Ranking The West Kingdom Trilogy

hi everyone my name is bonnie and i'm naveen from before you play and today we are going to be doing our final wrap-up for the west kingdom trilogy yes monique and i we played through all three of the games in the west kingdom trilogy they are designed by shem phillips and sj mcdonald published by garfield games and renegade games here in the us and if you're not familiar what we're talking about monique and i played through all three of these games with the tome saga expansion which basically links and connects all three of the games so if you missed any of those we'll leave a link to our series up in the corner um but we're basically going to talk about uh kind of our experience what we learned from it and go from there and of course our final rankings right and so if you're not familiar with this series if you're just joining us now this is the architects paladins and vi counts of the west kingdom we also did the age of artisans expansion for architects of sorts we did it in a co-op scenario and the tome saga and so going into this series you know this was my idea to play it because i think between the two of us i was the only one who had played one of them yes when monique pitched this idea to me um i had not played any of these so i knew very very little about it the only thing i knew was one time at a convention we had a group of friends that played paladins and we were told that it took them about four to five hours to finish that game and that's all i knew about any of these three games was like wow that game takes that long um so i was kind of going in the blind and so i think that's part of the reason why we hadn't played it until now is because we're thinking oh gosh all those games are really long yes when i had played architects the first time we played in a three-player game and i thought it was really interesting and at the time i didn't know i don't even think these two were released yet so when these when the next two games were released i thought okay so is it gonna be the same as this one right yeah is it just architects 2.0 right what exactly is it and that's i feel like something that tends to happen with other trilogies or even movies right they do this where it's kind of like a rehashing of the same game with just like this mechanic or you know this is a little bit different but it's pretty much the same game the thing that i was really impressed by with this trilogy is that it is not like that at all these are three individual games that play completely differently they're different weights they have different mechanics but they're all the same kind of theme like interwoven theme it is all tied together and so for that reason um it's i think it's very interesting that uh if you like or dislike one of them we still recommend that you play the rest of the series because if you maybe you don't like one of the games that should not be the kind of the barometer or the the measuring stick for the other two games we'd highly recommend it because they're so different uh there's maybe something there for you and vice versa maybe you liked one game and maybe you won't like another one so we highly recommend you try and test it out yeah if any of this looked interesting to you at all or if you enjoy euro a mechanics uh you know it's almost like a perfect marriage between mechanics and theme because a lot of times in our experience when we play euro games it's like a heavy emphasis on the mechanics really really right like that is what like that is typically what characterizes a euro game right right but here we have this uh you know this running theme that goes through them all and uh mechanics that try to complement that theme we have a running theme of virtue it's almost like uh choosing between being virtuous or being non-virtuous or being a criminal i guess right but it's not necessarily good or bad depending on the way that the game goes that might not be a bad thing that might that might cause you to win the game yes it's not like you know being good is going to be the good strategy right because you can use being bad as the good strategy exactly so it's very interesting i if you're not familiar by the way architects you're building up this the city and the society paladins you're trying to defend it slash convert people to live in uh the society and then by counts it's a flourishing uh well it's not a flourishing kingdom you're trying to make it you're trying to make it yes by by having commerce and doing different things uh with your buy accounts so uh that's kind of going back to that thematic ties of all three games and so i think these two designers did a wonderful job on this trilogy you know they really made each game stand out on their own you can play them as their own independent game or you can do the entire campaign and have a very rich experience in my opinion yeah i didn't have too much familiarity with these designers going into this i the only other game that i had played once was nocteluka which is kind of a much lighter game uh compared to all three of these yes um i did demo one like a round of uh raiders of the north sea but i it was so long ago it was kind of like real quick so i really don't have too much grasp on that game or that whole series of games uh so i'm very very impressed with these two designers and what they what they were able to create here and one last bit before we start talking about our ranking check out how perfect these box sizes are yeah they i think they're are they a perfect square they're definitely the same size you know you can line them up we have a we have a cowlick shelf where we put all our games and these are we have an entire west kingdom cubby exactly we put them all all of them are going to stay on there you know these are these are keeper games for us which is saying a lot because we're we're typically into heavier games than this like those are that's kind of like our bread and butter but we really thoroughly enjoy this series yeah totally and uh i really appreciate it when uh designers and publishers manufacturers can can get a nice thick game into a nice compact little box like this i think it's perfect yeah they have your shelf