Villagers

20th July 2019

Saturday night is here. This means gaming at Matakishi's.

And on this night we played 'Villagers'

Have you ever wanted to live in a idyllic little place? Where a single cobble stoned road runs through a village populated with quaint thatched roofed, half timbered homes to carpenters, jewellers, blacksmiths and many more craftsmen?

'A village where the population is trying to rinse everyone else out their cash two gold coins at a time?'

If this sounds appealing; then welcome to Villagers; a pretty little set collecting card game.

What's in a game?
What's in this game? Cards, lots of cards.

• Founder cards: These are the starter cards, 1 is given to each player at the start of the game.
• Basic cards: There are 3 types of basic village card, lumberjack, hayer and miner. These 3 types of card will form the backbone for most sets of cards you collect.
• Villager cards: These are all the other types of card in the game and represent the villagers that are collected during play. Villager cards must be played on a basic card of it's type. There are also some different types of basic card (And associated villagers too.)
• Solitary cards: These are villagers that are not played on basic cards and can be played straightaway
• Special cards: Strictly speaking, these are not villagers. When played, they have a one-off affect or bonus.
• Some gold coins, quite a lot of gold coins actually.

That's it for components. Unlike most card games, the backs of these cards are not uniform, instead they display what type of card they are (That is, which basic card they need.), more will be explained later.

There's not too much else to say, well the illustrations on the cars are nice.

How's it play?
Broadly speaking, the objective of Villagers is to collect sets of cards in the same 'profession'. When accumulating these cards, they are stacked on top of each other, so only the names of the cards underneath are displayed.

As quite often, we begin with the set up.

• ​Each player is given a founder card and some gold.​
• The 3 basic cards are put in 3 separate decks.
• 5 cards are dealt to each player.
• Finally, 'the road' is set up. This involves placing six small decks of cards face-down in a line. 'Market' cards  are placed under the 2nd and 6th decks. Then the 6 starter villagers are put in a parallel line next alongside the decks.
• The remaining cards form the 'reserve' deck.

​Now play can begin. There's a collecting and playing phase.

• In turn each player takes a card from the road, a card can be taken from any of the 6 face-up cards or face-down decks.
• Basic cards cannot be taken in this phase.
• This continues until all players have drawn all the cards they can. Players can draw 2-5 cards. Initially, players can only draw 2 cards, but when some cards are in play, this can increase up to a maximum of 5.
• Once all selections are completed, any remaining face-up cards are discarded (I guess they were only passing through!).

Next we go on to the playing card.

• In turn, each player plays cards into their village. Players can put 2-5 cards into their village each turn. Each player can stat by playing 2 cards per turn, but cards can increase this to a maximum of 5.
• If a player wants a basic card (And they will do!), then they must return a card back to the road. This does not count as one of the player's action and they may do this up to 3 times per turn.
• When playing a villager, it must be played on either a basic card or another specific villager card (The card will explain which.).
• When played, most villager cards need to be 'unlocked' by another card. The card will tell you which other card this is. If you have that card, 2 gold is taken from the bank and put on it. If another player has the card, you must pay 2 gold to that card. If none of the players have that, you pay 2 gold to the bank.
• When a villager is played on another card, it covers it and that card and that card loses any benefits it conferred on you. But generally, the card you are playing will confer a better version of that benefit. This is how you create sets.
• Play progresses until all the cards in the road are gone and the 2nd market is triggered.

Endgame 
​Scoring for Villagers is a bit convoluted and requires some explanation.

• There are 2 market phases in which scoring occurs. They occur when the 2nd and 6th decks are depleted.
• Most cards have either a gold value or silver value on them. 'Gold' cards score in both markets, 'silver' cards only score in the last market.
• When a card is scored, it earns its owner gold. Only the top card on a set earns gold.
• The amount a card earns its owner is equal to the value on the card plus any gold that has been placed on the card (The actual gold is not removed from the card.).
• The gold coins on cards 
• Not all cards have set values, some will pay out gold dependant on other criteria, these tend to be silver cards.

Players tally all the gold they've earned. Highest amount of gold wins.

Overall
Villagers is deceptively fast to play. Apart from the basic cards, there's only 2 of each card. This means that you don't have the luxury of hoarding cards for 'later'. You need to start working towards collecting sets as quickly as you can and even then, it's likely that you will only manage to accumulate one major set in a game. If you can do this before the first market, the stack will score twice. So don't get too distracted by other potential sets when they appear.
Luckily, there is normally an abundance of solitary villagers that you can take to give you something when the card you need invariably don't appear. 

So it seems that decisive errr decisions are the order of the day in Villagers.
​
Villagers is an interesting game to play, particularly its unusual scoring system. I'm not sure on it's long term depth. But as an occasional game it's perfectly acceptable.