The Vale of Eternity

It’s hard to believe and even harder to deny that Vale of Eternity has nudged its way towards the top of my favourite games list (look, top slot will always be occupied by Space Base until a) they stop making expansions or b) John D Clare clears this already impossibly high bar). I was this close to buying it early last year after seeing it reviewed on an unnamed but well-known gaming channel, but got pipped and had to hold on ’til UKGE. At that point, my interest in it had cooled somewhat, but I bought it after thinking ‘I can’t go away from UKGE without having bought something’ – not the most auspicious way in which this game entered my collection. But despite this apathetic origin, this game became one of my most played, if not THE most played game of last year, and with the arrival of the expansion, Vale of Eternity Artifacts, things are looking to get even more frequent. And for why, he asked rhetorically? Well, that’s the whole point of this, isn’t it…

Got to Tame Them All… Apart from The Ones You Sell…

Vale of Eternity is a ‘get the most points’ game for two to four players that takes place over ten rounds maximum, but will end when someone gets over 60 points. To get these points, players need to summon mythical beasts to their area, but can only have as many creatures in play as whatever round it is, so it is important to choose which beast to summon and when.

To summon these beasts, you need to ‘tame’ them to your hand first from the central roundel. Once tamed you can summon them, but to summon them costs ‘stones’, which come in three sizes: red ones, blue threes and purple sixes. To get these stones, you need to ‘sell’ beasts, instead of tame them, but this means discarding them from the roundel. Creatures come in five types: fire, earth, water, wind and dragon. The types determine how much in stones you get: the least is fire with three reds; the most is dragon with one purple. This is also important as, when you summon beasts, you don’t get change. Also: you can only hold four stones at a time.

So, there are always tricky decisions to make, but they always lead to different opportunities – that rock golem would pull you down some big points later on, but right now you need the reddies (red stones -get it?) to summon that fire demon that turns all your red ones into red twos… then you can see about summoning that water dragon that will get you a whole lot of points whilst knocking out that really annoying card in your opponent’s area that keeps stealing a point from you every. Single. Round.

Now I love a deck builder – I may have mentioned this once or a thousand times – and one of the great things about deck builders is the capacity to combo to infinity – and this combos in shovel loads. Also, a lot of the time you are creating strategies on the fly and having to make decisions on cards are going to feed into that strategy and which you are willing to sacrifice to someone else’s deck – in this, you get opportunities a plenty to build on the fly and scupper to boot. Finally, all deck builders start you on a level playing field, in theory, but turn order will definitely have a big effect – here there is balance, in that the first player gets to choose their first card, but is left with their second card, but the last player gets to choose twice.

Ascension, the Buzz Aldrin of deck builders, was designed by Magic champion Justin Gary, John Fiorillo and Brian M. Kibler who wanted all the strategy and surprise of Magic without the endless money sink it proved to be (ironic, seeing as Ascension is now on its 15th expansion and also has Ascension: Tactics), so I can’t talk about Vale of Eternity and deck builders without talking about trading card games. Yes, it has been mentioned by the great and good that this has a similar TCG feel without the TCG cost, especially with the mix of artists and elemental types, and that whole build a tableau and use that tableau is straight out of the Magic/Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh playbook, but it is more, and I guess, less. You can’t build endless decks to practice and vanquish, but you will build different tableaus each time, and if you play the game long enough, you will get to know the cards and their synergistic connections… but it takes some time… and there will hopefully be an expansion.

Oh, there IS an expansion? Well… carry on then!

This Is Rumour Control… Here Are The Artifacts!

Some expansions add more of the same (Space Base: Genesis, Joyride expansions); some add a completely different mechanic (Dune Imperium: Ix and Immortality); and some do a bit of both (every expansion of Shards of Infinity, except the last one WHICH ONLY GOT RELEASED AS PART OF THE BIG BOX KICKSTARTER! AND YES, I’M STILL MAD AT YOU!). Vale of Eternity Artifacts definitely falls into the final category.

First off, you get a whole load of new cards, that work quite nicely without the other bits, thank you very much (though some work a lot better with, I can tell you…). Now the base game took a lot of the major mythological beasts and ancient gods, but there’s a whole lot of myths and legends out there in this big old world – notable broken cards (every card in this game can be a broken card, BTW) are Horus, which allows you to summon a card from your hand for free AND claim its cost as points (say whaaaaat?), Aklut, which allows you to summon a dragon card from the discard pile for free whilst only costing six, and Duduri King, which increases one of the stones you claim from selling a card to the next value stone up (practically turning all water card values to dragon card values – kerching!).

There are also a group of broken-ish cards that beg for combo-ing, such as Thalassa, which scores you a point for each of your water cards in play, but will be recovered to your hand every time you earn a blue three stone (I had this played three times in a single round against me – THREE TIMES!) and there is also a new twist on an old theme on some of the dragons – for instance, when you summon Whisper, you score eight points THEN swap the card with a player’s air card (there is a proviso here in that you HAVE to be able to do this to summon this card, but you can swap with yourself). And because of the new wombo-combo capacity, the game now goes up to 80 points or round 10 before going into end game.

Then there’s the new mechanic – the Artifacts. Now, as I said, there is nothing wrong with just putting the new cards in without the new mechanic, but there are good reasons for having both together, because the cards just work better. With the Artifacts in play, there is an extra step to the game that comes before the choosing of cards – choosing an artifact. This goes in turn order, and you can’t choose the same artifact twice in a row. There are three which are always in play, then three, four or five added depending on whether you have two, three or four players. The last three cards are chosen at random from a pool of six, which allow for advanced effects that… I won’t go through here.

I will look at the three you always get, though: one gives you an extra action where you can discard two cards to get two red, one blue and one purple stone – fairly straightforward. The other two are connected. One allows you to do one of two actions: to pay three to gain an extra space in your area – remember that you can only have a number of cards in play corresponding to the round it is? This gives you up to two more; or shelter the top two cards from the deck – this is new. What this means is that you get a little side paddock, separate from your area, where you can put cards for later, though they will be on show to your opponents. You can have as many cards in your shelter as you like. The last base artifact is an instant effect: draw a card (very basic) or retrieve all cards in your shelter. Oh my. Suddenly I have all the options.

The other artifacts all add nuance to the base game, but these are the backbone of the new mechanic, and certainly open up your possibilities. You’re also more likely to see more of the deck, which is nice, as there are some lovely cards in there, even if you might not get to play them, or even like them… if someone else gets them.

In a way, I think these answer some of the comments from people who say, ‘well, I like this game, but I wish it could do [this].’ Want to see more cards? more cards? Now you can – at a price. Want to play more cards? Now you can – at a price. Want to get back cards? Now you can – at a price. It’s not an admission that the game was terribly flawed, but a nod in the direction of ‘you may think this needs fixing… well, the choice of whether it does or not is up to you.’

Artifacts brings in a bit more interaction, a bit more strategy, a bit more get back (not enough to make it horrible) and just adds more game. If you want a critique, then it might be that sometimes I forget to do the Artifacts bit… but I am not allowed to forget for long. I am certainly not forgiven.

Scores

Overall Score (for both): 87%

Artwork: 5

Complexity: 3

Replayability: 5

Player interaction: 3

Component quality: 5

You Might like –

– That combo crunch you get from a trading card game… without the consequent credit crunch

– Very high production values – and a standee that has a purpose now!

– More game breaking cards and the opportunity to break the game more – at a price…

You Might Not Like –

– Some very spammable combo cards (but only if they’re not yours)

– More to do, so potentially more to forget or more to get tied up with

– A bit more get back… which can be a bit infuriating, but only a bit.

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