LogFAQs > #934323283

33. Villagers (2019)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Card-drafting, tableau-building, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 30-40 minutes
Experience: 5-8 plays over 4-6 sessions (2019-2020)
Previous ranks: NR/100 (2016), NR/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player is attempting to populate their village with villager cards, which come in several different suits. The game is split between a drafting phase, during which each player takes turns drafting one villager from the market, and a building phase, during which each player chooses up to their build limit of cards in hand to play. Villagers are free to build except the ones that pay other villagers (if present in anyone's village), and the cases where you have to discard a card to create a base villager. Some villagers require predecessors (like evolving Pokemon). There are two scoring phases; some villagers score both times and others only at the end.

Design - The great appeal of Villagers is that despite having a market of cards that you freely can draft, it plays very fast. The analysis paralysis is greatly reduced because cards themselves are simple: it's easy to recognize which suit they are (they're delineated by color), and most of them simply provide victory points, engine-building symbols, or a chain. There are some exceptions where you'll have to read more - you can benefit from having some when someone builds a specific other villager; the red ones are action cards that don't go in your tableau; and some Solitary cards can reward you with synergies - but overall, these actually either guide your strategy or fit neatly into it.

The biggest flaw I've noticed is the building choke. Without a good knowledge of what suits to mine (as you can draw facedown cards knowing only their suits), you can be shut out of getting extra builds for your villagers. These build symbols are vital, since no matter how many villagers you draft, you can only add to your board in accordance with the build symbols. This can result in perhaps the worst part of an engine-builder: when losing means you get to do less - your build phases will be shorter than everyone else's build phases if you can add fewer villagers.

Experience - Villagers isn't a super-remarkable design. It gets here largely on the back of becoming a go-to in the last half-year or so, after a friend got it on Kickstarter. Some setup aside that I've never had to participate in, it's a high-floor, low-ceiling type of experience that always has a few exciting turns - looking for that big chain to complete the Jeweler, or hitting a dramatic Solitary card, or even just finding a way to pay yourself multiple times. On the flip-side are the times hwen someone gets locked out of building more than two villagers for the first few rounds (in a game that can have only five or six rounds), but that's the nature of the beast.

Future - At the moment, Villagers appears to be one of the short euros du jour. I don't see it as being spectacular, but it's so seamlessly pleasant that I have no reason to object. While I don't particularly thirst to play it, it's become an easy answer for "what should we play" when we've got less than an hour and aren't ready to turn to the higher-energy, less-strategic games just yet.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness