Paladins of the West Kingdom

BaBalleflassstar5,0

Very multiplayer solitare. Not my type of game. Architects is my favorite from Garphil by a long shot, but I havent tried Circadians Chaos Order yet which I hope doesnt have the same flaws as Scythe.

EvEvanstar4,6

At the start of each of seven rounds, players draw three cards. Each has it's own ability that focuses on making a specific action cheaper or more effective, and comes with two workers. Then in turn order players draft a card that comes with four additional workers. The workers come in a variety of different colors. Once this is done players take their actions one at a time clockwise by laying workers of the correct colors into the action spaces of their boards. Some actions on your board collect resources, others give you steps on one of three scoring tracks, and at times they also come with a bonus reward. There is an action space that places a building onto a worker space making that action cheaper in further rounds, and a space that lets you pays some resources to clear the workers from an action, allowing you to resolve it twice in that round. To further build your engine, there is a belt of purchasable cards that provide additional bonuses when you resolve a specific action in the future. The game has a number of random elements that are a little troublesome. Money is very tight in the game. When you take a wild-colored (represented as purple) worker, you also take a purple card. The back of the purple card has 0, 1 or 2 free dollars on it. These dollars pull from a separate bank, which when depleted refills and then punishes the player with the most purple cards. A player who lucks into getting mostly $2 vs a player who badlucks into getting mostly $0 has a substantial advantage. Additionally, there's an action where you build wall cards at the top of your board. These too come with random rewards, that might help you a lot in your chosen path, or might just wind up a waste of your precious few workers. Another big advantage comes to the player who draws the helper card that reduces the cost of the building that substitutes the worker on your board by half in the first round. Add to this the way the belts of faceup cards work. Each round you refill the two card displays. One is full of cards that can be taken to improve your engine, but they can also be discarded for a one-time bonus. First come first serve. The cards don't appear to repeat as well, so it's easy to miss out on an effect you need because someone else wants the one time benefit for punting them. It works the same with the second display of cards, but those have a mix of one time bonuses at the top, and bonus scoring criteria at the bottom. Mild randomness frustrations aside, the game is enjoyable overall. I like working a personal management board, and it reminds me a lot of Orleans, minus the bag building, plus a little more randomness. This is a game where you need to laser focus on your goals, since workers and money are in short supply, and the rewards for track bumps only come at the very end of the tracks. In that way it's mildly disappointing since it seems like there is a lot of cool stuff to do but really you pick one or two goals at the start of the game and then just push as hard as you can in that straight line. Aside from beating each other to cards, there's very little 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

Jonas Van Loockestar8,0

Very good and fun game. The rules are very easy while the game brings a lot of strategy. It feels well balanced. The main interaction between players comes from people not taking your spots. The decisions matter. Slightly long is my only minus.