If you love the artwork of The Mico and like the North Sea series from Garphill Games, then you are in for a treat with the first game in the West Kingdom series.
ARCHITECTS OF THE WEST KINGDOM (2018)
Architects of the West Kingdom is set at the end of the Carolingian Empire, circa 850 AD. As royal architects, players compete to impress their King and maintain their noble status by constructing various landmarks throughout his newly appointed domain. Players need to collect raw materials, hire apprentices, and keep a watchful eye on their workforce. These are treacherous times, and rival architects will stop at nothing to slow your progress. Will you remain virtuous, or be found in the company of thieves and black marketeers?
The aim of Architects of the West Kingdom is to be the player with the most victory points (VP) at game's end. Points are gained by constructing various buildings and advancing work on the Archbishop's cathedral. Throughout the game, players need to make a lot of moral decisions. However, only at game's end will their virtue be judged. A few underhanded deals here and there might not seem like much, but fall too far and you will be punished. The game ends once a set number of constructions have been completed.
—description from the publisher
Weight 2.75/5
Our Take on the Game
Even though the game is only five years old, a lot of people will consider this a “classic” worker placement and resource management game.
We love that up front you get all twenty of your workers up front, unless you use the variable player powers which you may not have all at the very start but can get them back. This means you can start planning your turns right away and even look ahead to a certain point. But of course, there is a catch.
What is this catch you might be asking? Well, this game you can gather groups of your opponent’s workers onto your player board which allows you to later send them to the guardhouse to earn money for each one you send there. However, if your workers are gathered and you don’t want your opponents to earn money from them, there is a way to get them all back by taking a certain action at the guardhouse, of course it will cost you money.
Learning the iconography of the game is easy. The only language dependent item in the game is the rulebook. All the actions you can take is shown by the various icons on the game board, yes, even all the cards are that way.
Gaining needed resources in this game is something that we absolutely love because unlike a lot of the worker placement games, if another player is in the spot you want to go to, so what, you can still go there as many times as you like (the only exception to this is the black market spots which only one meeple can be there at a time). The more workers you have in the locations, the more actions or resources you can take.
To help you build the various buildings (green cards that are in your hand) you may need to hire various apprentices (blue cards). Each type of card also provides you various other abilities to help you win the game.
Even though points are not tallies during the game, all game information is public and you can look at what the other players have done to gauge where you stand against them.
You might be wondering at this point how does the game end? The answer to that is by filling up the guildhall with your workers. Now I need to explain the guildhall I suppose.
This is the location of the game board in which you “sacrifice” your workers to construct your building cards or to work on the cathedral. The “sacrifice” is that you do not get those workers back when you get to gather your meeples. The guildhall is also the way to track how close you are to triggering the game end. The more players you have in the game, the more workers are needed to fill the hall.
Our second two player game of Architects of the West Kingdom lasted around thirty minutes because we focused heavily on constructing buildings and working on the cathedral so we filled up the guildhall really fast.
One last thing to note, since it was mentioned in the BGG Description, is virtue. Virtue is gained and lost in various ways but mainly by card actions. For the most part, you will want to stay towards the middle of the virtue track which allows you to visit the black market and to build the cathedral. Too much virtue and you can not take black market actions but will earn you extra victory points at the end of the game. Too little virtue and you can not build the cathedral and you will subtract victory points at the end of the game, however, a plus side to that is you also pay less in taxes.
FAMILY GAMER VERDICT
We rate this game a 9 out 10.
The game is one that will get tabled over and over and not because it is on our 10x10 Challenge for this year. Since our first few plays, we have introduced others to the game with much success. The addition of the expansions is next on our docket for this game which adds more and interesting elements to the game play.
As stated in the intro, if you are a fan of the Mico’s artwork, you will love all aspects of the game. If you are not a fan of his work, I am sorry, but we think you still will like the gameplay.
LETTER TALLY
A: 1 – Architects of the West Kingdom
E: 0 -
G: 0 -
H: 1 – Hamlet: The Village Building Game
J: 0 -
K: 0 -
L: 2 - Long Shot: The Dice Game, Legendary Encounters: Firefly
R: 0 -
U: 0 -
Z: 0 -
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