space in mind yes exactly all right so let's start with the tome saga yes so we just want to basically talk about this before we do the ranking because this is a uh a big part of the experience that we have yeah you know thank you to everybody a pair who recommended this because i really enjoyed playing with it yeah yeah it was it was cool um i like the fact that uh you if you thumb through the deck before each game you like you can know what's potential that you have to focus on but you only get to see three of them so then it's like okay these are the three things that even though i'm trying to go for the win i'd like to go for the win via these routes yes so i really tried that in all three games and it didn't work out for me i was able to collect homes throughout uh i think i collected more in-game tomes than you did throughout this i think naveen had tom saga tunnel vision i did every time we would play the game he would just gun for those those uh those objectives my thought process was if i can pick up two of the three in play and still win the game then that's a huge spread problem was i wasn't winning the games because i was so focused on the tome saga but and that is what i like about the top saga yeah by the way hot tip it is not the tomi saga it is the tome song that is something else that we learned during the series but uh and if you're not familiar with this in particular this is just a way for you to play all three of these games in one campaign by presenting everybody with specific objectives but if you win them they'll give you a power to use in the next game and at the end of the whole trilogy whoever has the most tomes wins the entire campaign and tones are literally like a little card so yeah if you're familiar with it then you know and so the thing that i really liked about the tome saga is it doesn't really take away too much from the actual game experience like it is a perfect compliment it's just a supplementary thing to tie everything together to keep everybody kind of involved yes from game to game yeah you're a lot more um invested yes in the next games afterwards if you play them all as one campaign yeah especially if you get some of those in game tomes it's nice knowing like i have this power in the next game and you kind of marinate on it and be like okay so i get points for every time i do x y z or i get to do this x xyz so how can i shape that into the next game so uh it was really really exciting for me to to have two of them almost every single game yeah going into the next one but i also liked how it uh it kind of balanced like if you won the first game the next game you're going to have less money and you're going to go last in turn order yeah as compared to your opponents right i really like it it's definitely not mandatory and i think that speaks to the trilogy on its own the fact that these games are so independently entertaining on their own that you don't need the tome saga but if you enjoy all three games and you know you're going to play all of them and you would like to do them as a campaign this is a no-brainer especially if you enjoy playing co-ops because there is a co-op scenario for all three of these games we played the architects one it was really hard probably not my favorite way to play any of these games but we've been told that the paladins one is really good we haven't played the other two co-op yet all right and finally our final ranking now there are only three games so we skipped out on superlatives this time we'll kind of try to embed them in our ranking we also talked about this already since there are only three games right and we have the exact same ranking so we'll just do this together sure okay so starting with number three our least favorite in this trilogy that we've been just you know throwing compliments out of all the time gushing over is uh it's architects for me yeah and i think for you as well yes so this was number three for us this is the lightest of the three games which is not not a bad thing you know this is something that i think is best played at higher player counts which is probably part of the reason why for me at least it is the the lowest one of the three it plays fine at two the way that we did it in our uh in our series is we played with constantine yeah a bot i bought yeah a bot player who would remove pieces off the board i don't necessarily know if if i were to play it again at two if i would if i would play with constantine oh really see i think i would yeah we kind of differ in that yeah i think i would because then it just kind of creates a little bit more chaos which is kind of kind of architects because you know they can steal your workers and stuff you kind of want that little chaos if not then it's just you and me i don't know like are you gonna be going in and and stealing my workers as often you know so constantine kind of just forces that flow yes a little bit more so for me i think i would only play with constantine at two players i would say you know i've played this two and three players i've never played you can play with the five players i'm thinking four players would be the sweet spot so in a four player game i think everyone there's there's enough checks and balances there's a lot of opportunity to go hijack other people's uh workers and throw him in the slammer and get some cash uh but i think i think four players is that sweet spot now of the three games i think that this is the easiest one to get into because it is the lightest one so if you're looking for an entry into the trilogy this is not a bad place to start yep uh it probably is the best place to start honestly another quick tip if you are going to play the tome saga you must play with the non-asymmetric sides of the player boards that is a big mistake that we made the first time we played through the dome saga because we did a practice run before filming it yeah um that just breaks the game so much well one of the we'll tell you what one of the tomes was have 13 on the virtue track and monique had an asymmetric player power that started her off at like 10 on the virtue track so she was like okay i'll just gain three virtue oh i got one of the tones like that's a ton that's easy