order to borrow one of their resources for one turn (can only be done once per turn). The riches give one victory point at the end of the game and can also be used to determine the victor of an event card if there is a tie.

Centre land:  This card is the centrepiece of your kingdom and therefore will be placed in the centre of your land board and will determine which deck you draw from when drawing up to your hand size. The space on the board remains empty until your kingdom reaches level 2, at which point your centre land will come in as the Town Hall. At level 3, the centre land will flip to become the Castle.

Setup:

Keep the "Age of Enlightenment" card from the advanced deck to the side. Shuffle three separate decks of the basic, intermediate and advanced cards (they will have different backs).

Place the "Age of Enlightenment" card in the advanced deck at a certain place based on player count.

2 players: 9 cards from the top of the deck.
3 players: 11 cards from the top of the deck.
4 players: 13 cards from the top of the deck.

Each player will then grab the following cards/board and draw five basic cards to begin the game:

3 riches cards
1 player turn reference card
1 icon legend card
1 kingdom board
1 castle/town hall card

How to Play:

There are four phases on each turn in order to build your flourishing kingdom: action phase, discard phase, upgrade check phase and draw phase.

Action Phase:

This is the main phase of your turn. You have three actions per turn to either draw cards from the basic deck or play a card. If the card has no resource building cost (in the top left) then you can play the card using an action.
If there is a cost, your kingdom must first be creating enough resources to build this card, where the resources that a card creates are seen in the bottom centre of a card. Additionally, when building a land don't forget about the rule for upgrading land cards.
There are four resource types that cards will require as a cost: food, metal, population and wood. Unlike other games, once you use a resource to pay the cost of a card that resource isn't depleted that turn.
You may be confused by this so let me explain further:
If you have seven food resources in your kingdom and you have two cards you want to build, both costing six food each, most games will make you play one card this turn and one next turn. Nope not in Era of Kingdoms, you can play BOTH cards this turn. Sounds awesome right? but it gets better!
If you play a card that produces resources, you don't have to wait to your next turn to use them, you can use them on the same turn that the card is placed.

However, additional to the three actions per turn rule, you can remove cards from your board (still using those resources for the next immediate action) except for plagues, these cannot be removed in this way.
Plagues are an ongoing event that an opposing player will play on your kingdom to then slow your construction. You can remove these plagues in two ways, either by playing an event named "Religious Sacrifice" or by removing two person cards from your board on one turn during the free action. Thanks to their noble sacrifice all plague cards placed on your kingdom will be removed from play.

Discard Phase:

At this point, if you are tired of not being able to build up your kingdom or of using the same cards over and over again, then you can discard any amount of cards you choose and draw to your hand limit in the draw phase.

Upgrade Phase:

If you meet the upgrade requirements you can upgrade your centre land to the Town Hall (level 2) or Castle (level 3).
To upgrade your kingdom to level 2 you have to have three level 2 cards to build the Town Hall, or three level 3 (or higher) cards to build the Castle.

Draw Check/Draw Phase:

In this phase you will draw cards until your hand has reached it's limit. The base hand limit is five but there are cards that can change this. If you are tired of drawing basic cards, you can upgrade your kingdom (to Town Hall or Castle) in order to draw better cards. Upgrading to the Town Hall will allow you to take one intermediate card per turn, and upgrading to the Castle will allow you to take one advanced and one intermediate card per turn. The leftover space in your hand limit is then filled by basic cards.
The game also has a fair catch up mechanic for players in that if an opponent has upgraded to the advanced deck but you are still only drawing basic cards, you now get to draw two intermediate cards per turn before filling with basic cards, no upgrade necessary.

Stretch Goal - Mini Expansion:

As "Era of Kingdoms" is beginning to roll through stretch goals, there is some exciting news on the horizon. The mini expansion named "Ruler Traits" will hopefully become unlocked as a stretch goal.  This expansion adds four traits (images shown below), one of which can be chosen by each player to use during their turn. There will be multiple copies of each trait included in the expansion to cater for multiple players seeking the same trait.  At the start of the game each player will choose one of these traits, this will give the player more direction on what goals aim towards while building their kingdom.

Each trait will give two game changing affects that will assist during game or help receive more points at the end of the game, and a victory point bonus if your kingdom contains a certain person or building at the end of the game.As "Era of Kingdoms" is beginning to roll through stretch goals, there is some exciting news on the horizon. The mini expansion named "Ruler Traits" will hopefully become unlocked as a stretch goal.  This expansion adds four traits (images shown below), one of which can be chosen by each player to use during their turn. There will be multiple copies of each trait included in the expansion to cater for multiple players seeking the same trait.  At the start of the game each player will choose one of these traits, this will give the player more direction on what goals aim towards while building their kingdom.

Each trait will give two game changing affects that will assist during game or help receive more points at the end of the game, and a victory point bonus if your kingdom contains a certain person or building at the end of the game.

(may not be final art)

Final Thoughts

Pros

• Many strategic routes allowing for increased replay ability
• Catch up mechanic when the end of the game comes to a close
• The rules are intuitive and not clunky

Cons

• Some take that aspects but not enough to leave a distaste
• The first time you play you will have no clear direction on what to do or what to aim for

Era of kingdoms is an easy to learn but hard to master tableau builder where you compete to have the best kingdom around. This is achieved by the intuitive rules that makes player turns rapid, reminiscence of the way a player's turn moves fast in classic deck building games. The main downside is in your first game is that you may feel a lack of direction, but this is improved through repeated game play as numerous strategies for constructing the greatest kingdoms are revealed. The mini expansion helps to give the players a clear goal throughout the game. This will assist with the confusion of what kind of kingdom to build in the beginning round. 

Click...feed the addiction:

Era of Kingdoms on Kickstarter
Era of Kingdoms BGG
Expand Your Game Facebook page
Expand Your Game Instagram