Archive for the 'Village' Category

I really like Village as a game – it has you juggling lots of things at once without enough time or resources to do everything; you have to think about the other players who may take the actions/resources you want before you do so you have to prioritise what you take first and maybe alter your plans on the fly if someone has now taken something you were going to; and, players sometimes kill off their villagers on purpose so they can grab their points scoring positions in the village’s journal and by doing so means you have to watch out for the game ending sooner than you think or want.  This makes a very entertaining game and I was glad it deservedly won the Spiel des Jahres last year.  (The following assumes you know about the Village base game – if not, you can read my review of it here.)

As I liked the main game, I was pleased to hear there would be an expansion.  However, I have realised over the years that the majority of expansions (especially for non-narrative games) end up adding more  noise than gameplay – some friends and I worked out recently that we usually buy expansions because we’d like to see extra variety, but then more often end up playing the base game without the expansion because it’s usually tighter.  So, into which of these categories was Village’s expansion (called Village Inn) going to fall? Read the rest of this entry »

I read the rules for Village when I was at Essen last year and as soon as I saw the meeple laying in the history book or in the unmarked graves I knew I wanted to play it.  I pre-ordered it and I’m glad I did as I’ve really enjoyed every game I’ve played of it so far.  More recently it rightly won the complex Spiel des Jahres award too.  The reason it’s a great game is due to an interesting mix of some unusual game mechanics – none are complex but there’s lots of variety – so I shall attempt to summarise the main elements.

GAME OVERVIEW
In Village, players use their villagers (meeple) to do various tasks and the goal is to earn the most respect (victory points – VPs).  There are two key mechanisms in the game – time and actions.

Time
The first core mechanism is time – many actions use up time which each player tracks with a marker around the edge of their player board (their farm).  Quite often, the player has a choice to spend time or use resources to do things like making a plough, but many options require time like travelling, or training a craftsman.  When the time marker completes a circuit of a player’s board, one of the eldest villagers of that player passes away and is either placed into the history books or in an unmarked grave (more on that later). Read the rest of this entry »