Board Game Review: Valeria’s Kingdom: The Queen’s Game

After last week’s introduction of the Heat board, today I have another card game for you. This time it is the card game Valerie’s Kingdom: The Karen Game, the gameplay of which we will look at in more detail in the following paragraphs of this text.

• Number of players: 15
• Play time: 30-45 minutes
• Price: 779 CZK (Alsa)
• Age: 13+

Valerie’s Kingdom: The Courtship Game Will Test Your Ability to Choose the Right People

The plot of the dice game “Valeria’s Kingdom” takes the player to a kingdom surrounded by dangers on all sides. It currently has no ruler, but in order to survive, it needs a leader who will take responsibility for the empire and lead it. Dukes “compete” for this role, controlled by the players themselves. From the very beginning, you take one of them and start playing.

The game here is primarily based on the idea of ​​combining dice and cards. But first of all, you always roll a pair of beautifully crafted dice that can logically give you two specific values, which you then work with, and more. Then you also have their sum available, so there are three activations in the air. But what do you activate? You animate your villagers with the numbers that roll, which give the active player different options than those waiting for their turn.

This is because everyone’s turn is more or less split, and the interaction happens primarily after the roll, with the active player evaluating one half of the card and the others evaluating the other half. I know it may sound weird, but in practice it works like this: for example, when a Healer card is thrown, it gives the active player three magic points, while the inactive player only gets one. However, no one is left out, so you never have to deal with the angry looks of your teammates. Also, all characters with this number will always activate, no matter how many you have in your deck, which is also magical.

Once all characters with given values ​​have been activated, the player currently playing enters the action phase. You can perform one of four actions in total, which will benefit you in different ways. The first is eliminating monsters. Monsters always form a deck, built from the weakest to the strongest. To catch them, you will always have to spend a certain amount of power. If you only have one point of power and enough magic, you can call upon the power of magic. However, under any circumstances, you must use at least one ability, because without it, the heroes simply will not be able to swing for the hunt. You will then receive a reward for the destroyed enemy, as well as victory points at the end of the game, so the hunt is worth it.

The second event is the recruitment of residents. Their range consists of symbols from one to twelve. Each of the kingdom’s residents is unique and offers different benefits to the active player and those who are not on the move. The price of the characters is clearly indicated. However, when your duchy already has one representative of this card, you must add one coin to the purchase to increase the difficulty of the purchase. But some specializations can bring you some pretty crazy bonuses. For example, I once had a couple of champions, and the eight came up so often that in the end the power chips gave me twenty victory points. In short, incredible luck.

The third alternative offered is to buy buildings that offer the player various one-time or permanent abilities during construction. For example, I really liked the structure that gave me the ability to return one of the monsters I defeated to my deck for three victory points. It was a good deal to get that unusually weak goblin back. You build your settlement with money and cards. In order to implement it, you always need to have certain professions on hand that will then take care of the space.

The last option is to choose a resource, because if you don’t want more villagers, you don’t have enough power for monsters or you can’t afford the buildings, there’s nothing better than taking what you need for your The next building moves when the dice don’t fall in your favor. After you’ve done one of the actions, it’s time for the next player to go through the same process. The game then ends with the exhaustion of some of the available sets, defeating all the monsters or selling all the estates. The points will then be recalculated, which is also affected by the duke you chose, because he is the one who determines how the points will be calculated in your case. The difficulty of the game itself can be changed with a few other elements, but in general it works without them.

Valerie’s Kingdom: Karen’s Game Will Let You Enjoy Your Rule

Twenty games of Valeria’s Kingdom are behind us, so it’s time to give my overall impressions. What can we say is that although this map doesn’t look very ambitious at first glance, it’s actually a very interesting thing, in which the combination of dice and cards works well, thanks to which it can decently draw you into the game. . As the dice keep falling to the ground, no one is lazy, and everything moves at a decent pace until the end.

Valerie’s Kingdom: Karen’s Game is a quality release that isn’t as demanding as it might seem at first glance. The game speed is decent and the replayability is high. Scoring can be a bit of a challenge for younger players, but older teammates can help with that. So I wouldn’t be afraid to tackle this one.

We would like to thank Czech distributor REXhry for providing us with a copy of Valerie’s Kingdom: Karen’s Game.