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Faer Enough
Sons of Faeriell is a great big game. It’s got a great big heavy box filled with components all neatly packaged in individual player boxes. It’s got a heavyweight 6 piece multi-coloured playing board. It’s got solid wood “Guardians” of the realm. It’s got 12 well sculpted “Weybit” miniatures plus 20 different tribal masks that can be clipped on them. Its got 104 playing cards of 3 different decks. 20 Hero tiles and 22 Perk Tiles.And its also got a 36 A4 page full colour Rule Book.
And there’s the rub. There’s an awful lot in Sons of Faeriell that you want to dive into and use right away but there are a lot of systems and mechanics to comprehend first. Also you play competitively, but semi-cooperatively at first, and with a possible traitorous twist. Then again you could play full co-op or solo plus there is a couple of variations if that’s all too straightforward. Does the game play warrant such variety of approaches? Let’s find out!
Faer’s Fare
The lush land of Faeriell is divided into 8 Areas each split into 4 Regions. These areas are each home to one of the Great Guardians who have lived happily through the ages. They are not even disturbed by the arrival of up to 4 different tribes of Weybits. These little people each represented by three tribal leaders set up their homes in different regions coexisting peacefully with their giant neighbours.
What they do get disturbed by is the arrival of Corruption. This generic, unspecified dark force will slowly spread throughout the realm, first Threatening the Guardians and then Corrupting them and if the level of Corruption gets sufficiently high all is lost, Faeriell is lost to the powers of darkness and all the players lose too!
But fear not the plucky Weybits can roam the land and remove threats and cleanse corruption all the while trying to complete their own achievements and so claim a personal victory. Unless, of course, a player has turned to the dark side and will try to speed Faeriell’s demise and so claim victory for themselves!
Pretty Faer
Sons of Faeriell has great table presence. The 6-piece brightly coloured board spreads out across your table depicting the Land of Faeriell with its’ 4 different terrain types: Mountain, Meadow, River and Forest grouped together in a natural pattern. Each Region has its own specific terrain and there are 8 of each type. The Guardian Areas are artfully intertwined so each contains 2 types of terrain in its regions (Look if you’re getting confused between Areas and Regions, I know I was, think A for Areas and All together; R for Regions and Restricted to one!)
Added to this you randomly draw an additional Terrain type token to go into one Region of each Area to form that Area’s Heartland where the Great Guardian will start. Note while the Guardians can get moved to other of their Regions they never leave their own Areas. In fact they don’t do much at all just get “Threatened” and possibly “Corrupted” by various Menace tokens. One Region in each area will also contain the Atunement card for the respective Great Guardian.
Each player chooses a Tribe and places their first 2 settlements (3 in 2 Player) they then Mask up one of their Weybits (2 in 2 Player). The games “currency” are the 4 different Essences: Red, Yellow, Blue and Green which are used to pay for game elements: buff cards, new settlements and heroes and achievements. These are linked to the 4 different terrain types. They are also the 4 colours of the Menace tokens which Threaten the Guardians.
Weybits can clear Threat tokens from a Guardian but only if they have the appropriate coloured Mask. Each tribe has their own style of Mask and the Masks are rubbery and attach to the Weybit’s head by a simple clip. This is a neat system. You can never change the mask (unless they go dark but more of that later!) though you can start more heroes with different masks up to a limit of 3 of the 4 colours.
Faer Play
The game is played in a number of Rounds where each player has three turns. In each turn they perform their choice of one of three phases:-
· Tribe Phase - here you buy stuff with Essence cards – Settlements, Beacons, new Heroes, Upgrades and enhancement cards
· Hero Phase – move Heroes, clear threats, use abilities and conduct quests
· Event Phase – where new threats come in and where you get Essences
After everyone has completed all their 3 Phases the Round ends and the first player token gets moved on to the next player. Play continues until someone gains 5 Achievements and they win or until the Corruption level gets to 15 and everyone loses!
Play moves along, slowly at first as your Hero only moves one space at a time until you upgrade it. You need Essences to build anything and you get these by clearing threats or Harvesting them in the Event phase. Your level of Harvest can be increased by building Beacons. These can also be used to clear threats.
Alternatively your Hero can go on Quests. They draw an Essence card of their colour on the back of which is a Guardian, when they move to that Guardian they get to keep the Essence.
Faer and Square?
Each player is trying to gain 5 Achievements. These can be colour related like – enhance a Red hero to level 4, clear 4 Green Menaces, own 4 Yellow (Meadow) regions or generic – most contiguous Regions owned, most Hero upgrades over 3 Heroes, most Beacons owned etc.
You need to work out which you might go for, bearing in mind each Hero has specific unique advantages dependent on their colour Mask. Also you all have to work together to keep the threat level down. This isn’t much of a hardship as this is one of the main ways of earning Essence.
Unless you succumb to the Dark Side! Generally when you draw a Corruption Token in your Event Phase you can choose to ignore it and move the Doom track on one space towards the fateful fifteen or spend an Essence to cleanse it. However, you can Yield to Corruption, the Doom Tracker isn’t moved instead your Tribe gets Corrupted one space.
If your Tribe isn’t squeaky clean you immediately lose the one Achievement for Purity that you start the game with. Your yielding does gain you a Corruption Essence card though which is like a Joker and can be used instead of any other Essence and can be very useful.
If you continue down this path when your Tribe reaches the 5th level of Corruption, completely black, you become the Corruption Sower and your world changes. You take one of your Heroes and replace his coloured mask with the Corruption Sower mask. You can also swap any upgrades for Corruption Upgrades. You no longer win by Achievements but must aim to get the Doom token to the 15th space and Doom everyone else!
All’s Faer
Designer Christian Zoli states that he wanted to bring in this “Traitor” side to the game because he’s been influenced by his long experience with Mafia/Werewolf style of games. This is fair (faer?) up to a point but unlike those games when someone is going dark it is immediately apparent to the other players and they can work against them. Indeed they must if they are not all to lose.
Any more Faers
Yes there are! If all the combinations of Essences, Terrains, Guardians, Masks and the Point Salad of possible Achievements wasn’t enough there are 3 sets of Additional Rules, or mini-expansions if you will. Namely:
· The Shadows, not Cliff’s backing group (younger readers Google it!) where your Hero can don a dark Mask and use Corruption Upgrades and Essences to solve Corruption and undertake Black Quests
· The Drifter – this special character wanders about shifting menaces and corruption from one Guardian to another controlled by each player in turn
· The Spooky Root – which completely and permamently corrupts one Region and Guardians can not enter (the rule book declares “even Dornog the Spider” which is kind of interesting as, as far as I can see, Dornog the Spider does not appear anywhere in the game!)
Also there are rules for playing fully co-op and solo.
A cleverly designed and very well produced game that will reward players that can overcome the initial hurdle of feeling overwhelmed.
