Margraves of Valeria Review

Daily Magic Games continues to expand the Valeria universe and Margraves of Valeria is one of the more ambitious titles of the series. 1-5 players will control their Margrave, a military commander that must defend Valeria. Players will do this by performing 1 of 4 actions on their turns. They must play a card from their hand and choose to perform the cards main action which can gain you resources or allow you to battle enemies, do the banner action which can allow you to move units around the map and do the actions on the map, retrieve their hands, or build a tower. Players only control pieces of their colors, all of the knights on the map are loyal to the margraves as a whole so as long as they are on your spot, you can move them around the map or add them from your player board.

When you are in combat, you must simply match the defense value of the card you are battling. This is done by spending your own defense points as well as any knights on your spot or player board. If you do sacrifice a knight, they are sent to the graveyard where you can gain additional bonuses if a row/column is filled with them.

The primary goal of the game is to get your 4 towers out and climb the influence tracks of the various guilds. The more reputation you have with them, the more points you will get at the end of the game. Every citizen card you have of those types will net you more points at the end of the game. Whoever has the most points will win.

The Good: The shared knights on the map is such a unique idea. It can allow every player to have equal opportunities and you must plan ahead to keep them away from the other players potentially to keep them from getting specific items. I loved the amount of freedom to choose where you'll advance on the influence tracks. Even drafting your starting resources is a great touch. It provides more freedom to a game that's full of it. The Mico continues to impress with the art for this world. Every citizen and enemy card looks awesome. His art style is one of my favorites across board games.

The Okay: Combat is really simple, but during setup the specific region decks are shuffled with the only guaranteed card is the boss at the bottom. This is fine, except early on in the game you may be forced to actively avoid combat because higher valued cards are shown meaning you'll be saving a few turns to be in the position to attack. This can also cause you to miss out on potential opportunities.

The Not So Good: The components of the game overall are fantastic but I really don't understand what the keeps do for you. My understanding is that they're there to hold your gold but I really wish they served an actual gameplay purpose. Because you aren't at the mercy of a dice roll like in Card Kingdoms, you may find turns to be more involved and brain burny than you planned for. To me, this is a pro, but for most analysis paralysis is a huge issue that can steer you away from a game.

Final Thoughts: The Valeria series is quickly becoming one of my favorite worlds to explore. Being able to flesh out a world that spans multiple games and all of these games are completely different from each other is no easy feat. Margraves plays a lot closer to a euro than others in the series and I loved it. It's such a streamlined design that can play quickly but never feel unbalanced. There's also additional micro expansions that add a solo mode and events as well as new enemies. The more, the better.

Thanks to Daily Magic Games for providing me with a review copy.