West Kingdom Tomesaga Review

Welcome to the mid-9th century

In the Carolingian Empire, modern day France, you take on the role of the architects building up the kingdom, then defend the city with the might of a paladin, and finally negotiate as the viscounts to lead the kingdom to prosperity or ruin as the King starts to decline. However your story unfolds, it will all be written and collated by the scholars of the day. It’s time for you to become part of the West Kingdom Tomesaga.

The Game The Tomesaga, like the Runesaga for the North Sea Trilogy before it, is an expansion for all three games in the respective series. In this case, it’s the West Kingdom trilogy, Architects, Paladins and Viscounts. In this epic saga, you have two modes of play. The first is a campaign game, where you play through the three games in chronological order and follow the story of building, defending and running the kingdom.

For playing the campaign version, at the set up of each game, you will deal out three random Tome cards to the shared board for the game you are playing. These are, effectively, objectives for you to aim for to claim these Tomes. At the start of Paladins and Viscounts, the Start Player marker goes to the player who won the previous game initially. However, after the setup is finished, the marker is moved on to the next player in the turn order. That way, the winning player is the last to draft and the last to play in each game. Additionally, extra silver is paid out to the players. The amount is dependent on the difference of claimed Tomes between you and the player with the most. At the end of Viscounts, whomever has the most Tomes wins.

But, I hear you cry, how do you get these tomes? Well there are two ways. You can either claim these from the three placed face up in the setup by meeting their objectives. The top half of the Tome card shows the objective the players must meet before claiming them. Once they have claimed them, the bottom half shows a unique power for the next game.

The other way to claim Tomes is to claim Victory Tomes. The three tomes we didn’t deal out in the setup are available for the players to claim here, depending on how well they did in the game. A major victory, by which a player wins by more than 10, 12 or 15 points in the respective games, lets you claim 3 Victory Tomes. Less than those scores is a Minor Victory and gets two Victory Tomes, with second place getting one. These remain facedown and do not provide a bonus in the next games. The last type of Tome to claim is the Crest Tomes, which are claimed when players reach 3 (or 4 with two players) Crests on their Tome cards or Crest Tokens, which are claimed as a reward for the 2nd place player for a Major Victory and a 3rd place in a Minor Victory.

The other play mode available to you for all three games is a co-operative mode, which I have not yet tried, but it pits you against the Overlord to score the most points.

Final Thoughts

I really love the West Kingdom Trilogy. Paladins and Architects have both been in my top 5 games of all time for a long time, with my respect for Viscounts growing as I play it more. And I was excited to play the Tomesaga all in one day, to really get all three games going and just smash through them. Once I had done this, I had some time to reflect on the scenario. Yes, I really enjoyed my experience of playing the three games back to back and having some kind of story to work on. But that was not the experience of my two fellow players. Bear with me whilst I provide context. One had played the games at least once each, the other was brand new to Paladins and Viscounts. Whilst they agreed it was a cool experience, they had felt a little distracted by it. The overall winner of the campaign had a good game in Paladins and so had some pretty strong abilities going into Viscounts, which meant his strategy was pretty simple. In a way, that helped, but it meant that the other two players didn’t really have a chance to compete in that strategy. That is actually a potential problem with the expansion. If you do well in the first two games, it’s very hard to come back from in Viscounts, which means it’s almost a foregone conclusion.

If you’re going to play with the Tomesaga, I would recommend that all players are at least familiar with and have played the three games enough to be able to roll with the punches. Otherwise you’ll end up not enjoying it as much as I think you should. All that aside, I had a great time, getting all the games played together. What I’m yet to try is the co-op mode, and I’m not sure I’ll be in a huge rush to give it a go. I like the competitive nature of the games as they are, so co-op doesn’t necessarily appeal to me. To each their own though, so if you want to give it a go and let me know, I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts.