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Architects of the West Kingdom - Rachel Page
I spend more time than I care to admit browsing Board Geek Game and Zatu. The list of games that I want to buy is infinitely long. But by the time I have the money in my pocket, I tend to have forgotten which games stood out to me. Architects of the West Kingdom was one of the few games that stuck with me from my extensive research. It was the idea of being able to play as a moral or immoral player that gripped me. This is my game of the month.
It is this function that made this game such a great buy. The game itself follows a basic worker placement pattern. Each player wants to construct buildings and parts of the cathedral in order to gain victory points. You gain the resources to do this by placing your workers on the various points of the city. This is a simple enough format; it is the virtue track that adds a unique element. To build the cathedral, you have to be a virtuous and pure individual.
We all know that every city has its seedy underbelly too. You can use the black-market and steal taxes, but you will plummet down the virtue track for doing so. Each time I play, I pick a different morality. As fun as it is to steal other people's workers and stop their progress, there are a lot of benefits from being an up-standing citizen too.
Variety is what makes a good game. I don’t want to be able to use the same strategy each time. I want to be kept on my toes! Here, your progress is massively affected by your opponent’s choices as well as your own. If they imprison all your workers, you have to fight back! Virtuous or evil, Architects of the West Kingdom is great.
Tiny Epic Dinosaurs - Callum Price
What have we been playing during this short time of February? Ha! What haven't we been playing?! We've relived some classics, had some new stuff thrown our way, and even dabbled in some solo-gaming! And that is the basis for my game of the month, the quality of the solo experience. Tiny Epic Dinosaurs by Gamelyn Games is my game of the month due to its superb solo play. (The competitive multiplayer is superb, too, but in these solitary times it's the lone wolf feel that I'll be thinking about.)
Tiny Epic Dinosaurs is a worker placement, contract fulfilment game for 1-4 people. Players need to fulfil private and public contracts by collecting dinosaurs. The game is played in seven rounds over specific phases. On a turn, players place ranchers to locations to gain benefits. These include fences to build enclosures, research cards to give them an edge, dinosaurs to add to their park, or resources to let them feed their dinosaurs. Each spot can only hold one standard rancher, and players must place +1 ranchers to a claimed spot to use it. However, players have access to a big rancher who counts for two, allowing them to use spots easily or block them maliciously. The game ends after seven rounds and players then score based on contacts fulfilled, research acquired and dinosaurs they still own.
This is the first Tiny Epic game I've committed to in terms of playing a solo mode. I've tried some others, but not wholeheartedly... however it became a "needs must" scenario with a lack of players. And hoo boy am I glad the needs must-ed, because this was a thrill and a real pleasure to play. The game runs its routine and you allocate workers, but the AI claims spots and gains bonuses accordingly.
It's tricky to master as they gain bonuses or trigger effects if you have any workers there, but it works well. There are four AI to take on, and they all have different focuses. This variety meant the replay-ability increased tenfold. Before this year, I'd never really done solo play properly. Now, partly because of this little beauty, it's become routine! Dinosaurs and board games, a match made in heaven!
Sagrada: The Great Facades – Life - Tom Harrod
My game of the month, ahh, Sagrada. The apple in Floodgate Games’ eye, where dice-drafting and pattern-building come together. Here you’re creating a stained glass window for Barcelona’s Sagrada Família. Last month I loved playing with the second of The Great Facades trilogy: Life.
Sagrada: The Great Facades – Life introduces fun new modes for you to add into the base game. You can mix and match these to your heart’s content, using some with other Sagrada expansions. (Click here to read my reviews for the 5-6-Player Expansion, and The Great Facades: Passion. ‘Life’ is my favourite kind of expansion. It provides you with the tools to tailor the experience to the exact thing you want from Sagrada in the moment. Or, if you want to whet your appetite, you can create a near-unique, modular game every time.
Life comes with new window patterns with Apprentice symbols on certain squares. When you draft a die over this, you get one of 22 Apprentice card bonus. This could be an immediate reward or it could act like a second Private scoring Objective! There are also even more Public Objectives for everyone to chase.
But let’s face it: the most exciting thing about Life are the new Masterwork dice. They’re orange – if Irn Bru made sucking sweets, they’d look like these! (Ed. Please do not suck the dice…) These Masterwork dice have arrows on the faces, not numbers. You can swap a drafted die from the pool to claim one from the Masterwork board. You can place this Masterwork die onto your window. If the arrows face either matching colours or numbers, you score extra points! It adds a marvellous extra layer of strategy into the pot.
Last month I played Sagrada: Life live on Instagram against fellow-Zatu guest-blogger Will. (It was a @boardgamebeacon vs. @buryboardgames Live Sagrada Showdown!). We even had Sagrada co-designer Adrian Adamescu ‘refereeing’ the entirety of the stream. Adrian chipped in with regular comments regarding rules clarification. It was a special moment for both Will and I as Sagrada fan-boys!
Raiders of Scythia - Matt Thomasson
Feb has been a slow month for new games for me which has given me a chance to delve into some other games I have recently received. Marvel Champions has been hitting my table a lot especially with the Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch hero packs being released. But one game that has stood out is Raiders of Scythia and this is my game of the month for Feb 2021
Raiders of Scythia is a re-implementation of Raiders of the North Sea with some of the expansion content added, rethemed and tweaked. However, the core mechanisms, the DNA if you will, of North Sea, runs through Scythia. It has the very interesting mechanisms of placing a worker and performing an action then picking up another worker and performing another action. The workers do not belong to anyone in particular. There are also different coloured workers and certain worker placement spots will have different rewards based on the colour of the worker placed or can only have a certain colour worker placed on it.
Scythia has a wonderful ebb and flow to the game. You gather resources and recruit crew members from your home village, then go and raid other settlements on the board. You gain rewards and often wounds, head back to your village to heal and gain more resources to continue to raid. All of this is driven by some very interesting choices along the way about where to place your worker and which work to pick up.
There is tension as you may need a specific coloured worker that is out on the board and you are hoping that no one else wants it. There is also a race element to which settlements you want to raid before your opponents.
The solo mode also works very well and has various levels of difficulty to play against. The AI is driven by a very easy to follow deck of cards which you draw from each turn and follow the steps.
Solo or multiplayer, I always enjoy my games of Raiders of Scythia and the twist on the generic worker placement mechanism is a welcome change. Can’t wait to get this back to the table and get raiding.