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Hello, me again. I’d like to talk to you about a little card game called Volfyirion. As I’ve mentioned a few times in various reviews on this here website, I enjoy a card battle game. I started off with some Magic: The Gathering when I was but a lad and then as I got more into the world of modern tabletop games I got into Android: Netrunner and Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn. One thing I’m just noticing is that all of these games have colons in their name. Ho-hum.
I’d say these are the three games that have stuck with me the longest but it’s by no means an exhaustive list. Last year I took a look at Sanctuary: The Keepers Era, (more colons!) from Tabula Games and really enjoyed it but ultimately felt it needed a larger card pool to keep it interesting. I’ve played it several times since that first look back in the wild days of 2021 but have now had a different game from Tabula land on my desk to check out. So here we go!
Here Be Dragons
Volfyirion, with no colon in the name, is a small box card game where two players will face off trying to destroy each other’s cities. It’s a deck builder that reminds me a lot of Star/Hero Realms but it does some very cool things to differentiate itself from these similar titles. The first big difference is those cities.
In most card battling games you are whittling down some life die until it hits zero, then you shake your opponent’s hand and then go on your merry way. Well here things are a little different. In Volfyirion you have three cities and once these are destroyed, you’re done. I think this more interesting than just depleting some arbitrary life counter. It’s made even more fun when you can start fortifying these cities with soldiers to make them harder to destroy.
I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit, let’s go back to the start. At the beginning of the game you’ll have a deck of 10 basic cards to go with your three cities. Each of these cards will grant you resources of one or more types: command points, battle points or knowledge points. These three resources are used in different ways.
As you gain these resources you can start to use them to tweak and upgrade your deck to give you access to more powerful abilities. There is a row of cards for sale in the middle of the table and these can be purchased using command points. Battle points can be used to attack your opponent’s cities or grab yourself some wonder cards. Lastly, knowledge points can be used to switch out cards in the asset row or basically attack or repair wonder cards. That’s not how the rules describe it but it’s definitely how I thought of it.
Into The Lair Of The Beast
There is actually one other way to spend these points and it’s to do with the namesake of the game, the great dragon Volfyirion. You see, those wonder cards you’ve been out questing for are in its lair. That’s probably why you needed battle points to go get them. Anyway, you can spend knowledge points to coax this dragon to go and sew some chaos over in one of your opponent’s cities. If they can’t get the dragon back out by the end of their turn, that city is reduced to ruins.
The other thing you can do is try and slay the dragon. This gets rid of the spectre of unexpected dragon visits, but it also allows you to take control of the dragons lair and use it as a 4th city, essentially giving you more life. This is a massive boon but it’s also incredibly difficult to do.
The main meat of the game is the asset row in the middle of the table where you will be buying asset cards with your command points. There are three different types of cards available for purchase here. You’ve got command cards which basically give you some resources and then get discarded. The other two card types stick around if you’ve got room for them. You see, each of your cities has room for one defending troop card and one upgrade building card. Troops essentially make your cities harder to destroy by raising the amount of damage needed to destroy them. Buildings on the other hand give you some resources every turn, I find this makes them essential to getting the levels needed to take on Volfyirion or to take out a heavily defended city.
Minor Houses, Major Benefits
These asset cards can be allied to one of three coloured houses. The abilities of these house cards add a little bit of theming in. The red house has lots of battle perks, the blue house has plenty of ways to grab some extra cash. Some assets gain secondary abilities if there are other cards played down that match their affinities, and this includes building cards. This means with some savvy card buying you can have combo bonuses flying off all the time.
The wonder cards are sort of similar to buildings in that they grant you a bonus every turn. But as I mentioned earlier, it is possible for your opponent to disable these leaving you having to reactivate them in order to get your extra resource production back. I’ve found this being a good tactic to keep my opponent’s production down while I try and get my economy going.
This is where something hit me about this game, there is not a lot of combat. You’re not playing out creatures that are attacking each other. The only things you can attack are the cities and the dragon. I wouldn’t say that the game is not combative, it’s just something that struck me after a few games. There aren’t armies clashing, it’s just a series of city sieges. Nothing wrong with that though.
Added Treasures
There are also some neat little modules in the box that can be added in to keep things fresh. My favourites are the two that add asymmetry to the game. One gives you a secret ability you can spring as a trap the other gives you a known ability you can use throughout the game. It’s a nice way to keep things fresh. There are also a few new card types that can be added too, and these are fine but add a few edge case rules for not a lot of extra fun. I may add them again in the future if I want some extra spice, but they aren’t essential for me.
Once I was up and running, I’ve had a great time with Volfyirion. But those first few steps weren’t as easy as they could’ve been. There are some weirdly inconsequential issues with the rule book that had me re-reading it just to make sure I was doing things correctly. For an example, there is no mention about which cities go to each player. Now ultimately it doesn’t matter, you just get one of each point value each, but the city cards have different architectures, and the names seem to be in different languages, so I’d like to make sure I’ve got the right ones for each player. As I said, makes no difference to the gameplay but I’m a stickler for details.
What is harder to forgive is calling the game 1-2 player and then not including the solo rules in the box. Sure, they’re on the website but there are times when you don’t have internet access and this seems like a big oversight.
Riding High, (On A Dragon)
With those little issues aside you’ve got a cracking, small box, card duel game here. The artwork is nice and there are some interesting strategies that you can play towards, especially if you start adding in some of those optional modules. What also excites me is the knowledge that there are more cards incoming with an expansion, Volfyirion Guilds, in the very near future. These sorts of games live and die on their card pool so with some fresh cards on the way I think Volfyirion may well have a bright future ahead.
That concludes our thoughts on Volfyirion. Do you agree? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames. To buy Volfyirion today click here!
