Renegade Game Studios Renegade Game Studio | Architects of the West Kingdom | Board Game | Ages 12+ | 1 to 5 Players | 60 to 80 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

If you eventually get tired of the same old thing though, there are also a couple of variants for you to play with. The previous one we played that we enjoyed was the great Raiders of the North Sea, so we were a bit surprised when we found out this game all about building a cathederal could be more cutthroat than vikings.

How many times do you need to visit the same resource location before you have enough or someone might capture your workers? You may feel like 20 workers is an obscene amount at the beginning of the game, but even the inverse of the above is a possible challenge: If nobody captures your workers, you may have to waste turns freeing them yourself, from spots that are no longer useful or risk running out of workers altogether. Eurogames (also known as German-style board games) are traditionally light on random chance and direct player interaction, but heavy on strategy and resource management. Players will need to collect raw materials, hire apprentices and keep a watchful eye on their workforce. The right-most space costs 3x silver and 1x Virtue and you gain the resources stated on the ‘larger’ market.Note that in that final round, players can still take the Guildhall action even though all the spaces are filled. Sure, you can fix a game with house rules, but it felt like Architects would take more work than that to be easily adapted to a more challenging solo mode. If the manual is the shared inaccessiblity of all board games, reusing design metaphors is part of the eventual solution.

However, Architects also carves its own niche in the worker placement genre with its unique implementation of the genre’s mechanics. Do you spend a turn capturing your Artisan back or leave it on the board knowing your opponent may do the same? In Architects of the West Kingdom, visit the Town Centre and pay 1x silver (to Tax) to capture opponents’ workers! I’ve always enjoyed worker placement games, but this took it to the next level with the worker investment. What first attracted me to this game was its fresh take on one of my favorite mechanisms – worker placement.There is a clear sharing of concept between the way Apprentices in Architects and how Crew in Raiders of the North Sea work, allowing for the same team-building mechanics that made Raiders such a hit. You just score points like in a normal game (cathedral progress, building points, virtue track position, petty cash for leftover resources, and minus points for unpaid debts). Conversely, if you get too high a reputation, you can’t be seen cavorting around with the criminal underworld, so you avoid the black market like the plague. Also, if you find yourself in prison when the black-market resets, if you have the most workers there, you’ll be gaining debt.