Renegade Game StudiosArchitects of the West Kingdom Game for 1-5 Players Aged 12 & Up

This game is awesome. There are so many nuances to the game that it is easily one of my favorites, and it is the game that I want to play the most.Components: This box is jam packed with stuff - it's hard to fit it all! The game board is beautiful, and is very nice quality. The workers and goods are all nicely produced wooden pieces, and the cards are quality stock. The minor things that I find less desirable are that the box could definitely benefit from a better insert for organization purposes (I had to modify mine to contain sleeved cards and all the other components and was even a tight fit without sleeves with the "insert"). Additionally, they give you cards to represent multiples of goods which I am not a big fan of. I just wish I had more goods, and a better insert to handle these pieces as there is room. Neither of these things affects gameplay, but they are something I wish they had done differently. Lastly, I wish the player boards were made of thick cardboard, as that would have really made it pop. With these few things, the look and feel is not as great as it could and should be - although it is still incredible.Gameplay: There are two main ways to try to get larger amounts of victory points, with lots of ways to get smaller amounts of victory points as well so that players can pick different ways to try and win. There is some player interaction in this game as well which is great because lots of worker placement games are mainly trying to see which spaces are still open, and where your opponents may place their workers - not this game, here you want to pay attention to where other players are putting their workers so that you can capture them to acquire things you want. The fact that you start with all your workers is also really cool. There are so many places to put your workers..... Oh yeah, it also has a good solo mode, and you can play 2 players with and auto - very cool and well thought out.Overall: For my minor issues I would normally take a star off because this game looks AMAZING, and then there are some shortcuts taken, which for me I normally find dissapointing. HOWEVER, the gameplay is sooooo great that I just can't bring myself to do that. 5 stars.

GAMEPLAYIn usual worker placement games you have 2-5 workers and a fixed number of rounds. Every round, players take turns to place their workers on certain spots to take that action. These spots are then blocked for subsequent turns. At the end of round they call their workers back.Here's how the game is different from other worker placement games:* Almost all the spots support unlimited number of workers.* There's no concept of rounds, the game ends when work on the cathedral is complete.* The more number of workers at a location, the better the reward. Say you send a worker to quary in 1st turn, you gain 1 stone. Next time you send a worker to quarry, you've two workers on the quary and you gain 2 stones.* Your workers don't return to you at end of round (as there's no round). You have to take an action to call your workers from a spot.* Players can capture opponents workers from the board and optionally send them to prison (for money)* A player can free their worker from opponent or from prison by paying the cost.The primary objective of the game is to gain maximum victory points. During the game you take turns taking resources by going to different locations on the board (stone, brick, wood, coin, gold, marble etc), recruiting apprentices, building structures and working on cathedrals. The game has a virtue track. Your virtue adjusts based on your actions. It goes up when you work on cathedrals, building schools etc, but it goes down when you perform action at the black market or build structures such as gambling house etc. Based on your position on the virtue track certain positions on the gameboard may not be available to you.PLAYER COUNT AND DURATIONThe game plays in about 90 mins. The player count doesn't increase the duration as the game ends when the cathedral work is complete.The game plays well for 2-5 players. No scaling issues as all the locations allow multiple workers.The automa mode is pretty good and competitive. I've played it two times with 1 win and 1 loss.COMPONENT QUALITYThe Component Quality is Good. The resources are made of light wood. The coins are made of card-board.The game board is big and pretty. The art work on gameboard, player mats, building cards and apprentices is really cool. It's a cartoon-ish theme similar to other games from the same manufacturer (raiders of the north sea).CONCLUSIONWe really enjoyed the game. The best part of the game is capturing opponent's workers. It makes for really fun and interesting player interactions! The good (working on cathedral) and bad sides (black market for quick resources) are well-balanced and you can chart a path to victory via both ways.Highly recommend it.

I really liked Shem Phillips' North Sea Trilogy. Raiders of the North Sea is one of my favorites. I was a bit hesitant about purchasing this one, Architects, because it kind of seemed to me to be the same game, only with a different setting. But I heard a ton of buzz about it and when I was given a gift card for Amazon, I decided to get it.Excellent game! And it's not just a re-skin of Raiders! It's a little tougher to learn, I think, but not much harder. This game, instead of being Vikings, you are royal architects in the Carolingian Empire, trying to impress the king.This is a lot of fun. It plays up to 5 and is not bad with that player count. Raiders can be a bit lengthy with 5 players. Architects is better.I would highly recommend before you actually play a real game of it, to just setup a 2-player version and play a couple of turns with yourself, so that you get an idea of how to play and how the turns should work. Then it's much easier to teach others on game night.I still haven't decided if I like Raiders or Architects better. The graphics on both are amazing.I do appreciate that Architects came with a solo mode. With Raiders it's an expansion, but only available direct from the publisher in New Zealand, which means you're going to pay more than the expansion costs for shipping.