Review: Valeria: Card Kingdoms (2nd Edition)
Use magic, money, and might to recruit citizens, defeat monsters, and conquer lands.
Designed by Isaias Vallejo and published by Daily Magic Games
👤 1-5 players
🧩 Card Drafting, Dice Rolling
⚖️ Light-Medium (For Families and Gamers)
Overview
The land of Valeria is under siege by hordes of monsters. You and your fellow Dukes must recruit citizens and buy domains to build up your kingdoms and slay the foul creatures that lurk in the surrounding lands. (from the publisher)
Gameplay
Valeria: Card Kingdoms is a tableau-building game. The citizens you can recruit help increase your income during the Harvest Phases of the game. On your turn, roll two dice and active the citizen cards that match the rolled values of each die as well as the sum of both dice. Not only do you get to activate citizens on your own turn but you may also active citizens on other players turns. After the Roll Phase the active player can take two out of four available actions.
Recruit a Citizen
You pay the coins shown on the Citizen you would like to recruit and place it in front of you. Recruiting the same citizen multiple times will increase its cots by one each time. From now on, each time the number is rolled during the Roll Phase the Citizens get activated. During the Harvest Phase these activated citizens provide resources.
Slay a Monsters
To slay a Monster you need to pay the required strength and/or magic and you immediately gain the one time benefit. Monsters are worth VP at the end of the game.
Buy a Domain
To buy a Domain you need to pay the required coin cost. You also need to have the matching citizen icons in front of you. A Domain provides a one time bonus or an effect that is active for the rest of the game.
Gain a Resource
The last action a player can take is gaining resource of their choice.
The game end is triggered when X number of Citizen, Monster and/or Domain stacks are exhausted (emptied). Where X is the number of players + 2. Once you're familiar with the base gameplay you can change up the available Citizens and Monsters. Besides the Victory Points (VP) earned during the game, players also earn VP's at the end of the game for their Duke, slain Monsters and bought domains. The player with the most VP's wins the game.
The Good
- No down-time since you can also activate citizens on other players turns
- Fast and satisfying game turns, there is nothing like rolling the perfect combination and gaining loads of resources
- The base game offers plenty of variation with different citizens, domains and monsters.
- Fast, a full two player game takes around 30 minutes.
- Art by The Mico is fantastic as always
The Bad
- Set-up and tear-down is pretty long for this type of game
- Citizen / Monster effects are not that interesting, it's usually just gaining some resources
- Sometimes it feels like the game ends a little too soon.
Valeria: Card Kingdoms (2nd Edition)
⭐ 7.8/10
🎨 Artwork & Design: 9/10
The art by The Mico is fantastic and the iconography is clear and concise.
🎲 Gameplay & Innovation: 7/10
Gameplay isn't that innovative but it's solid and flows well. It introduces some variations on the gameplay introduced by games as Machi Koro.
📖 Rules: 7/10
The Rulebook is good, but lacking in a few small areas. For a few rules we had to reference BGG.
♻️ Replay value: 8/10
The base games offers loads of variation. And if you like it enough, have a look at the various expansions available for the game.
😀 Fun: 8/10
Valeria: Card Kingdoms is just plain fun! Rolling Dice, Collecting Resources and seeing your engine at work.
Alternatives
Looking for alternatives or similar games? Have a look at Machi Koro or Space Base.