Margraves of Valeria: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Worker Placement, Engine Building, Deck Building, Area Movement, Worker Movement
Player Age: 14+ Player Count: 2 - 5 PlayersTime to Play: 60 - 120 Minutes
Game Designer: Isaias Vallejo
Player Age: 14+
Game Designer: Isaias Vallejo
Rundown:
Valeria has become overrun with monsters. The queen has chosen the margraves to build ward towers to push the monsters away. She has promised them wealth, banner man and privileges for succeeding. She has also told the knights amongst the land to help Margraves anyway they require.
Margraves of Valeria is a unique worker movement game that each player has one worker and can move any of the knights on their board or the main board. This is also a hand-building game with multiple ways to play each card.
Your turns are simple in this game but tricky to optimise. On your turn, you will play one citizen, either for its pennant actions on the top left (normally gain some sort of resource than move your Margrave and a knight), it's power action that will give the player multiple actions or resources and sometimes resources for all players.
The other two options are that a citizen card can be played face-down to redraw your cards and purchase a new citizen or spend one of each resource (wood, stone and magic) and a gem to build a ward tower.
While having your turns players are trying to gain the favour of the four guilds by spending influence to make each guild symbol that the player has worth more points at the end of the game. Each recruited citizen and locations that ward towers are built on have these symbols.
Alteration:
Each character will have the same starting benefits the main alteration at the start of each game is three wealth tiles that will be shuffled and three of which will be drafted by players. These tiles will give bonus resources, influences and privileges. In the Kickstarter edition, there is also an event module and a dragon module that can be incorporated to keep the game feeling fresh between plays.
The main alteration that players will have is how they build an effective hand of citizens. As you will want citizens that match the guilds you are gaining influence in but you will also want citizens that help you meet the objectives you are aiming for such as slaying monsters or building ward towers.
Production:
Firstly I want to establish the version I received is the Kickstarter version so some parts may not be the same in a retail version. Such as the metal coins that are amazing and help elevate the games table presence.
The production keeps getting better and better with Daily Magic Games. The game has small containers from punched out cardboard that gives players a place to hold their coins. Besides this, all the resources, player pieces and knights are greatly produced wooden meeples.
In Margraves the iconography remains consistent with the other Valeria games and helps the players easily read the abilities available and keeps the universe feeling connected.
Interaction:
Margraves is a highly interactive game due to the worker movement system of the knights. The knights can be controlled by any player for battles against monsters (which will cause them to die) or they can be moved to locations and gain the bonus of going to that location (or two gold) as long as they were originally in the same location as that player's margrave. This means that the players will constantly have to gauge where the board state is to make the most effective turns. Players can also move knights from their board onto the location that their margrave is on giving the location bonus or two coins. This also places more knights on the board for other players to potentially use so players have to be careful when to place new knights on the board.
Determination:
Pros:
- Unique game play.
- Challenging decisions.
- Easy scoring that helps focus players throughout the game.
- Great production.
Cons:
- The pace can feel slower than other Valeria games.
- Players can be prone to analysis paralysis.
Margraves of Valeria is another great addition to the Valeria line of games. This time it is a more challenging game with trickier decisions and earlier planning needed. This is due to the challenging movement of the knights and the range of actions that can be done in a turn. Mechanically the game is an engaging hybrid of worker movement and hand-building which are two mechanics that aren't seen often as is, but margraves further the worker movement by making the knights a shared worker. The other engaging element is that players can choose where to spend their influence, determining what guild they want to score at the end of the game, keeping the scoring for a large game simple. For the unique mechanics that are often underused in board gaming, this game has earned a spot in my collection which will be picked when I'm looking for a challenging game with unique mechanics.
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