Architects of the West Kingdom: Works of Wonders sees players hiring accomplished builders to erect a series of impressive monuments across the King’s city. (Thanks BoardGameGeek.) These five potential works of patriotic art require an architect of the highest esteem to oversee their construction, with players needing to gather enough influence to obtain support from the kingdom’s princess. The aim of Paladins of the West Kingdom is to be the player with the most victory points (VP) at game's end. Points are gained by building outposts and fortifications, commissioning monks and confronting outsiders. While Paladins can feel like a struggle to get through at first, its rules eventually become intuitive.

Garphill Games is the publisher responsible for Works of Wonder and City of Crowns, alongside both the West Kingdom and North Sea trilogies. In the first few playthroughs, I found I had to fight an urge to do a little bit of everything.The problem with this approach is then you end up doing nothing well.In many euro games you are rewarded in a point salad style, with points for doing everything.Not so in Paladins.Here you have to get several buildings out, or actions completed to even get one point. In Paladins of the West Kingdom, players are noble men and women, trying to fortify their city. They are seeking to defend it against enemies and spread faith throughout the land. But they are not alone in this quest, for the King has sent his Paladins to assist. Each Paladin has a special ability that will help players throughout the game. One thing that some people may not enjoy is the low scoring nature of Paladins of the West Kingdom. It can feel like you have to do a lot to get a few points. Even if you manage to get all your garrison buildings out, you still only get nine points. This can seem like a minor reward for the many parts needed to get those seven garrison buildings out in the first place. The player board is broadly split into two sides.One where the actions are focused on acquiring goods or workers.The other side is focused on the main actions which gain you points.

Suiting Up

For instance, paying four silver and two workers of any color allows you to use Develop to remove the leftmost workshop from your player board and place it onto one of the action spaces on your player board that are surrounded by dotted lines. This makes those actions cheaper in the future. Additionally, as the workshop is removed, a bonus worker is earned. In fact, all of the spaces that were covered by wooden pieces during setup will reveal some kind of bonus once the space is revealed. If you’ve ever played a game like Terra Mystica or Clans of Caledonia, this mechanic should feel familiar. I will accept, you do have to worry less about a space being available than in other worker placement games.Each player has their own board with action spaces on it.The King’s Favour cards do offer contestable spots.However, in the main, players will be making use of action spots on their own board. In Paladins players do not have their own colour of workers. Instead, at the start of each turn they will draw workers depending on the Paladin card and tavern card they choose. The cards display different colours of workers, and the different workers have different roles. As noble men and women, players must gather workers from the city to defend against enemies, build fortifications and spread faith throughout the land. Fortunately you are not alone. During the expansion, players can choose to hire workers to build the city’s five wonders, whilst ensuring that they gather enough approval from the princess to have her survey the monuments herself. Alternatively, players can decide to gain Profiteer tokens, should they want to seek support from the secretive individual. The expansion will also feature a solo board game mode that includes six possible opponents for players to compete against.

This is where, for me, Paladins shines. Instead of having to worry about whether a spot is free for your worker, you now have to make sure you have the right colour workers. Many spots need two or even three workers.Players therefore also need to make sure they have enough workers left to do what they want. Fighting For Space? Yes, this can seem disheartening at first, when often games can score points in the hundreds.You are not in any danger of getting close to a hundred points in a game of Paladins! But, once you accept that your opponent is not going to be getting huge scores either, you can take it more at face value. With Paladins, as with many games, some of the challenge of the first few games is actually finding out what a good score is. The Final Score In his great wisdom, the King has sent his finest knights to help aid in our efforts. So ready the horses and sharpen the swords. The Paladins are approaching. Architects of the West Kingdom has one to five players becoming renowned royal architects who must gain the admiration of the king by helming the construction of various buildings throughout the city. By gathering the required amount of resources, hiring skilled apprentices and ensuring that their workforce is staying on target, players will be able to gradually create a series of impressive constructions. However, players will also need to make sure that their moral judgements do not hamper their potential for victory points. If you’re a fan of medium to heavy weight games and you want to get a full experience, might I suggest that you don your armour and take on the mighty dragon that is the AI in Paladins of the West Kingdom. It is 900 AD, and the city needs to be developed and protected from enemies. Whilst the game itself has a wonderful feel at 2 to 4 players, sometimes, you can’t get the numbers together. Or you want to learn the game in a stress-free environment so you can teach it at a later date. I talked about the Architects of the West Kingdom solo game before, so now let’s go forward in time to the second game in the series! Solo Differences

