11th December 2022 It's a Sunday evening and where logged into video chat and Board Game Arena for some gaming fun. More space, more empires and more final frontiers. Cosmos: Empires is a galactically-themed tableau building where plays rush to build their cosmic empire - or least increase their empire's production - all very capitalist! Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally. What's in a game?
I have to say I found the illustrations to be pretty good sci-fi themed artwork and could easily see them on classic 70's sci-fi book covers. Having said that, I did also find some of the artwork was a little too busy for a card game, there were bright spots that drew the eye from important information for example and perhaps the text could have been a bit clearer. While there are a few icons, it's not overwhelming, some information on card abilities are displayed on the cards themselves, sometimes player's will want to refer to the rules for clarification. I would not consider it a problem as Cosmos: Empires is pretty straightforward. How's it play? Setup
On to play In Cosmos: Empires, players will be generating credits which will be used to buy cards from the drafting area. These cards will have various actions that can be used to the player's benefit with the ultimate aim of increasing currency production. When a player reaches a certain threshold of currency production, it will trigger the game end. Cosmos: Empires mostly follows the typical turn structure with the active player performing their actions before play progresses to the player on their left. However, it is likely that 'inactive' players will have their cards activated outside of their turn. The following occurs during the active player's turn.
Endgame Play continues until any one player has combined production value (Not credits.) on all the cards in their tableau of 30 or more. At this point the endgame is triggered, the round continues until all players have had even turns. All player then calculate their finishing combined production value. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Cosmos: Empires is a tableau building game that seems to me to have been designed to be a more streamlined, quicker playing, simpler, more accessible game that's a little different to other games of this type. The strategy in Cosmos: Empires is relatively straightforward; acquire as many cards as quickly as you can, while some cards do combo off each other and getting those cards is good. It's also a goof idea to just get many cards as you can and hope dice rolls go your way. You see; typically in tableau building games there's an early game element about building up the tableau then a late game element about using that tableau to work towards whatever the winning criteria. Cosmos: Empires eschews this paradigm because it's winning criteria is about accumulating production value and all cards provide production value. It means that acquiring any cards works towards winning. The impact of this is that can create a sort of situation where a player will get some cards that quickly earn them a lot of production/credits which can be used to get even more cards (Especially the case when a player can build 2 cards per turn.) to get more even more production/credits in a self perpetuating cycle. Now this might sound like a good thing and the kind of you'd want in a tableau builder? The issue is that it can put one player into a unassailable lead where they not only constantly outproduce other players' production but consequently, they also constantly outpace the production increases of other players. A uncatchable double whammy! This can be exacerbated by the fact that all cards activate in all players' turns. Quite often activations will end up benefitting whoever is in the lead simply by virtue of them having more cards. Sure, players can shift the activation numbers but I found in order to not to give the leader benefits, I also had to deny them to myself. It felt very negative. I genuinely admire any game's attempt to pare back rules, provide more elegant gameplay and quicker playtime and this is the case for Cosmos: Empires but it results in a game that feels somewhat unbalanced. Additionally, I found Cosmos: Empires a little bland, it didn't feel like there's much variety in the mix of cards and it didn't feel particularly engaging. I'm not sure it would stand up to repeated playing Although, having said all of that, I might not be the best target audience. Cosmos: Empires might serve as a good entry the tableau building game type and if you want a straightforward, uncluttered, quick playing iteration of it, Cosmos: Empires might tick those boxes.
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20th September 2022 Tuesday is here again and we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns in Woking. Recruit and assemble your citizens (Or heroes really.), build domains and vanquish foul enemies in this fantasy adventure themed dice rolling and tableau building game. What's in a game?
Component quality is the usual good quality you'd expect from a modern game like Valeria: Card Kingdoms. Card quality is fine as are the card tokens and the player boards. Wooden tokens for resources are always a welcome addition. The dice are plastic and feel a little 'square' but they have indented numbers which is good. Valeria: Card kingdoms features good art throughout. Cards are well illustrated with colourful chunky pictures of heroic citizens and intriguing domains, my favourite though, is the artwork for monsters that brashly depict menacing enemies. There's quite a lot of iconography throughout the game, from types of heroes and monsters, to terrain types and ability icons. For the most part, they are fairly intuitive - matching the roles on citizen cards to the requirements on domain cards is obvious but some of the abilities, particularly on domain cards are a bit esoteric and will require some looking up in the rulebook. I don't think it's especially beginner or casual friend but by no means is it a gamebreaker either. How's it play? Setup
On to play In Valeria: Card Kingdoms, players will be rolling dice to activate cards to accumulate resources which in turn can be spent to acquire more citizen cards, domains and monsters. The game follows the usual turn structure of the active player taking their actions before player progresses to the player on their left. During a turn, the following phases occur.
Endgame Play in Valeria: Card Kingdoms continues until any 1 of 3 game ending criteria is met, which are:
A player can earn VPs from a variety of sources.
Points are tallied, highest score wins! Overall
I'll start by saying I quite like the implementation of the fantasy theme both in presentation and execution. It is slightly abstract but gathering a band of heroes to go off and fight monsters and build domains feels good. Like many engine and tableau building games, there's a distinct early game in Valeria: Card Kingdoms about players building up their tableau, in this case with citizen cards and a late game about gaining increased resources to acquire monster and domain cards as well as VPs. However, because players get 2 actions during their turn, there's some opportunity for optimised actions, card synchronicity and thus meaningful decisions. Getting the right citizen card can lead to getting a domain card for example. Getting a good domain card early can be a big boon dependant on its ability. This means there will be a fairly constant flow of cards being drafted from the central area. Players will find themselves competing to get the cards they want as quickly as possible and is the game's primary form of interaction between players. In fact: Thanks to every card having an ability that can be activated in other players' turns and also being able to read the dice both individually and as a pair making card activations more common, means the game generally flows quite rapidly. Players will often have something happening outside of their turn. Like many drafting games, there's a higher level of play here that comes from watching what other players are doing and potentially trying to stymie them. The addition of duke cards messes with this though, providing players with unique and unpredictable objectives. Valeria: Card Kingdoms is a solid iteration of the dice rolling, card activating, tableau building game style and players of those games will be on familiar ground here. To compliment this, there's also a couple of innovative touches to do with reading the dice and card activating that make the game fresh. Despite its brisk playtime, the game does has a fairly involved setup process and also an abundance of iconography which makes for a slightly steep learning curve. Don't that put you off though. Valeria: Card Kingdoms is well worth a try. |
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