Architects Of The West Kingdom - How To Play

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi and welcome to watch it played my name is Rodney Smith and in this video we're going to learn the 1 to 5 player game architects of the West Kingdom designed by Shem Phillips and SJ MacDonald and published by Garfield games who helped sponsor this video the newly-appointed lands require the work of skilled architects but the king is not easily impressed so you're gonna have to outshine your competitors if you hope to retain your noble status but will you be able to remain virtuous or will you have to resort dark alley dealings only you can make that decision so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up place the main board in the center of the play area and then find these black-market cards these will either show two or one good on one side or for goods on the other shuffle them into a pile here so that this side known as the small market is face-up the cards with this back are the rewards shuffle and deal two per player plus one into a facedown pile here I'm gonna set up a two-player game in this video so I've dealt five and will return the rest to the box the green-backed building card should now be shuffled and placed face down into the space for them here on the board these apprentice cards with the blue back are also shuffled and then you'll deal one face up into the eight spaces here with the rest of the deck placed facedown nearby these def cards can also be put to the side of the board with this side face up along with these multiplier cards now create a supply near the board for all of these clay wood stone gold marble and silver pieces the trays you see here don't come with the game but I'm just using them to help me keep things organized now from the supply put four silver pieces into this space above the tax stand next have each player take one of the player boards putting this full colored side face up in front of themself and collecting the twenty workers and two markers in their matching color they should now each put one of their markers here underneath of the cathedral and the others stacked on top of the seven space of this virtue track now deal four cards to each player from the building deck and you'll keep the secret but from them every player will choose one to keep passing the rest to the player on their left once everyone has done this from the newly received cards everyone picks one more to keep again passing the rest to the player on their left from the remaining two cards that you receive pick once more but return the UH incured to the bottom of the building deck in this way everyone will start the game with a hand of three buildings now randomly choose a starting player giving them three silver from the supply the next player in clockwise order takes four silver a third player would take five and so on if you want a more varied setup you can have players use the other side of their boards which starts them with differing amounts of silver virtue and other items and provides each player with a unique special ability these abilities are explained on the back of the Appendix book which I'll leave for you to discover on your own and that's the setup now to make it a little easier for me to move things around here on the table during this video I'm gonna set some of the components just off screen and only bring them back in as necessary in architects of the West Kingdom players will be trying to appease the King and earn points by building a variety of different buildings and show their progress on the cathedral but it won't just be the quantity of your work that's judged but also the quality of your character the game is played over a series of turns starting with the first player and then going clockwise around and around the table on your turn you'll place a single worker from your board on to a location of the main board and there are three different types that you can go to large open circles like this mean that any number of players and workers can end up here over the course of the game so if yellow one or two in a future turn they could assign another worker here and in the same way other players can go here as well on the other hand locations with small circles like these mean that only a single worker can be placed into those spaces outline spaces can only hold a single worker as well but you lay them down there and once placed you will not be able to get them back for the rest of the game the prison area is another location but you may not choose to place workers here instead they'll go sent there by other effects and with that understood now let's go through all the different locations on the board and see how they work the mines Quarry forest and silversmith will give you resources based on how many of your workers are at one of those locations for example the first time that you send a worker to the quarry you'll get one stone from the supply but on a future turn if you go here again you'll get two stone and the next time you'll get three and so on as you're reminded of here and don't forget this is a large circle location and that means any number of workers can be placed here including ones from other players just keep in mind that this player will only count the number of their own workers in that location meaning that they'll only collect a single stone in this case either way the resources you collect are then placed on your board the forest works the same way but giving you wood from the supply equal to the number of your workers there the silversmith gives you one silver from the supply plus an extra silver for each worker that you have here so in this situation I would collect three the mines are similar but they offer a choice of either clay or gold each time you place a new worker here but you must pick one or the other each time you can't gain a mix of both for clay you get one piece plus one more for every worker you have at that location so in this case I would gain two clay on a future turn if I put a second worker here I would collect a total of three pieces gold is harder to obtain and you'll only get one for every two of your workers present in the mines so if I place the worker here now to collect gold I would only get a single piece also the first time that you place a worker here you cannot collect gold and must choose clay instead this is the King's storehouse and like the mines it offers two