Medieval Realms

Board Game Geek Reviews

1. 5 out of 10

   garry_rice

   Hidden production on one side of the board and hidden battle on the other where you may or may not get what you want depending on whether you have more strength in that region than anyone else. Felt rather repetitive after a few rounds although there are some variation in the effects of the cards. Ultimately nothing special to write home about although the tactics/strategy with selecting majority cards was mildly interesting.

2. 6.2 out of 10

   WoodenKing

   A solid game with a lot of positive points but also some critical flaws. I'll start with the positives: - great component quality: Cards and board are thick and feel great, artwork is superb and wood components are also detailled and fine. - the mix of emchanics works: You have cards you have to bid for, others are going to a player holding a majority of resources. Cards have different values but get cheaper the longer they stay on the board. So theres a good mix of workerplacement (although very very light), engine building and auction bidding. Its fun at least. - Has components for 5 players - is balanced enough to allow different tactics and not have players build up too much point-distance. - Language independent - not expensive Negatives: - Because there are several mechanics mixed, most of them turn out to be rather lightweight. The bidding is not as important as in other games, like lets say Power Grid. The workerplacement is done in secret and besides the "war map" there is no blocking or interaction between players. The engine building is probably the deepest part of the game and yet still light. There just arent enough cards to create a proper engine and most of its effects might be triggered at the end of the game anyway. - too few different cards: The game could really benefit of a few twists with the cards, more unique effects for them and a lot more engine building cards (cards with repeating effects). Especially resource production cards could be more plenty. The other reason is an aestehtical one. A lot of the cards have the same artwork, more different artwork would provide more variation. - too few components: While components are nice, there are too few of them. Even with only 3 players we had to exchange resources back and forth between one and three denominations. Meaning several times in a round, simply because there werent enough. Cant imagine it working well with 5 players. - lack of theme: The whole premise of the game is totally generic and empty. The introduction of the theme in the manual is literally just "You are kings and queens ruling your realm". Thats it. No story, no real theme to be found. Its blant and empty. Without any need for it to be that way. Games like Dominion managed to find a balance between fanatsy and medieval in a fictional universe. Dominion doesnt really tell a specific story but through the context info and flavour text provided by cards, manuals, card names and pictures its enough to get an understanding of the world. The cards here dont even have names. Thats the disadvantage of making a language independent game, it lacks text. In my eyes the lack of a proper theme is the worst part about it. - unclear manual: Leaves a lot to be desired. Quite many special situations arent explained or dealt with. We had to constantly try to find out what things mean. For example wood is green and cards that are absed around wood are also green. Just that there are also orange cards using wood and being focussed around that resource. - Use of symbols and gamelogic: It then had us scratching our heads as to why some cards are coloured the way they are. Another problem i thought was the use of icons. For example cards marked with a crown icon are "majority cards". Meaning cards that you only get when you hold the majority of a resource. While cards marked with a symbol showing 3 cards are "realm cards", which are cards you just buy and get. We would have used the icons the opposite way. A crown is rather associated with realm and ruling. While an icon showing three cards rather indicate some sort of "majority" or "set" intentions. It also raised an eyebrow because realm cards are cards you just buy without any special "bidding" rule condition. So why they even needed an icon to indicate that they have no special rule, is a weird way to go at it. Its obsolete then. Another issue is with gamelogic. Throughout the game the mechanics felt a bit questionable. For example, why would you invest 3 production resources and then have a card go to an opponent because you have to bid for it, would be pointless. That means bidding and majority cards are cards you wont purchase from the open market as long as its clear you cant get them. So basically it doesnt mather what type of card they are, since the result stays the same. You are blocked from getting it. That means theres no real reason to have bidding and majority cards, because the resulting effect on the gameplay stays the same = the person with most of the asked type of resource is the one getting the card. In short, it would suffice to only have bidding cards. But then the whole production marker system would stand in the way. The whole game is a bit of a weird beast of mechanics. Sure it kinda works and is fun, but its also comming off as not thought through and not working flawlessly. There are games that are just designed perfectly and work with one system going into the next and it just feels well. Medieval Realms is rather the other way around. Its a game designed with a lot of stuff and although its totally messy it somehow works out, just not that good. - Obsolete components and thoughtless implementation: There are character cards for each of the five colours, but they have no purpose. The first problem i had with them was the lack of thought. These cards could easily have been two sided showing a male and a female character. You know, a bit like Brass. The major problem i have with these is, they do nothing at all. There are no different starting conditions or abilities linked to them. Not even as a way to have more game variants to increase its depth. These are just pictures (not even good looking ones i might add), that are there and feel like wasted potential. The game lacks variants, entirely. There is no suggested drafting variant, different starting conditions or other stuff allowing to go deeper or different at the game. And i cant wrap my head around the fact that someone created character cards for the different colours but didnt bother to come up with a few faction related starting conditions and abilities (Terraforming Mars style). What a waste. I know im beating the dead horse here, but if the creator had invested a few thoughts into creating specific factions and starting conditions, could have fixed a few of the negative points here. Like a lack of theme could have been fixed by providing more character and identity to the factions. The games depth and replayability could have been raised aswell, thus it wouldnt feel as lightweight. The next problem comes with the blockades used to cover your realm in the workerplacement phase. The playerboards are either too small for the barriers to properly fit on top or the barriers lack a recessed part so the board fits properly underneath. With how they re made, placed on top of the board, they are nearly falling over and not properly placeable. Result: 6.2-6.8 Medieval Realms is despite its negatives a 6.2-6.8 for me. I know i went through the negatives a lot more, but thats because i rather wanted to explain those properly. They are there, but not majorly a problem (mostly). It depends a bit on mood and whether i overlook its flaws. Some of its flaws cant be overlooked though. The lack of component quantity is hindering gameplay and a few of inconsistencies or not perfectly working aspects can cause struggles. Yet, i feel like its a solid game for a warmup. Its certainly no deep game and sits rather at a complexity and depth of Dominion with its baseset only. Deep enough to mess around and have fun, but not enough depth to dig deep into strategies. I wished the game received a few expansions providing more cards and most importantly more story context. The worst is probably that it has character cards for each colour that have no meaning at all. No asymmetric gameplay through faction abilities. If the creator stayed at it and fixed a few problems with the game with a second edition and an expansion, it could turn out to be a really good game. Even though i feel like the workerplacement could have been entirely scrapped out and replaced by cards with more engine building (implement a few standard cards for purchase next to the market producing resources and you would have a better gameflow). All in all its a solid basic game but nothing special at all. With more thought spent and a bit more creative engagement regarding the theme it coul have been an outstanding nearly genious game. Missed opportunity there, so it stays a game for a warmup and i bet others have better games for that purpose.

3. 4 out of 10

   larryjrice

   FIRST IMPRESSION: Gets repetitive fairly quick and I was ready for it to end around halfway through. Should be quick playing but there were moments where AP was prone due to trying to figure out what opponents might do versus what you need to do, etc. Thought the resource acquisition mechanic was fairly clever and the military acquisition of resources was unique. Wonder if perhaps the value of cubes leftover at the end might be to high at 2 for 1 but perhaps not - might have been just due to the final set of cards in the final round that made purchasing most of them rather pointless since you'd pay more than you would receive in points. (FYI, the TTS mod wasn't my favorite although the hide mechanic/button automation was well implemented. Cubes? really, cubes? Also, the TTS mod has a couple different icons that must have been changed before printing as it caused us some angst. )