Page 30 - Spielbox_2_2020

REVIEW
Paladins of the West Kingdom
A Nicely Different Feel
Shem Phillips would seem to like trilogies. He and his company, Garphill Games, made their name with the Viking Age one, Shipwrights/Explorers/ Raiders of the North Sea, and now, in company with co-designer Sam Mac- donald, he is part way through a second. This time the setting is the King- dom of the West Franks from its formation in the middle of the 9th century through to the end of the Carolingian dynasty and the accession of Hugh Capet towards the end of the tenth. The first of the series, Architects of the West Kingdom, was set at the start of the period and was reviewed in spielbox 3/2019. In this game we have moved forward 50 years to about 900 AD. The kingdom is powerful, but it needs to be, as it has powerful enemies – the Vikings to the North, the Moors of Spain to the South-West and the Byzantine Empire to the South-East. Meeting the threats that they
pose is a major part of the story this time.
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place one of the other two on the top of your deck and the other on the bottom. This mean
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one of your two r
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on ice” as a possib
temporary boosts to your skill level in one or two of the three categories, and a spe- cial power. For example, Engelier gives you a red worker, a green worker, an extra 3 on your strength rating, 1 on your faith rating, and he rewards you with two silver when you attack one of the invaders. These bonuses only last for the one round, and so this partic- ular action will be at the top of your list of things to do while Engelier is at your side. He will be discarded at the end of the round and his benefits lost.
In addition to the two workers from your paladin card, you will get a fur- ther four from a tavern card chosen from a small selection made avail- able at the start of each round. With your workers of assorted colours and your pal- adin at your side, you now embark on the actions phase, and here the procedure is similar to that used in Reiner Stockhau- sen’s game Orléans. On your player board are a dozen locations, each labelled with the name of an action, and each showing one to three workers. In some cases the colour of the worker needed is specified, and in other cases not. To take the action you must place the required workers. In addition, some actions require that you
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The setting is an interesting one and provides more flavour than is the case in most of the games reviewed in these pages, but you should not expect a game that tells a story in any great detail. Like its predecessor in the trilogy, this is still very much a euro- game. Some of its mechanisms are about building defences and repelling invaders, but others are purely abstract, and once you start playing, your main concern will be about choosing cards and placing
pieces so as to create an efficient engine that will yield a good haul of victory points. At that point the theme just becomes a pleasing
piece of background scenery.
The first thing that strikes you when you set the game up is that, while the central board is quite a bit smaller than usual, the player boards are significantly larger and come loaded up with a lot of wooden pieces in a variety of
shapes.
The second is that there
are also many differ- ent types of cards
and that
your table is going to need to be large enough to cope with rows of them both above and below not only the central board, but also each player’s personal one.
I A more complicated structure
Then there is the rule book, which is
almost twice as long as that of its pre- decessor. Paladins is a game with a lot of moving parts and a more complicated structure than Architects. The wooden pieces you begin with are of five types, four of which (representing such things as workshops and settlements) begin in rows on your board. During the game you will be looking to move these into more profitable places. The fifth set consists of three markers that will measure your skill level in three areas (strength, influence and faith) on a track along your board’s left-hand edge.
In addition to the board and pieces, each player begins with a deck of 12 cards. These are the paladins of the game’s title, and you will use one of them in each of the game’s seven rounds. The mechanism
for deciding which is a neat little twist on the common “draw several, choose one
round, which allow
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Each paladin card gives you two workers,
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