Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria Review

The next of the Valeria universe I've been lucky enough to play is Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria. In it, you are trying to gain command of the shadow kingdoms. Each player controls a warden and on their turn, they place their warden in one of the regions of the board. They'll pick up a die and do the action. The dice act as units. The higher the pips, the stronger they are. Luckily, lower pips will give you steep discounts. The regions are pretty straightforward. You can gain gems, money, magic, or cards when you do the action. You can also turn in awards which are randomly placed at the beginning of the game. The core of the game happens when you battle. You must have a battle plan card in your reserves and then you place your worker on your player board. Add the matching dice and count the total strength value. This can never go beyond your influence. Depending on the lower value of the two, you'll determine victory points gained. Then you can upgrade your campaign board by taking a placeholder piece off of the player board. The campaign board gives bonus points and resources if you complete links. Once a player has completed their 7th battle the game will end and whoever has the most points wins.

The Good: This is an excellent introductory worker placement game. There's a lot of different elements at play with managing dice and player boards but overall, it's not an overwhelming amount of things to do. Making lower valued dice have a purpose with discounts is really nice and when you battle, there are several ways to modify dice. Spending gems lets you flip to the opposite side or spending magic lets you increase by 1 per spent. The Mico knocked it out of the park as always with the artwork.

The Okay: The awards are extremely valuable but if you don't plan for them the right way, the game can simply end without being able to fully take advantage of them. Several also depend on the choices you've made on your campaign board. If you've played efficiently, you can make up the difference with end game scoring but it's a very tight game at the end.

Final Thoughts: Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria is right up there with Margraves for my favorite of the series. It's really easy to teach and it's extremely clever. Being able to upgrade your warden every time you battle gives so many different outlets to play the game. There is also a solo mode that works really well with scalable difficulty. Overall, this is a great game that should be higher than it's current rank of 2,624 on BGG.

Thanks to Daily Magic Games for providing a review copy.