Game Play Review - Architects of the West Kingdom

Architects of the West Kingdom is a game published by Renegade Game Studios and Garphill Games. The premise of the game is for players to take on the role of royal architects working to maintain their status and impress the king by constructing landmarks. Once a certain number of constructions have occurred, which is based on the number of players, the game end is triggered. The player with the most victory points is declared the winner.

This post is broken into the following 3 sections, feel free to jump directly to one:

1. General summary - consisting of information about overall enjoyment, theme, replayability, and upgrades
2. Complexity - consisting of information about the rulebook, setup, player turns, and overall learning curve
3. Player turns - consisting of game type, game flow, rule you are likely to miss, and favorite aspect

Number of players we had: 3
Our play time (not including setup): 1 hour 35 minutes

Overall enjoyment

Overall our group really likes this game for several reasons. First, there are lots of things to focus on and ways to gain victory points. This means players are often working towards slightly different goals and even from game to game, players employ different strategies. This game requires a medium amount of strategy and players really must pay attention to all of the game board and other players if they want to win. There is also a great level of suspense in the game because nobody really knows exactly how well other players are doing.

We also really like the medieval theme of the game as well as the layout of the player board and player cards. We enjoy the game board which is like a map of an entire town. This make the game board feel well thought out as there is a logical spot for all the special locations and places players will want to send workers on their turns. The artwork is great and follows the theme throughout each part of the game.  

Lastly, because players are bound to run out of workers, they must occasionally retrieve them. When doing this, they can retrieve some of their opponent's workers which can be very strategic. Later players can gain money by releasing opponents' workers to prison, or they can keep those workers and force their opponents to pay to get them back. When any player retrieves workers, your entire strategy can be forced to change and this is another way the game is great at creating suspense.

Theme

The theme of the game is medieval, with players taking on the role of architects. As an architect, players recruit apprentices, work on the cathedral, build their own constructions and much more. There are places to gain supplies, in addition to some ways to more quickly gain materials, but beware, they come at the cost of  your virtue. Everything about this game is a balance of decisions and the theme is great at putting players in that frame of mind.

Replayability

While the main premise and mechanics of the game remain the same, there are a couple of things that add to the replayability of it. First, as mentioned above, there are several ways to gain victory points which can lead to a win. These include:

1. Increasing your virtue
2. Constructing buildings
3. Acquiring apprentices that have special scoring
4. Staying out of debt and out of prison which deduct victory points
5. Working on the cathedral
6. Having unused resources

The other thing that increases the replayability is the fact that each character card is two-sided: a standard side and a variable side. The variable side provides each player with a unique ability, in addition to beginning the game with different levels of virtue, silver, number of workers in prison, starting resources and more.

Upgrades

There is an expansion to this game, Architects of the West Kingdom: Age of Artisans. Additionally, you can purchase metal versions of the silver coins in the original game.

Rule book

The rule book is well organized and easy to follow. There are a decent number of pages, but mostly because there are many different actions a player can take on their turn. Luckily, each page has a heading for the subject it covers, there are plenty of images to go with explanations, and there are sections in a different color font to draw your attention to important clarifications and rules.

One of the best parts is the additional pamphlet with full descriptions and clarifications of apprentice abilities, building effects, variable setup and solo play.

Setup

Setting up a game of The Architects of the West Kingdom is fairly easy and takes about 10-15 minutes. There are a series of steps to follow, each of which is explained with images on a 2-page spread in the rulebook (as seen in the image above).

Turns

There are several things a player can do on their turn, but each action requires players to have a worker to place on the board. On their turn players can place a worker to:

• Collect resources from the quarry, forest, mines or silversmith.
• Trade resources at the King's Storehouse.
• Hire new apprentices or gain additional building cards at the workshop.
• Capture groups of workers, including their own, by visiting the town centre.
• Collect all the silver at the Tax Stand.
• Collect valuable resources from the Black Market (if you're willing to risk losing virtue).
• Visit the Guardhouse to retrieve your workers who are in prison, sell other players' workers for silver, pay off debts or pay to retrieve workers who were captured by another player and remain on that player's board.
• Construct a building or work on the cathedral by visiting the Guardhall.

Because there are so many places for players to send their workers, the game moves quickly. Players are busy planning their next move during other players' turns. Sometimes other players moves affect your plans and you have to adjust and do something different than you expected. The rest of the time players are working to determine the best order of operations for gathering resources, visiting locations and maximizing their turns before they need to retrieve their workers.

Overall learning curve

The overall learning curve of this game is not that difficult even though there are a lot of options on each turn, and there are many ways to earn victory points. The symbols on the game board are used across the player cards, and building and apprentice decks. After a few rounds it is easier to remember what the symbols mean, and if you need clarification, the additional pamphlet with building and apprentice descriptions is super helpful.

Play type

The Architects of the West Kingdom is a symmetrical game with an optional setup where players have variable abilities. This game is mostly a worker placement game, with a small amount of card drafting, as well as requiring players to use a decent amount of strategy and planning to be successful.

Game flow

The game flows quickly because players are planning their turns when not actively taking a turn. Most player actions are quick, with only a few triggering bonus actions or benefits. The only thing that slows players down is if they made a mistake in their planning, or if another player captured some of their workers and messed up a player's plan for that turn. However, this is something that has to happen over time or players will run out of workers and once locations begin to get full, everyone knows someone is about to capture workers!

Rule you are likely to forget/miss

The one rule we forgot was to take a reward card when advancing the cathedral. I think we got distracted with how quickly the Guildhall was filling up, paying our resources and seeing players get edged out of the cathedral and simply forgot - but these rewards can be super helpful so be sure to grab them when you have earned them!

Favorite aspect

Our favorite aspect of this game is how many different actions each player can take on their turn, how many ways there are to earn victory points, and the suspense naturally created by the game mechanics.

Additionally, we like that the game has a natural way of resetting itself. The more workers you have in any location, the more you collect when a new worker is placed there. However, over time this also makes your workers a target to other players who can collect those workers to keep you from using them or simply to gain silver by sending them to prison.

Even if another player does not capture your workers, each player will eventually run out of players so they have to plan to retrieve them at some point. This means each player has to choose which location they want to reset when collecting or visiting that location. This is a really cool way to keep any one player from running off with the game.

All in all, while we do not play this game all the time, we thoroughly enjoy it every time we do play it. Also, though I didn't mention it before, the game board is very good sized yet the game box is small and compact so it easily fits on game shelves. We will definitely keep this one for a long time and I think it is a great game to introduce to players who are looking for something more strategic.