types of actions shown by these rows of symbols when you place a worker into this location you can perform one of these actions for each of your workers there for example if I was placing my third worker here I could do this action up to three times or even just once and then this one up to two times or really any combination that I like and you're reminded of this here where it says one action per worker now to perform this first action you any combination of two stone wood or clay to the supply and then you gain one virtue so as an example I might choose to return one stone and one clay your virtue is shown on this track and each time you lose or gain some you'll move your marker accordingly if you're performing this action then instead you'll return any combination of three stone and/or wood that you have to collect one marble from the supply next we have the workshop and going here will either let you hire one apprentice or work on gathering new building plans and the number of workers you have here will affect your options if you choose to hire an apprentice you must pay for silver but notice these are different colors anytime a cost shows coins in red instead of paying them back to the supply you put them here in the area for taxes so I'd pay two to the tax stand and the other two I would return to the supply then based on the number of workers I have at this location I can hire any one apprentice from up to a certain number of columns away going from left to right if I have just one worker here then I can hire one of the apprentices from this first column but if I have two workers present then I could hire an apprentice from either of these first two columns with three workers present I would then unlock this third column and with four or more workers I would then be able to pick any one apprentice from the face up display now it's also possible to use silver as a shortcut if you want to you can put a silver on the leftmost card of a row to skip it for example if I only had two workers here I would normally only be able to acquire any one of the first two apprentices in these rows but if I really wanted this one I could put a silver here and now I could ignore this one and pick either of these two placing the silver here only affects this row so I'd still only have access to these two if I was taking from the top row however I can continue placing silver from left to right to skip further apprentices so if I put a coin here I would now have access to these two just note you can only pay silver from the leftmost apprentice to the right you can't skip any spaces in the future if a player hires an apprentice with any amount of silver on it then they get to keep that silver for themselves either way after hiring an apprentice place it face up in front of you and shift any cards in its Road to the left to fill in the space created and then draw a new card to fill in the empty spot a player may have more than one copy of the same apprentice but may never have more than five apprentices total though you can freely discard them at any time to make room for new ones placing the removed apprentices at the bottom of the apprentice deck some apprentices cause either the gain or the loss of virtue represented by these symbols that will resolve as soon as they are hired but just note that discarding an apprentice later does not reverse that effect apprentices will also provide you with new abilities or bonus actions which are represented by the symbols found at the bottom of them we're not going to explain each of them in this video but the game comes with a helpful appendix which lists all of the apprentice abilities explaining how they work if you have any questions the other action at the workshop is gaining new building plans and here you'll draw one card from this deck plus one more for every two of your workers at the workshop so in this case I'd get to draw two building plans and you'll keep all of them except that at the end of your turn if you have more than six building plans you must discard the extras of your choosing face down to the bottom of the deck now as you might be suspecting as time goes on the spaces of the board will fill up with more and more workers and if your opponents have focused on particular locations then the actions that they take there will only continue to get stronger but don't worry you're not powerless to stop them large crowds attract the attention of local authorities who will encourage you to go break up those gatherings where unsavory deeds are likely happening by visiting the town center you're able to recruit locals to help you capture workers from any of the large open circle locations of the main board and for each worker you now have here you may pick one location and capture one group of workers of the same color for each silver that you spend to give you an example I'm going to assume we're in a four player game and by placing a worker here yellow now has two total so they could pick this location and spend one silver to capture all the workers of a single color here like these green ones they could then spend another silver for their other worker and pick another color at the same location to capture as well just keep in mind you must target the same location with each capture yellow could not have spent that silver to instead capture the purple figures over here the exception to this is if you only have two or three players in the game in which case you can divide your captures among at most two locations so again going back to our two-player game like we have here if yellow went to the town center now they can perform up to three different captures between two different locations they might spend one silver for the first capture and take these workers and then spend a second silver to capture this worker you also always have the option of performing fewer captures than you're allowed to make perhaps in that last example the player wouldn't have performed a second capture here feeling that spending one silver to just take one worker wouldn't be worth it that said no matter the situation any opponent workers you capture are then placed into this area for them here on your player board also note when paying silvers at the town center the first one is shown in red and again that means that you'll place it into the tax stand well the rest that you may pay will go to the general supply I should also point out a few other