Paladins of the West Kingdom Review - with Tom Vasel

[Music] and now it's time for another diced our review with Tom vassal hey folks I'm Tom vassal and today we're taking a look at a very anticipated game paladin's of the West Kingdom I was pretty pumped about this one I enjoyed the first one in this sequence here which was architects of the West Kingdom and I liked the previous series where at least I liked Raiders of the North Sea but this game here promised to be a somewhat heavier game than those first they're all fairly similar worker placement style games well this one yet workers of all different sorts and colors and you're following various tracks in fact the Paladin theme here isn't tremendously strong but I didn't really care about that I was hoping to see a nice interesting game let's see how it plays out [Music] there is a lot going on in this game and in the game the games gonna take place over seven rounds in each round you're gonna reveal one of these cards one of the cards the first three cards as you reveal these actually in round three you revealed two cards but it's going to show you various things that you will score points for if you build for example five of these you'll get eight points after that it's going to give you more spots where players can place workers to do things but these rounds going to keep track of the game and at the end of the game whoever has the most points is the winner players gonna be playing mostly on their own board but there is kind of these communal boards that are in the middle but let's take a look at a player's board you'll notice there's many different actions spaces on the board these actions are gonna cost workers there are workers of various colors black green white blue red and purple purple is wild but you also notice many spaces there's no color in the background so any color can go there but only a red one or a purple could go into this spot here sometimes an action requires multiple things to be placed into it and sometimes it requires one on this side of the board these actions require three things to be placed in them but as the game goes by it's possible the houses will be built in them causing the action to become cheaper to do in the future in each round of the game players are going to get workers based on a tavern cards you're gonna have one more than a number of players in the middle and players are going to pick one of these to draft so maybe I'll draft this one here players are also going to have three pounding cards and they're going to pick these cards one of them then and say this guy I'll stick him on the bottom of the deck he might show up later in the game one I'll put on top of the deck to use in the next round and one I'll keep for this round I keep it for this round for a couple things there's a color banner number here which will matter but it's going to give me two more workers so if I kept these two cards I have three Reds a white a blue and a purple so I'll take those workers and those are the workers I'm going to use this round as the round progresses I'm going to be placing these workers on the board taking actions everyone around a table until players all pass in which case then you'll do some any round up keeping and go on to the next round so one side of the board you have different actions that you can take here for example you can get more resources there's two main resources over the course of the game supplies and money and so I can put one guy here and take one supply or place one and a green and get three same thing here for trade but with coins over and develop you place two workers of any color and you can pay for coins here to basically develop to put out a workshop one of these green buildings and I already mentioned when you place it on this side you're gonna make those actions cheaper but not only that as you place these workshops you're gonna get workers and the more you place the better the color the workers get and if you replace all your workshops you'll even get bonus points at the end of the game one three and six down here you can pray where you can pay two money to take a group of workers off the board which lets you take the action twice and then conspire you can pay a worker of any color to get a purple who is wild but any time in this game you get a purple you're going to get a suspicion card you'll turn a suspicion card over and there might be some coins that you get you may or may not get coins sometimes they have one two or zero point on them but suspicion cards can be bad for you later on the recruit action is going to allow you to get a temporary benefit from a town's person or a worker or you can get a permanent one depending on whether you place one or two when you do that players are going to look up here at the top of the communal board at these people and if you just spend one worker you're gonna pick one of these cards possibly paying more costs on it depending on where it is and you'll get the automatic benefit at the top like this one for example gives a red and a white worker a purple worker etc or you can keep the bottom part of it which will give you a permanent ability for the rest of the game so for example this one here says anytime you build a red house you get a white worker and there's all sorts of benefits that you can get and you have to decide which ones you want to do players are going to be keeping track over the course of the game of their strengths faith and influence much they have of each of those and they'll be moving these up as the game goes by is different things will let you move them up however the Paladin that you play will also temporarily increase those numbers for this round so for example this black is under three but it's as if out of this round my black is at six while blue is at zero but for this round