MEGAforce Boardgames Night: Villagers

With MEGAforce down to two members recently, Grim and I tried out Villagers. There's a two player version which was ideal for us to learn the game.

What is Villagers?

Villagers is another game from Haakon Hoel Gaarder, designer of MOON, and is available from Sinister Fish Games. The conceit of the game is post Plague Europe. Settlements are struggling to rebuild and need to attract new workers. 

There's a stream of potential new villagers travelling along The Road, and players take these and try and fit them into their village.

The winner is the village that to amasses the most gold by the end of the game.

Gameplay 

Players start with one Founders card, the farm around which the new village will accumulate, eight gold, and a hand of five Villagers cards.

The game consists of Draft phases, where players alternate taking Villager cards into their hand, either from the face up cards on the Road, or face down from the Stacks placed above the Road and used to restock the Road during the Draft Phase. There are no restrictions on which Villagers you can draft, but you might not always be able to add them to your Village straight away.

Players can draft two Villagers, plus an extra one for each red Food symbol in their Village, to a maximum of five.

Once the Draft Phase is over, the Road is cleared and restocked from the Reserve (the cards not yet in play).

The Build Phase is where you add Villager cards to your village from your hand. 

Players take turns to build two cards, plus one per Build symbol, again to a maximum of five.

Example Hay Suit

Villagers mostly build up in chains, for example; Hayer, Grazier, Milk Maid and Fromager (see above), requiring certain existing cards which they are placed upon. The chains all fall into a series of suits, Grain, Hay, Wood, Ore and Grapes (two more are available in larger games with more players). Some Villagers also require Unlocking; in the chain above, the Milk Maid requires the Cooper. Ideally, you already have the relevant Villager in your village, which earns them two gold. Alternatively, you can call on the skills of an unlocking Villager in another player's village, but you have to pay them. As a last resort, you can pay the Bank if no unlocking Villager is in play, so Unlocking is a problem that money can solve.

There are three types of Base Villagers, Miners, Hayers, and Lumberjacks. Up to three of these can be built in addition during the Build Phase by swapping them for cards in the player's hand. These don't add gold or anything, but are vital to build those chains of villagers.

Play then continues with more Draft Phases and Build Phases until a Market Phase is reached.

There are two Market Phases. The first when the first two left hand Stacks are exhausted and the second when all the stacks are exhausted, signalling the end of the game. These are where you actually collect gold. Some gold will have been placed on Villagers during Build Phases and some Villagers have gold symbols. The Second Market Phase also allows you to collect Silver, which is simply a way of differentiating gold collected at the end of the game, it's worth just the same (this sounds odd, but it works fine in practice). Silver is often dependent on other cards in your village, such as the Peddler, who gets three silver for every two gold symbols in your village.

Extras 

There are Solitary Villagers, such as the Priest, who don't belong to any suit. They are mostly used to add Silver in the Second Market Phase at the end of the game.

There are also Special Villagers, who either have a one off effect, like the Tinner, who automatically unlocks all Villagers that you build for the Build Phase when she is played, or permanent, like the Monk, who replaces any one Villager in a chain.

The game part way through. We are in the Build Phase just prior to the First Market Phase.

Briefly, top row, l to r; First Market Phase card, four Stacks, three piles of Basic Villages. Next row, l to r; The Road of six Villagers, the Refresh pile and the discard pile.

Below that are our villages, arranged as we saw fit. You can see some of the chains building up.

My village, with a very creditable 171 gold.

Grim's winning village with 186 gold.

Summary

Villagers is a great fun game. Of course, there's more to the rules than my brief description above, you'll have to play to find out.

I did find the art style a little jarring, it works wonderfully for Moon, for this game I'd have preferred a more 'Medieval' style, but that's just me.

If you like a game with more interaction with other players, there are expansions that introduce various Villagers who can effect other villages (in the base game the Apprentice can do this, but I don't think any other villager can) among other extra effects.

I'll give Villagers an 'S' Tier ranking, just behind Moon.  It looks to have a lot of repeat playabilty and there's a real sense of the different crafts relying on each other to thrive.