details about this action when capturing you can target the town center itself because again this is a large open circle location other locations like the guild hall black market prison or another player's board cannot be captured from you can even use the town center to capture your own workers for example yellow might place a worker here and then spend a silver to target this location where they have three workers hanging out the matically you can think of this as them sending out a team to warn them to come home as they're attracting too much attention from the local authorities and when you capture your own workers they go directly back to your supply where they can be used again as normal next let's look at the tax stand you can only go here with a worker if there's silver above it but if so you steal all of it how as we know this is the symbol for losing virtue and for such a dastardly deed you now lose to virtue by moving your marker here two spaces down now we come to the black market which has three separate spaces each with their associated action shown directly beneath them and again at most only one worker can be placed into each of the spaces if a player goes here they pay one silver and lose one virtue but then collect the goods from the supply that are showing on this small market card this space costs two silver and you lose one virtue to go here but then you can either choose to take any one face-up apprentice or draw five building plants keep one and then discard the rest of the bottom of the deck here you'll pay three silver and lose one virtue but then take all of the goods showing here from the supply from what is known as the large market this is the guardhouse and it allows players to take one action for each worker they have their so in this case two actions which can be divided up amongst these four options as you like the first one sends all workers you have in this captured area of your player board to the prison and then you'll collect one silver for each so in this case three this represents the local authority's appreciation for your efforts to maintain order with this action you release all of your workers from prison placing them back on your player board basically you visited the guard house and successfully made your case for their innocence this third action represents you bribing the local authorities to help get your workers back not from jail but from other players if you have at least one of your workers captured by other players you can pay five coins two of which are taxed or take one of these debt cards and lose one virtue and this will allow you to take back all of your workers from every capture box of the other players boards if you choose to pay by collecting a debt card these will cost you two victory points if you still have them at the end of the game however as another action here you can pay six silver three of which are taxed to pay off a debt flipping it over to gained one virtue you'll also want to keep this card as certain apprentices will provide benefits for paid debts actions you take at the guardhouse can be performed in any order and although it would make no sense to repeat any of these first three on the same turn you can take this action multiple times again assuming you have the workers here to assign to those various actions and can pay any related costs this is the Guildhall and there are only two ways to place a worker here either by constructing a building from your hand or by working on the cathedral and we'll go over how both of these work in a moment but when performing either of these actions you then place one of your workers here like this in the top left most empty space meaning that over the course of the game the spaces will fill up like this the numbered ones that we see here will only be used if you have the indicated number of players in this two-player game the next person to use the guild hall would go here but if we had four players you'd instead fill two here and then go on to the next row now though let's learn how you use the guild hall to construct a building all buildings have a cost in resources shown here so to build this gamblers den I would need to return one stone one gold and three marble from my board back to the supply they may also have symbols here in the top left hand corner which will require you to have at least one hired apprentice with those symbols in front of you for example this one requires carpentry and tiling expertise which is found on these two apprentices that I have here once you've covered all the requirements you'll place the building you have completed face up above your player board checking for any symbols here if you see a lightning bolt this is an immediate effect which must be resolved right now for example this one will cost us two virtue if you see a flag this is an effect that you'll resolve at the end of the game we won't go over all the various building effects in this video but again they're all covered in detail in the game's appendix either way after constructing a building place one of your workers here in the guild hall however you might also use the guild hall to help with the construction of the cathedral to do this pay the resources shown to the left of the row above your marker so in this case one gold and anyone building card in your hand which you'll discard to the bottom of the building plan' deck then move your marker up one level if there's an outline space for it the higher you go the fewer spaces there are so advancing on the cathedral early could block others from getting to the same heights after advancing then reveal the top card of this reward deck and gain its shown benefits and remove it from play if this deck is ever empty then players who advance on the cathedral will just get one virtue finally after advancing the Cathedral placed one of your workers into the next available guild hall space this means that you cannot take either of these actions if you do not have a worker to put here and don't forget workers placed in the guild hall will never be returned to you speaking of which if you start your turn with no workers on your player board your entire turn will instead be spent reclaiming any one worker from the main board but not including the guild hall black market prison or ones that have been captured with a worker reclaimed you will now be able to use it on your next turn before moving on we need to talk