Siege of Valeria Review

Defend the wall.

Siege of Valeria from Daily Magic Games is a solo game where you are attempting to stop the incoming assault from the monsters on the wall. You'll set up a 5x5 grid of cards behind the wall with siege engines at the end. Each round, you'll roll your pool of dice. Then depending on where the siege engines are at, they'll activate. These can cause problems before you've even done anything. From here, you'll use your dice and assign them to the first row of monsters, using their values against the monsters defense values. You can combine dice to make them stronger if you need to. When you defeat monsters, you take their card and add it in front of you. You can then spend their abilities to help you throughout the game. These can allow you to modify dice or attack enemies beyond the first line. Siege engines can be attacked if they're in range as well. Once you've spent all your dice, the front line will attack (assuming there is anything left of it). Then, everything will move up and four more enemies will fill in. Then you rinse and repeat. In order to win the game, you'll need to take out all of the siege engines. If the enemy deck depletes, a siege engine gets through the front line, or if a section of wall is completely destroyed, you lose.

The Good: This is a spectacular solo game. It's a surprisingly tough puzzle to figure out. You need to balance your attacks of the front line and siege engines or else you could lose one or the other. In my first game, I had one siege engine left when the monster deck wore out. Next time, wasn't even close. With anything from the Valeria universe, the artwork is amazing. There is repetition but it's still great to look at.

The Okay: There are times where the game can feel somewhat unfair and you may need to burn more dice than you'd like to on a single card. Efficiency is key with this game and it doesn't always let you do so. There are plenty of cards that can adjust dice or give you more of them but dice are always going to have a mind of their own.

The Not So Good: The solo experience is fantastic but there are times where I do wish this could be played cooperatively. This is something that can be house ruled but I'm not creative or clever enough to create a set or rules. I just enforce them, kind of. With any solo game as well, maybe its just me but there's nothing stopping you from redoing some things. Don't like a roll, re-roll it, nobodies watching.

Final Thoughts: Siege of Valeria is an excellent solo game. Typically I don't really go for tower defense type games but this is a great experience overall. It plays quickly and the ruleset is fairly minimal meaning you can dive right in without much effort. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Valeria universe is one of my favorites in all of board games. Every game plays differently and I don't think I've found one I didn't care for.

Thanks to Daily Magic Games for providing a review copy.