This effect feels particularly prominent in Paladins of the West Kingdom, designed by Shem Phillips - creator of the Viking-themed North Sea trilogy (Shipwrights, Raiders, Explorers) to which the West Kingdom series (in which Paladins is the second chapter, after 2018's Architects) is a follow-up - and SJ Macdonald. The board game focuses on players assigning a limited number of meeples to enable increasingly effective actions on future turns. Gathering momentum is crucial, but Paladins has no mechanic to help players catch up when they’re behind, which is particularly galling since it can take hours to learn and play. If you can get over that frustration, the game’s potent mix of flavour and strategy makes for a deeply satisfying experience. The other series’ expansion set to release in 2021 is Paladins of the West Kingdom: City of Crowns. The upcoming board game expansion introduces new elements to both the shared board and individual players’ boards. Before you even begin a round in Paladins of the West Kingdom, you are faced with decisions that will determine how your round will play out. Many of the worker placement spots on your own personal board will require certain colours of workers, and you draft from a selection of cards to decide which coloured workers you will receive. You will need to look at which workers are available, and from that try to establish which actions you’re going to be able to perform with them. Of course, there are ways to mitigate the restrictions. Purple workers are wild, so they can be placed anywhere. There are also plenty of actions you can take which will allow you to gain more workers, potentially giving you the right colour at exactly the right moment. Though they are both in the same series of games, comparing Paladins of the West Kingdom to its predecessor is difficult, as they are very different games. This one is a much more complex affair, and so it really depends on what mood you are in. Personally, if I were to compare, I much prefer this one, as I like a crunchy game with an interesting puzzle. I prefer the attribute system to the virtue system in Architects, and I love the interaction between the actions. That being said, I think for a lot of people, I would recommend Architects as the better starting point. Prices delivered by BoardGamePrices You can accelerate your progress by praying, which lets you spend resources to remove your pieces from a space so you can use it again the same turn, but the hard limit on doing the same action seven times over the course of the game forces you to build multiple engines. This is the closest the game has to a catch-up mechanic, but players who have been able to gain extra resources throughout the game will also have an easier time diversifying than those who are struggling to gain traction.

The second instalment in this trilogy, Paladins of the West Kingdom fast forwards to a time when your land is under siege. Similarly to its predecessor, the theme isn’t strongly represented, though, again, the actions you are taking make sense within the context of the game. These games concentrate on the mechanisms, aiming to make them as strong as possible, allowing you to completely ignore theme if you wish, but still sprinkling it in so that, if you’re looking for it, you can find it. Theme is not high on my priorities when it comes to board games, though it is for many, and so I can see Paladins of the West Kingdom falling short for those people. Two titles in the West Kingdom trilogy of board games are seeing brand new expansions coming later this year. Paladins of the West Kingdom is set at a turbulent time of West Francia's story, circa 900 AD. Despite recent efforts to develop the city, outlying townships are still under threat from outsiders.

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Each round, players will enlist the help of a specific Paladin and gather workers to carry out tasks. As the game progresses, players will slowly increase their faith, strength and influence. If I had a complaint about Paladins, it’s that after maybe 10 plays or so, you may find it getting a bit same-y in terms of the actions you’re doing. If that’s the case for you, I can highly recommend including the City of Crowns expansion, as this adds in a new attribute and more actions for you to get your teeth into. The expansion itself has a 4.17 weight ranking on Board Game Geek, as opposed to the 3.71 of the base game, but it’s still a really good expansion.

Four more meeples are received based on drafting cards - there’s always one more card than the number of players so everyone gets at least some choice. Players then take turns assigning workers to take action on spaces on their board until they run out of resources or decide to pass, with the chance to save up to three workers for the next round. There’s a dizzying amount of options including gathering basic resources like silver and provisions, and more involved developments that require more resources and higher values as you focus on them. The game takes place over the course of seven turns and you’ll earn additional victory points for performing the same actions five to seven times. Very rarely in my board gaming journey, have I found a game that I have fallen for by turn three.Yes, this might be a spoiler for the rest of my review, but Paladins is such a game for me! The Paladins Approach In addition to the workers, each paladin also brings some unique attributes to the table. Firstly, each paladin provides a temporary boost to one or two different attributes. Secondly, each paladin has a special ability. Consider Gerin, for instance. This paladin rewards the player with a white and a blue worker for the round as well as +4 to their Influence attribute. His ability reads: “Conspiring earns 2 silver”. So, your paladin selection will largely influence which actions you’ll want to perform that round and this will most likely have a large effect on which Tavern card you draft from the selection. One interesting aspect about these actions is that each is focused on a specific attribute (shown in the arrow pointing left next to the name of the action) and will raise a different one (shown in the arrow pointing right). So, if your current chosen paladin has boosted, say, your Influence attribute rather high, this helps to guide your focus in the sea of possibilities. With high Influence, you’d probably want to go with the Absolve or Fortify actions. Your choice of which one to aim for is further guided by not only what the action achieves, but also by which attribute will be raised by performing it. The attribute used and the attribute raised aren’t just arbitrary either. There’s a thematic reasoning behind it all. For instance, Fortifying is how you build walls. You’re using your Influence to get things done and the walls give your kingdom Strength. In traditional worker placement games, each player starts the round with a set number of workers in their colour. Over the course of the round, these are placed on different spaces. Players are then able to take the action associated with that space.Some games (such as Viticulture) have workers with special abilities.

Paying the Tax Man

The biggest problem with purer strategy board games is that it can become clear about an hour in who is going to win. One player can rev up their in-game engine to the point that every turn they take feels twice as effective as yours and there’s nothing you can really do to interfere with their plans. You can then be forced to spend an hour or more limping along and doing your best while the game plods along to its already inevitable conclusion.