a little bit more about the black market because if an action causes either all three of the black market spaces to be filled or a worker to be placed in either of these spaces of the guild then after the related action is resolved the black market is reset this symbol represents the king holding the architects accountable for their actions and it follows five steps first all workers in the black market are now sent to the prison then the top small-market card is turned over and put on top of what is known as the large market and if there isn't a card here to flip over during a reset because all of them are already over here then you'll shuffle these into a new small market deck now if any players have apprentices with abilities that resolve on a market reset these are performed in any chosen order then as shown here all players with three or more workers in prison now lose one virtue and finally the player or players if there's a tie with the most workers in the prison each take one debt card if you ever run out of debt cards or any of the resources have players trade in some using these multiplier cards for example if we had run out of gold and I had five of them I could return four to the supply for the other players to use and then take one of these multiplier cards and put the remaining gold on it as a reminder that it represents the same five gold that I had previously in this way debts and resources are never meant to run out and are always available to the players with that we've covered all the spaces of the main board and after a player takes their turn the next player in clockwise order will take theirs but now let's go back to the virtue track because there's a few extra things we need to learn about there as you can see there are various icons here that will become active as your marker moves along the track for example once you have three or less virtue you'll start skimping on your taxes and for each of these avoid tax symbols you'll ignore one tax on all future costs so while my marker is here if I went to the workshop I'd pay two silver to the supply as usual but only one silver to the tax stand as long as you have four or fewer virtue you can no longer work in the Cathedral as this symbol shows until your virtue is again above that amount in a similar way if you have 10 or more virtue you can't go to the black market spaces until you drop below 10 again if you would gain virtue when you are already at the top of the track instead you may destroy one unpaid debt meaning you return it to the deck and that also means you won't gain virtue for it and it won't trigger any related apprentice abilities if you ever lose virtue when you're already at the bottom of the track then you gain an unpaid debt card you'll also notice these yellow flags that are buying many of the virtues spaces and those represent points that you'll earn or lose at the end of the game speaking of which the end of the game is triggered once a worker is placed into the last available space of the guild hall the current player will finish their turn and then each player including that one gets one final turn and during this final turn you can still take the guild hall act just set your worker near it then with the game over players now resolve any endgame effects from their constructed buildings which will show this flag symbol and during this time all apprentice abilities and board effects remain active for example if you gained a virtue that would move you past the top of the virtue track you could still destroy an unpaid debt either way you now also gain all the victory points which are shown within the yellow flags in the top right hand corner of your constructed buildings along with any points you might receive from their particular effects to this you'll then add or remove points based on your final virtue and each unpaid debt will cost you two points also take into account any points gained based on your position along the cathedral track and then every marble gold and ten silver you have each gained you another point then finally you lose one point for every two workers you have in the prison now the player with the most points is considered the greatest architect and is declared the winner in the case of a tie the tied player with the highest virtue is the winner and if there's still a tie the tied player with the most silver wins and if there's still a tie that tied players share the victory the game also includes rules for solo play as well as additional variability for two players using two players versus bot rules which are found in this appendix but I'll leave that for you to discover on your own otherwise that's everything you need to know to play Architects of the West Kingdom if you have any questions about anything you saw here feel free to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance you'll also find forums for discussion other videos pictures and lots more over on its page at BoardGameGeek which I'll put a link to in the description of this video but until the next episode thanks for watching [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 133,754

Keywords: Instructions, Board Games, Tabletop, Learn How To Play, Play Throughs, Game Rules, How To Play, Watch It Played, Learn, Rules, Card Games, Instructional, Miniatures, Learn To Play, GeekUsername:Pelvidar

Id: _ZrG99c4vKQ

Length: 24min 48sec (1488 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 19 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/smokechaser]

Can't wait for this game to arrive. I'm a huge fan of Shem Phillips and the Raiders world he created, and it looks like Sam MacDonald has built a really sweet game with him! Looks great, u/SJ-the-kiwi!

[u/djrichards]

Thanks Rodney I knew you wouldn’t let us Canadian folks down.

[u/MrGurbic]

The container just landed in port. I’m really looking forward to this!

[u/[deleted]]

How is everyone playing this? I thought it isnt even out yet. Was it a KS and i just never knew?

[u/BoardGamingRamblings]

Really looking forward to get my copy from KS. I backed this for two reasons. One, it looked cool, and second, I have heard so many good things about Raiders, but never played. I actually got to play Raiders a week or so ago, and it was a fine game. Looking forward to see if I like this better!

[u/Wancrnls]

Just played this about half an hour ago. Love it. Fresh take on the worker placement formula. Need to play this more!