Valeria: Card Kingdoms-Darksworn is live (Six books of Card Kingdoms)
Update: Valeria Card Kingdoms: Darksworn has launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 22 days. You may pledge for the Darksworn expansion, or the Card Kingdoms base game, or both. You also have the option of backing the French or the German edition, or the PnP.
Our preview post below was published on March 8.
Darksworn is an expansion for Valeria: Card Kingdoms, launching on Kickstarter on March 9. It adds a soloable co-op mode to the core game, which already included a solo variant.
In the core game, cards are displayed on a central 4x5 grid, with Monsters in the upper row, Domains in the lower row, and two rows of Citizens in between. There are three resources in the game: Strength (to defeat Monsters), Gold (to recruit Citizens or claim Domains), and Magic, which acts as a wild. You start with 2 Gold and 1 Magic, and two starting Citizens in your kingdom, a Peasant and a Knight.
On each player turn, two six-sided dice are rolled. All Citizen cards have an activation number: if one of the dice, or their sum, matches this activation number, the Citizen card takes effect. All the other players also activate their matching Citizen cards, but these only trigger an alternative, “passive” effect. These effects usually allow you to gain resources or to trade one resource for another.
Then, the active player takes two actions from the following list: they can slay a monster by paying the corresponding resource cost, recruit a Citizen or claim a Domain from the central board by paying its Gold value or taking one resource for free in the supply. Domains provide victory points at the end of the game and have specific abilities, either instant or passive. Monsters also provide victory points. Cards taken from the central board are refilled until the exhaustion of the corresponding decks.
In the solo mode, at the end of your turn, monsters attack a column of the central display and kill a Citizen or, if none left, lay waste to a Domain. If you manage to kill all Monsters before all Domains are destroyed, you win the game.
The Darksworn expansion works differently. It comes with six book-decks, each one with several chapters. A chapter introduces a special effect that might be triggered in the course of the game, a tidbit of story and a Task that must be completed in the same way monsters are slain, that is, by paying the corresponding cost in Strength and Magic. Domains are no longer used. You can engage in additional actions, such as fulfilling a Task, praying to Aquila to exchange victory points for effects or share resources with other players. Then, similarly to the core game solo mode, a Monsters Phase occurs. Monsters will attack a specific column depending on the value of a die rolled for this purpose. You are initially protected by a wall, but once the wall is destroyed, they will start killing the available Citizen cards.
To win in the Darksworn expansion, you must fulfill all the tasks of the book you are playing before the Monsters attack a column that can no longer be refilled with fresh Citizen cards.
I wanted to add that, in the original solo mode, the victory condition is a bit weird, but interesting nonetheless. You have a clear-cut Win/Loss conditions: if you defeat all monsters, you win, if all Domains are destroyed, you lose. But games will also end when too many piles on the central board are exhausted. In that case, you count up the victory points that the AI snatched during the game and must beat this total with yours. In that way, it is still worthwhile to gather VP during the game.
In Darksworn, there is only a clear-cut Win/Loss condition: you lose if too many Citizen decks (to refresh the central board) are exhausted, you win if you fulfill all…
I also own Villages Of Valeria but I've found it to be a very limited solo experience. It's virtually the same every time and so I will probably get rid of it! However, I have always thought that Card Kingdoms was a better looking solo game and wanted to give it a go. It's been nigh on impossible to get up till now so I may well be persuaded to back this one....
I didn't realize it until now, but Valeria: Card Kingdoms has a lot of Expansions, doesn't it? Some are just Expansion Packs. Are those typically just a few cards, whereas an Expansion would have its own box and a lot more content?
I own Villages of Valeria, which I like. I like the art in these games, by Mihajlo Dimitrievski, too. I also didn't realize how busy The Mico is as a Board Game Artist.