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Volfyirion Guilds is the third game from Tabula Games that I’ve looked at for Zatu. They seem to put games that that tick the boxes that get my boardgame curiosity piqued. I’ve previously looked at Volfiyion and I really enjoyed it. I played it a fair bit since that review went live which is always a good sign in my opinion. One of the things I remarked about in that review was that the card pool was on the smaller side and that I was looking forward to Volfyirion Guilds expanding the game. Well, now it’s here with a few new ideas thrown in to give things a new look and feel. New isn’t always better though, so what’s the deal?
Enter The Dragon
Volfyirion Guilds is, primarily, a two-player deck building card battling game. Deck building in the Star Realms sense rather than the Magic the Gathering sense. This is a wholly self-contained game that won’t require you to go off buying boosters with any spare cash you scrape together. You and your opponent will start off with an identical deck of basic cards which you will add new cards to, remove old cards from, and basically customise as the game goes on. These new cards come from a shared asset row and you’ll use them to try and eliminate your opponent. In Volfyirion Guilds you do this by destroying your opponent’s 3 cities. Each of these cities can be garrisoned by a defending unit, making it harder to destroy. You can also develop it by adding a building that will generally give you a little bonus each turn that your city is still standing.
The cards you can buy are either unaligned or come from one of 3 minor houses. Each of these minor houses generally give you abilities to do with one of the game’s 3 currencies: Command, battle, and knowledge points. Command is used to buy new cards and move your defending troops between cities. Battle points are unsurprisingly used to attack your opponent. But you can also use them to go and grab wonders from Volfyirion’s lair. Some of the cards will just do one thing. But others may grant you an extra ability if you manage to play another card from a specific house. These card synergies can become key to winning the game. It’s one thing to play five cards that do one thing each, it’s a lot better to play five cards that each do two things, though.
Wonders are useful. They also give you little bonuses each turn like a city, but they can’t be destroyed. They can be sealed away though, and that’s where the final currency comes in. Knowledge can be used to seal up an opponent’s wonder. This will stop them using it until they spend some knowledge to unseal it. You can also use knowledge to discard cards from the central asset row or influence the dragon, Volfyirion. Influencing the dragon is great. If it is currently in its lair, you can send it off to one of your opponent’s cities and if they can’t get rid of it by the end of their next turn it will raise it to the ground. All of this was also present in the base game as well, so what’s new with guilds?
Teach An Old Dragon New Tricks
Well, for starters, all of the cards up for grabs in the asset row are new, as are the wonder cards. There is also a new ‘on-purchase’ ability to look out for. Cards from the asset row now might give you something extra when you acquire them. This may be a few resources or even a chance to look at the top card of your deck and bury it. Neat stuff like that. There are also a new class of cards in the asset row, Agents. These are an interesting addition to the mix as they give you a new way to purchase or, sometimes more importantly, deny a card to your opponent. Once you’ve got one of these cards you can deploy it out into the asset row on top of any card you like. Then at the beginning of your next turn if the agent card value is higher than the value of the card it is deployed on, you get that card and your agent goes back into your discard pile. While an alternative way of grabbing cards is nice, it also stops your opponent from buying the covered-up card unless they spend battle points attacking your agent. And those are battle points not being used against your cities.
The other big new addition are the guild vaults. You get one of these cards at the beginning of the game and they give you a way of saving a card in your hand for the next turn. This is very cool. I’m always up for ways of mitigating random card draw in games like this so I’m very on board with this new addition, it’s a great way to try and keep cards for the next round in the hope of setting off a card synergy. This isn’t risk free though as some new card abilities allow you to specifically target cards in an opponent’s guild vault. Fantastic bit of risk/reward design. Also, these guild cards act as a small catch-up mechanism. If you start to lose your cities, you gain access to new abilities. Allowing you to trade your currencies for a different type, or even straight up giving you some bonus currency each turn if things start to get really bad. They act as a sort of catch-up mechanic to help you try and turn the table back in your favour.
Checking Out The Guilds
Again, I’m all on board with those changes. In fact, that’s where I land on Guilds as a whole. There are a lot of small improvements that all make the game that little bit better. Another example of this is that while the original game does allow for solo/co-op play, the rules are online. Here they are in the box, ready to go. Much better. Speaking of solo modes. They have also been improved. There are 2 monster cards in the box that each have their own rulesets to play. There are actually 4 monster rulesets included in the rulebook but the cards for the monsters were Kickstarter exclusive. You don’t need the extra cards as the rules are all there in the manual. Thought I would mention it though. Anyway, the solo modes are pretty good. The first one was was a fairly basic, batter this big bad guy before they batter you. But the second one was a lot more subtle as it did a lot of manipulation of the asset row as well as the contents of your deck. A lot trickier to beat. All four solo beasties have their own flavour and require different approaches to defeat. Good stuff.
Overall, I am quite happy with Volfyirion Guilds. There are a lot of small improvements over the original. By the way, you can absolutely mix both games together to add to the replayability. There are a few downsides though when comparing with the original. Most notably, the original had some interesting modules that could be mixed in to freshen up the game. Whilst Guilds does have these, they are now Kickstarter exclusives or there is an expansion that has some of this in. It’s a shame to see this carved out. There are also a few bits in the manual which just seem to be errors. A few of the page references seem to be incorrect. While this doesn’t matter when you’re first learning the game, if you try and look something up you get sent to a page that has nothing to do with what you were looking for and then realise it’s actually 2 pages later in the book after an edit. It’s an easy thing to miss, but you do hate to see it.
Paint Me A Picture
Also, the artwork got a few raised eyebrows from the people I played it with. It’s nothing seedy or anything like that, but it definitely has a style to it. It’s a style that, personally, I really like. The meanest thing I could say about it is that some of the basic cards are a bit generic looking, but on the whole, this is a nice looking game with a consistent aesthetic to it. There is a bit more card symbology to learn here compared to the original as there are a few new card types and abilities included but it’s nothing insurmountable. Race for the Galaxy this is not. Would I pick this up over the original. Yeah, probably, Whilst I do miss the modular add-ons, the core game here is more enjoyable. If I were considering trying out the Volfyirion games I’d buy Guilds and then pick up the base game if I liked it. If you treat the base game like an expansion, you get a whole heap of new cards, a few new modules to add in and you also unlock the ability to play at 4 players. Something I have unfortunately not managed to do yet but is something I am very much looking forward to trying in the hopefully not too distant future.