it's at one red is at two and it is unchanged and again you need to remember to eg DS also for an example this is converting costs no silver so that special ability would cost no money if I did it this round this is going to affect these actions so the way these actions work is you'll notice that on them it will show this is what you need for the action and this is what the action will probably give you so this needs black gives you blue this needs blue gives you read this needs red gives you black each of these has a different thing for example the garrison here will allow me to pay provisions to build these Garrison's these Garrison's are and going to as I revealed them move me up my black marker up over here Commission is the same thing and it will move my blue marker off both of these again if you get farther along the track will also give you points when you build these you're gonna be building these on the main board in these different regions here you're going to need a certain amount of faith or strength based on a number there at the bottom again I mentioned you get those and then you'll play C's on the board taking the reward that's shown there which could be another worker money etc you also have the opportunity to fortify when you fortify you're going to be building these fortification cards here and they're placed at the top of your board in fact it's kind of cool as you build them they kind of build a wall at the top you're gonna need a certain amount here of the blue of the influence to build these across but as you build these they're going to give you they're gonna move up your red and also possibly give you other benefits the absolve action down here will let you pay a certain amount here of your blue or you you have to have that much blue to get these and coins and this will move up your black banner and as you build these you'll be able to place these over here taking the rewards that's listed on them attacking and converting will allow you to deal with these people here that are placed at the top you can fight them and so when you fight them you'll get in immediate bonus what you like for example if you fight her this traitor you move up a blue and get a purple worker but if you convert her she'll give you maybe bonus points at the end of the game like for example this vigil on teh at the end of the game we'll give you one victory point for every two of those blue pottery things that you've built at this point you might be overwhelmed with the amount of things that I'm saying there's a lot going on there's going to be money that's based put up here and that as players do different actions they're gonna take money from that many of those are gonna come from hiring the criminals and when all that money's gone whoever has the most debts is going to get or whoever has the most efficient cards is going to get debt which is negative victory point cards but other than that everything in this game is going to be giving victory points there's the three bonus cards over here that if you build those things with the victory points building along the different tracks here the different people that you convert will give you victory points having finished wall all the way across the top will give you victory points and the how high you've gotten your different markers here will give you victory points you're gonna add all this stuff together and whoever has the most victory points at the end of the game is the winner and even though it sounds a little convoluted everything that I may have said here as time goes by you will it makes sense on how all of it fits together and it's simpler to play than it might appear oh now this this is both the best and worst aspect of the game so best is artwork really I've always liked the art style of these games the cards themselves are also really good quality the boards themselves so you have a player board here the other side is if you want to play solo AI will tell you how to do it this looks confusing but it's really not so bad it kind of points and shows you exactly what things are it takes a lot to figure out oh that's flipping over a debt card oh that's clearing everybody off of space and using it again that gives me two goods but as time goes by you do figure things out and it's interesting that the game really helps you with this cyclical nature between the three colors black blue and red and so yes there's a ton of things all over the board yes there's a gazillion pieces there's two problems one I'm surprised that put reading Riaan workers in the game it really matters in a style game and I would not have done that I think it can be hard to tell the other is I have no earthly idea why they decided to keep the Box the size that it is you can barely by using extreme Tetris skills get everything into the box then you combine that with do you want to sleeve the cards do you want to put stuff in bags do you want to rubberband it maybe you want to put all the one player stuff together so they can start the game nope you're not gonna really be able to pull that off this box should have been much bigger very rarely said it's about games but this is this is too small of a box and I thought that to be kind of a detriment I wanted I don't want to have to work hard to pack the game up each time and then there is a ton of pieces in this game there's a lot of pieces all over the place which is fine I just how do you get them all back in a box other than that though I do like everything I like how it looks I like the walls when you put them together it's really cool alrighty so that's a paladin's of the West Kingdom now straight up hands down I think this is the best of this series so far and I'm quoting writers of the North Sea and I really like writers of the North Sea especially with the expansions combined but I think this