Architects of the West Kingdom

Vic Granellstar8.5

Great worker placement game with some cutthroat strategies that can change the outcome of your strategy by other players' boycotting. Enjoyed the first play a lot, with asymmetrical characters. With Folded Space insert.

GaGarfieldstar4.0

Too many possibilities for my taste. Buildings are too luck based but very important. Nice mechanism with catching and releasing workers. But it's just gathering ressources to build something. Rinse and repeat. [c] Theme: ★★☆☆☆ <!-- size 7]Too abstract for my taste --> Gameplay: ★★☆☆☆ <!-- size 7]Too many possibilities --> Interaction: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Catch other workers --> Artwork: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Very nice illustrations --> Luck: ★★☆☆☆ <!-- size 7]Building drawing --> Strategy: ★★☆☆☆ <!-- size 7]Buildings or cathedral? --> Components: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Very good --> Play duration: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Very good --> Easy to teach: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> Setup time: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> No downtime: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Not much downtime --> Replay value: ★★☆☆☆ <!-- size 7]Not much I can think of --> [/c]

EvEvanstar5.9

On it's face it's a fairly run of the mill worker placement game, where you place into areas to get goods, then spend those goods to buy cards either in the form of buildings that score endgame victory points on in personalities who improve your production engine in some form. The things that make this game stand out are the mechanism where you get extra goods the more workers you have in a given spot when you resolve the action, and the way you never get your workers back unless a player takes the action to capture them from the board. Captured workers turn into money for the capturing player, and the capturee, while their production engine takes an efficiency hit, they don't want to run out of workers entirely, so generally you're good with getting your guys back. So here's the question. How much can you trust your group to self-balance? If your group is good at getting a sense of who is in the lead and who needs their engine slowed down, then this is going to be a great experience for you. If not, then it's possible one player picks on another player too much, and then the third or fourth player runs away with it. I play enough dudes on the map games where the game expects you to be able to identify the leader and punch them, so it doesn't bother me here, but it also helps that my group has been so far pretty good at sussing out who is ahead. The worker capture doesn't need to feel punitive, but if one player is overly targeted it CAN feel that way. There's no in-game benefit or reason for over targeting someone so I don't think it's a problem. It's just something I've been thinking over. Overall my concern is drowned out by my enjoyment of a euro mechanism that encourages a natural flow of player interaction. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★☆☆☆ Raw enjoyment