let's do it yeah so and i was like in the corruption side or the non-virtuous side no everybody has had the same the same starting benefits and so that is architects um it is number three for us but we still highly enjoyed it it is probably the most thematic of the three oh and we played with the age of artisans expansion which is excellent this is i in my opinion i think this is a very very good yeah that is a good one expansion in general you know it doesn't change the game it just enhances the base game and i love it when expansions do that so a really great job on the age of artisans expansion number two so this one was really hard for me forever you made your decision i did yeah pretty immediately the reason why is because we played the next two i played paladins and i thought oh for sure this is the best one and then i played my accounts and i was like wait hold on this one might be better i really like deck building yeah but after a lot of thought we both agree our number two is vi counts of the west kingdom yes uh fantastic game uh it is definitely the number two for me um the the mechanisms in this game are really really cool um i like the way that the board flows uh where you you kind of manage your hands and you're trying to play your cards in a right sequence to have the right symbols out so that you can go around the board with your vi count and perform certain actions uh there's essentially four main types of actions in the game and it's uh it's very very clever it's a very clever design yeah uh it is interesting because there is more interaction in this game than in uh paladins but less interaction than there is in architects yes that's right also part of the reason why architects is not the best at two because you need that interaction to let that game shine exactly this is kind of like a nice middle ground i think that this game still plays really well at two i think i would prefer it at two because my biggest pet peeve with this one is is the length because the players are on the table determine the length of the game which is really really really interesting idea i like it when games do that but the issue is sometimes it can run a little bit long i love deck building games and this has a strong deck building component to it and that also adds to the temple of the game which is one of my favorite parts of this game because you're just going around this circular board and you're going around and around and around that's it you do that until the game happens you're just doing different combinations of those four actions that naveen mentioned you can't do them all you want to and you see other people doing things that you're not doing and scoring points for that and being envious of them that is what characterizes this game for me constantly saying oh god naveen got that i should be doing that yeah but i'm doing my own thing here and so just figuring out how to get the proper people into your deck who are going to work with your strategy is what makes this game really fun for me but yeah like i said the length yeah it's all about the length yeah because the length of the game is basically uh if uh one of two piles becomes depleted that basically signals the ending that the two piles are either debt or deeds are they deeds yes yeah debt or deeds uh and so i think that is one of my favorite parts of the game uh yes i agree with you on the the length of time but the fact that if the debts deplete then you want to have the most deeds yeah so there's kind of this inversely proportional uh kind of relationship between what is being depleted throughout the game plus what you have been doing throughout the game and you kind of want to be able to to hedge against both and what you can score what you can score at the end exactly yeah but in general i do like this one a lot i think that the middle castle thing that you kind of look at whenever there's any kind of like plastic toy looking things in board games you always kind of wonder like oh is that going to be gimmicky or is that going to be cool right it's cool it worked yeah works yeah for me it's cool what is your favorite player count by the way uh i know you said yours was two um i think mine would probably be three because of that plastic thing in the center that castle in the center i think i like it at three players because there's a little bit more checks and balances there's a little bit more competition for the manuscripts more competition for the castle as well that is a good point i think i'm gonna change my answer uh and say that this game is probably best at three i feel like in this game there's nothing worse than seeing your opponent just go okay well i'm going to put something in the castle and it's going to move this and i'm going to move that and then like 15 minutes later they're still moving around the castle right they're staying on the inner road yeah yeah just so you need that third person to kick people out like no that is no you can't do that integral so that was our number two that was vi counts so that's what we mean yes now we're number one paladins paladins is so good this game is so good it's so weird looking when you first take it out of the box that was my first yeah it's like which color are you which color do you want to be oh you're not any color yeah oh really no well for me it was the player boards i had some culture shock when we first pulled this out uh you know learning it to get ready for the series we pulled out the player boards and we're like so is that the main board why are there four of them everybody has a main board right it's a strangest looking game but it is so good yeah this is a game where you must plan your strategy you must pick a path or at least just maybe one or two paths that you really want to go down this game will punish you if you try to specialize in everything because of the feedback loops that everything is like you need uh you know your power to to feed into your you know the whatever the black uh is which is also the the then the to the red resource so or the blue resource right it's very very interesting in that way that you really want to try to figure out combinations how can this resource feed into this one so it