is better than that and better than architects although I like both of those games a lot paladins is a much deeper game than those and so why I find interesting about this game is the vast amount of choices you have at the beginning of each round in turn order you'll be drafting the card so you're picking your for starting workers and then you pick one of the three cars from the top of your deck and you're gonna pick one save one for next turn possibly and stick the other one underneath which you may or may not get again you're picking it based on special ability and what workers it gives you then you build on your own board for the most part you're not competing with other players on that board but you are competing as you try to go for the different workers that are out there as you try to conquer the different people out there and once you get into round 3 through 7 there are workers spaces out there that are really cool that you'll be fighting over those too so there's so many there's just a huge wider option of things and you can't do everything which is great because I don't want to be able to do everything I want to focus and palettes of the West Kingdom is most definitely a game and if you don't focus you're gonna lose you need to pick one of the tracks and I can't tell you that one tracks better than others I've done I've built all my workshops before I've completed doing one game I completed one line and another game I completed another line in one game I build a lot of walls in another game I went out and conquered a bunch of different people and each one of these well that's because I wasn't talking to you ciri so in this game you can follow all these different things you can follow and go through but if you follow just you know if you try to do a little bit of everything you're probably going to lose because the points are at the end of each of the tracks and for that paladin's of the West Kingdom I think really shines as I said it's overwhelming and when I sat down and taught this to people they're kind of like why there's so much going on here but I think once you start playing you sit there and go okay I have a green worker and two black workers and a white worker and where am I gonna put these workers I can put the white and or black one here and put the red and the green one here and you can mix and match where they go but there's kind of a focus and then once you kind of get into your groove of this is how I'm going to do it this is what I'm going to build then you can you you can follow through on that you can say okay now as I draft in the future I'm going to try to go more on that but you can't focus on just one color completely so let's say I focus on red only well to get more red power I'm gonna have to do another color to get that color I need another color you can kind of focus on maybe two of the three colors but it's as interesting dynamic and it's definitely a game that you will get better at as you play more and it's definitely a game that you can see the building blocks of his previous games in this is possibly shem phillips best game at this point time him in the SJ mcdonald they did a really good job like i said my biggest complaint is i can't fit it all in the box which sounds almost like a first world problem but it is a really problem with the game and other than that though i there's so many decks of cards in this game and so many different things that are coming up that it's it gives me not just the illusion of a lot of choices but real choices as to which strategy I'm gonna follow it's possible someone will write an article on the internet that says that it's following the one path is better than the others maybe but even then if multiple people are doing the same thing maybe I'll try to slide to something else and then those first three cards in the first three rounds also get bonus points if you follow different paths and I may do that just to get those bonus points but you could also ignore those and win now lots of good stuff so for me when someone says what is best about paladins I would say well their choices the art working components they look fantastic number three choices I know I keep coming back to that and number four it has this really neat cyclical engine where everything is codependent almost like a rock-paper-scissors dependency upon each other and that choosing the palette and at the beginning of each round is such a fascinating choice because hey this round I want to be able to do this for two coins set of four it gives me a special ability which hopefully will be really useful this particular round and it also moves up those three tracks which might allow me to do better actions all all a fairly deep game lots of choices what's not to like paladins of the West Kingdom dice our judgment excellent thanks so much for watching another diced our video if you enjoy our videos subscribe to the channel for more fun comprehensive board game coverage also consider joining us at one of our events come to diced our rich foods with a small intimate Gabba join us for diced our fruits the largest board game Clue attends diced towel wet in Las Vegas gaining fun on the west coast or diced our East in Orlando in sunny Florida diced our conventions the friendliest gaming conventions on earth I'm Eric summer and you've been watching the dice town [Music]

Channel: The Dice Tower

Views: 100,032

Keywords: board game, board, game, dice, card game, cards, catan, monopoly, tower, dice tower, vasel, review, tom vasel, vassel, settlers, gaming, GeekUsername: TomVasel, board game review, boardgame, uno, ticket to ride, apples to apples, educational games, educational, top 10, Shem Phillips, S J Macdonald, Garphill Games, Renegade Game Studios + 8 more

Id: 823nLNrZEnI

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 01 2019