In the sleepy English countryside, life continues undisturbed as it has for centuries. It is up to you to travel to every corner of this land, bearing the promise of modernisation, accommodating the oddly specific demands of the locals, and ushering in the age of steam. The main goal of Village Board Game is for players to complete tasks and receive rewards listed on their character cards faster than your opponents do. This requires careful planning of multiple strategies such as not only gathering resources but also maintaining relationships so that other people will help you along in completing your goals. Gathering Resources Rome needs rebuilding following Nero's fire, and the material at hand is card. Not just any card, mind: each piece of this card has four different uses. It can be a job, a resource, a building or mere points. Jobs lead the round, allowing players to use cards as resources or buildings by playing a matching job card. The joy and the strategy is in the extraordinarily complex ways these multi-use cards can combine with each other. Each time you feel like you've got a grasp on a given session, it slips away as other cards and players muddy the waters. It's complex and hard to find, but remains unique over a decade after release. At the beginning of the game, each player is dealt 1 of each of the 3 levels of Witch’s Scheme cards. Consulting their Books of Spells (which are the same for each witch) to determine which ingredients will be needed to cast the spells on their Witch’s Scheme cards, they put 1 familiar in the village green, take turns placing 2 additional familiars in other locations, and draw 2 ingredients from those locations. Adapt Your Strategy – You should always be prepared to adjust or adapt your strategy in response to unexpected changes within the game; by doing this, you can capitalize on opportunities as they arise or avoid potential pitfalls before it’s too late! Closing the Match

Each turn a number of coloured wooden cubes are placed on the board, and then in turn each player selects a cube and takes an action set by where on the board the cube was taken. So, for example, if the cube was taken from the Village Hall, an action can be taken in the Village Hall, and when the cubes at the Village Hall are gone no further actions can be taken there this turn. To find the instructions for how to play, look for an enclosed booklet on the board game box that explains the rules in detail. To interpret and understand these rules best, it is important to read through each description of card functions carefully before beginning play. Once you feel familiar enough with how everything works, you are ready to start playing! Setting Up Once you complete a line (as soon the line reaches the outside of your three by four grid) you score that lines features, then the trip cards at the start of the line and then you use one of your terminus cards to gain income. Completing a line early with only a few points is a good way of generating income which will in turn help you to buy more trip cards.

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Scores are tallied on scoring dials which are well produced and add to the overall charm of the game. All Aboard

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Each player also has a pet which offers a unique special power/ability. They are not groundbreaking but they do offer some variation and uniqueness to your character. There is also a decent supply of buildings, all of which require different resources to build. This keeps the game fresh. Village Green tasks you with winning the annual village green of the year contest. If that hasn’t hooked you in already then carry on reading! To win the game you will manage a hand of green cards using them to score as many award cards as you can. You will play your green cards to a three by three grid, while playing award cards on one end of each row and column, scoring only for the three green cards in that row or column. The answer is the three terminus cards you start with. These also feature special conditions, such as the number of stations on the line, but they earn you cash rather than points. As ever there’s a catch and the clue is in the name: you can only play them on a finished line. So in addition to trying to balance the features on the line and trips you want to attach you’ve also got to keep one eye on cashing in a terminus card. There’s also a desperate pressure to rush and finish a low-scoring line just to enrich yourself. It can be worth it if you get the timing and priorities right, but that’s yet another balancing act to master.

Village Rails players will score additional points for each of their lines that has a sidings on it with a massive 49 points available for anyone who has sidings on all 7 lines. Then players are awarded 1 point per 3 coins they have remaining. The player with the most points wins with ties broken by the most coins. Conclusion When I first came across Village, and what initially seemed a rather dry theme, I thought this might be dull, then again I initially thought a game about farming would be dull – how wrong I was on both counts. I normally love collaborations between Matthew Dunstan & Brett J Gilbert and this is no exception. Together they have created a very clever, thinky but at the same time simple tableau game which has a lovely theme and lots of replayability. Osprey Games have made the cards small and the components fairly basic but that has kept the costs lower and it all fits into a compact box.

You then have to assign that trip to one of your uncompleted lines. Each line can have a maximum of two trips assigned to it. To do this place it to the outside of your initial board alongside the line you wish it to score for. Completing A Line If games were rated purely on the amount of strategy they could squeeze out of brief rules and a few components, Village Rails would be up there with the best of them. There’s a lot of crunchy, thinksome depth in the game that belies its tiny box.