can just feed right back into it and then they can both kind of just go up and they're not technically resources they're like elements right the three different uh elements that you have on your tracker on the left hand side this game has two main things going for it you're trying to bump up those tracks in order to do the things on your board that require you to be at a certain level on those tracks everything else in the game is kind of supplementary like you have your paladins who will help you do those things you have the workers that you need in order to do those things right but the main point is to get those buildings out to hire you know do all those actions out on your player board and one of the big reasons why i think the game punishes you if you try to do everything is because you only score points for putting out like the last three buildings yes or like exactly you know it's not you know it's not one of those games where you score points for everything it's one of those games where everything can help you do other things it's just a constant efficiency strategy game like you are just trying to be efficient the whole way through because there are ways for you to earn more workers somewhere down the line you're going to have a moment of oh my gosh i did not calculate that into my strategy and now i'm suddenly inefficient what is this going to cost me uh what am i going to do with this excess sometimes yeah that's right yeah it's my the parts where it always gets like oh no is where you have multiple colors of meeples and sometimes you just tuck in one colored meatball in the wrong spot and you're like oh no i need that green one now but i put them in that in that middle like no man's land kind of zone that's painful yeah that's always painful but um i might one of my favorite parts of this game is the fact that you draw three of the paladins yes you play you you're gonna play one one is going bye-bye and the other one you can stack knowing that it's coming later that is really cool that setup is really really cool it's funny because you know you choose a paladin and it gives you one special benefit to use that round and you're going to say to yourself i'm going to try to use the heck you want to out of this palette yeah but then you realize like oh i can only actually do it twice that's right like it already feels like something you're gonna want to tap into several times but there's there's only it's so much you can do it around right and so we really love this game this is one of this is a game that we talked about the most like after we filmed it after we even like played it the first couple times uh this is definitely the heaviest of the three yep so if you're kind of looking like we were mentioning earlier if you're looking into just kind of getting into the series um maybe you want to introduce some of these games to new gamers architects all the way yeah for sure but if you're looking for maybe the crunchy the crunchier experience this one it can cause some significant analysis paralysis which is the reason why i prefer this at two yeah i prefer this tattoo for that reason as well as this is a pretty multiplayer games um there's very little competition in terms of uh kind of com competing for certain things i mean there's there's some cards out there and also some spaces on that main board it's not like architecture but it's not like architecture you're throwing people in jail yeah yeah there's very there's some levels of competition obviously but it's not that much and you're really kind of honed in on your own board and you're trying to figure out okay how do i make all these different actions work how can i take this action a second time and none of that is related to what monique is doing on her board you know so so for that reason i would say i would pretty much only play those two players because at three and four players it will add more time unlike vi counts which i think it you know kind of scales properly uh the way you kind of see those different decks and this one it's still seven rounds so everybody has to take their turns and you can't move on until the next player is taking their turns you can't all take the same turns yeah it's true so you might have a four-hour game yes exactly and so with that being said this is probably my favorite of the three to play at two so if you're looking for the best at two probably passing this and this is pretty much it for our west kingdom trilogy and so final ranking was number one paladin's the start of the show number two buy counts and three architects uh we would love to hear if anybody out there has played all three which ones are your favorite or if you haven't played all three which ones have you played and what did you think of them please let us know in the comments down below we would love to hear from you now we do want to mention that we are going to be starting another series it seems to be kind of something that we always like to do uh we will be playing through all of ube rosenberg's titles are a solid majority of all his titles yeah not all of them yeah yeah yeah like maybe like 80 to 90 of his titles uh and then also we are starting a mineclash games series uh where we'll be playing two different versions of tricarion as well as two different versions with expansions of anachrony so join us starting next week for the start of those we are looking forward to playing those and showcasing them and thank you all so much for watching the video we hope you enjoyed it if you'd like to see more videos like this in the future please consider subscribing thank you thank you bye [Music] you

Channel: Before You Play

Views: 10,960

Rating: 4.9718804 out of 5

Keywords: board games, west kingdom board game, how to play west kingdom, best west kingdom game, wets kingdom game rules, west kingdom board game rules, how to play viscounts of the west kingdom, how to play board game, board game rules, board game review, gaming reviews, architects of the west kingdom, paladins of the west kingdom, viscounts of the west kingdom, tabletop, brettspiele, board game reviews, before you play, west kingdom review

Id: tgST71suz48

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021