Valeria Card Kingdoms: Review

Valeria Card Kingdoms: Review

Information:

Mechanics: Card Drafting, Deck/Pool Building, Action Selection, Dice Rolling

Player Age: 13+

Player Count: 1 - 5 Players

Time to Play: 30 - 45 Minutes

Game Designer: Isaias Vallejo

Game Artists: Mihajlo Dimitrievski

Publisher: Daily Magic Games

Year Published: 2016

BGG Complexity: 1.99/5

Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.

The Game:

Valeria Card Kingdoms may start off slow as you patiently wait for your resources to build, but once they do you will be submerged into a world of magic, riches, faithful citizens, expanding domains, and terror-inducing monsters; the likes of which you have never seen!
Try as you will, but every monster you defeat only returns stronger and more difficult until finally, you see the ultimate boss. The head honcho. The big cheese! This battle will be the stuff of legends and it is up to you to defend your glorious empire and push forward to VICTORY. With your ever present Duke by your side, how could you possibly fail...

Objective:

The aim of Valeria Card Kingdoms is to have the most victory points (VP) at the end of the game. VP can be gained from monsters, dukes, domains, and VP tokens rewarded from cards.

Card Anatomy:

Dukes:
The dukes are three hidden scoring objectives given to each player.

Monsters:
There are eight monster ‘areas’ (habitats), five of which are used each game. The monsters range from weak to strong to ultimate BOSS for every monster area.
To the top right of the card is the monster area and type (this is used for different victory point conditions relating to the duke). To the bottom left of the card is the name of the monster with the strength needed to slay it (magic may also be needed in some cases). To the bottom right is the victory points granted once slain.
Now once you have done the hard part of slaying the monster on your turn, you will gain the immediate effect that is located underneath the monsters name.

Domains:
These are the lands available to buy once you start gaining your abundance of wealth. On the top right of the card are the icons needed to purchase this domain; the icons are gained from citizens.
The bottom part of the card is the same as the monsters, however there are two variances. Firstly, domains are purchased using gold, and secondly the effect below the title will sometimes be a permanent effect that can be used every turn.

Citizens:
This is the weight of the game where you will get the majority of your resources.
To the top left is the number that will activate this citizen (more on this later) and to the top right is the role that will help the player purchase domains. Towards the bottom of the card identifies the name of the citizen and the gold needed to add this citizen to your kingdom.
Citizens in this game don't like when others of the same profession is added to the kingdom, so if you buy a citizen that you already own it will cost one more gold per citizen owned of that type. If a Warlord cost 2 gold the first time, he will now cost 3 if you were to purchase him a second time.
On the bottom of the card is the effect that occurs during the harvest phase when this number is rolled. The left effect occurs on your turn, where the right side (normally the weaker result) occurs on other players turns.

Resources:
There are four wooden meeples which represent the four resources of the game; gold, strength, VP and magic.  Magic is different from the other resources as it can work as a wild. So, this versatile currency can be counted as strength or gold as long it is presented alongside one of the tokens it is copying.

Set Up:

1. Choose five monster areas and order the monsters from weakest (top) to strongest (bottom). If playing with five players then remove the monster with the 5 icon.
2. Order the monster areas from weakest (left) to strongest (right).
3. Order civilians into piles depending on their numbers (1 - 11/12) from left to right in two rows of five. Remove one card from each pile if playing with less than five players.
4. Shuffle the domain cards and create five equal piles of three. The top card of each will be revealed where the rest are facedown.
5. This should all look like a five by 4 grid with the monsters at the top, citizens in the middle and domains at the bottom. Now, give each player two random dukes to choose which they will play with.
6. Each player is given a starting peasant and knight citizen (these starting citizens have no role icon), as well as two gold and one magic.

How To Play:

There are four phases of each turn. The roll, harvest, action and end.

Roll Phase:

During this phase the active player will roll two dice. This can be altered using domain abilities.

Harvest Phase:

So whats the point of the roll phase? Well, it is a pre-requisite for this wonderful phase!
Each individual number on the dice, as well as the combined dice number (three numbers in total), will activate any associated citizen matching the numbers for every player.
The left side of the citizen activates during the owners turn, and the right side activates during opponents turns. If the dice are not in your favour and none of your citizens activate, either during your turn or another player’s turn, then you may gain one of any resource (except VP). in a five player game the resting player does not activate their citizens. The resting player will then change when the dice are passed in the end phase.

Action Phase:

The active player can now take two actions; these can be performing the same action twice. Don't forget, magic resources act as a wild as long as you have one of the other resource alongside them in the purchase.

Slay a monster:
A monster can be slain by paying the card cost in strength and possibly magic.

Recruit a citizen:
Following the rules explained above in the ‘citizen’ section of card anatomy, you can buy any citizen.

Gain a resource:
Take any resource from the resource pool that is not a VP.

Build a domain:
As long as you have enough citizens with the matching roles, you can now buy any face up domain. Once a domain has been purchased, reveal the underlying domain so it is now face-up.

End Phase:

At the beginning of this phase, check to see whether the game has ended either by all monsters have been slain, all domains have been built, or if a certain amount of citizen piles are empty (this number is double the amount of players). If the end conditions have been met, play continues until all players have had an equal amount of turns. This means that if one player has had twelve turns during the entire game and two other players have only had eleven by the time the end conditions are met, these two players have another turn to bring their count up to twelve,equal for everyone.  Following this, the victory points are counted and a winner is determined.
If end conditions have not been met, The dice are given to the player on the left and play continues.

Final Thoughts:

Pros:
- variable set up with only a sample of cards being in each game.
- alternate means of scoring
- wonderful art, making me want to play the other games set in this world
- good use of tableu building
- great player range

Cons:
- though it can be mitigated, the core game mechanic is luck based

Not only is the base game fantastic and fun, but many other expansions are currently available to add to the fantasy. Personally, my first play through was so good that I practically ran to look into getting the expansions; that is how good I found it. The base game was versatile and engaging, and I needed more... moRE... MORE! This is a no brainier for a Seal of Golden Go to Game.

Click...feed the addiction:

Buy Valeria Card Kingdoms at Mighty Ape Games

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