Review
how to get money and glory building walls
WALLS OF YORK
when an abstract game becomes history
Walls of York is a simple game of area control and optimization where two to four players work to create a perimetral wall around their medieval village, trying to include inside a certain number of “special buildings”.
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Opening the box, we will find some “strange” tiles and a few pre-cut cartons that should be mounted to create a 3D tower used to launch the dice. Remember to add some glue drops, once the tower is assembled, so it will be fixed forever and, yes, it can be stored in the original box without problems.
This tower is used to show the three “D6” dice necessaries to decide how many buildings must be included inside the walls and they are all different:
- The first has in effect 0-0-1-1-2-2 dots;
- The second has: 2-2-3-3-4-4 dots;
- The third has 3-3-4-4-5-5 dots.
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Each player has his own board, to be prepared assembling four square tiles and each tile has a grid of 4x4 cases: 4-5 of those cases are empty while the others show buildings (church, well and market), coins and Vikings warriors. In the middle of each of the four tiles is printed a different symbol with a small arrow. We will call “village” this personal board (with a total grid of 8x8 cases) from now on.
The other components are 50 coins and 19 “Viking tokens” (to be punched from a cardboard), one big red die (with symbols on all its faces) and 150 wall sections in grey plastic. There are also fours carton frames to keep together the four tiles of each board, but I do not suggest to use them, as they are too “thin” and do not work properly.
Now the First Player has to start the construction of his village: he selects one of the four tiles and place it on the table, with all the other players that do exactly the same (same tile, with the same symbol, placed in the same direction). The second players do a similar action and so on until all the players have their complete village ready: of course, all the villages are exactly the same.
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The First Player takes the red die and throw it on the table: all the players look at the face on top of the die to know how many wall sections they have to take and in which geometric shape they have to be built. Everybody picks up the requested sections and decides where to place them inside their village, with the only obligation to reproduce the “shape” shown on the die. Let’s look at Picture 4 to see an example.
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As you see the player satisfied the request and placed three sections of wall in a “Z” shape: please note that he “cut” the Viking case but included the well and two coins.
There are FOUR different shapes (with 2 or 3 sections), but each player may decide to ignore the die roll and to place just ONE section of wall where he likes (this usually happens to close a “hole” on the walls or when it is impossible to place the walls in the requested shape).
The second symbol on the die explain how many coins the player will receive when this die is thrown once he completes the walls around his village. As soon as this happens the game stops for a few second, just to verify if the village contains all the requested buildings: if the answer is positive the game starts again, but that player from now on will take the coins printed on the red die, instead of adding new sections.
When the last player finally closes his village, everyone takes the number of coins printed inside his walls and add it to his total: they also take as many tokens (negatives) as there are Vikings inside the village. Let’s look at Picture 5.
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That players satisfied the minimal request of the dice and included also in his village 10 coins and only one Viking.
The player who included the highest number of Vikings on his village must turn one of those tokens on the back (red side) and discard all the others: this means that he got a penalty of -5 VP.
A second round is then played, which is handled exactly as the first, throwing all three blue dice, placing walls, etc. The only difference is that the player with LESS Viking tokens at the end of the round takes the bonus tile “King’s Shield”.
Looking at the tiles we may notice that each “icon” is printed 6 times in each “village tile”: 6 churches, 6 markets, 6 coins, etc. and only the Vikings are different: 3 in each for a total of 12 in the complete board.
It is a good thing to avoid as many Vikings as possible, but if we consider that the maximum penalty is only -5 VP in each Era probably it is still possible to try to close as fast as possible the city walls to get 3-4 turns of red die: this should be more than enough to “cover” the penalty, therefore, I suggest to study the initial situation and the position of the requested building and try to figure if there is an opportunity to close the walls as fast as possible without considering the Vikings. If you are fast enough to leave some players back you will be able to spend 2-3 turns getting the bonus coins from the red die and thus “cover” the penalty.
Of course, the danger is … that the other players may do exactly the same and therefore it is possible to lose the red die bonus. Usually the second Era is the one where everybody will take a prudent approach, but they will ALL try to close as fast as possible, and this will be good for the player that got the Vikings’ penalty on the first one.
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As Lady Luck will decide what to show on the red die it is almost impossible to know how many turns will be necessary to close the walls: therefore I suggest to place the sections that appear on the “bad” results in a way that they can be connected quickly as soon as (or “if”, as you prefer) a “good” die will appear
The rules also suggest two extra optional rules and I suggest to use them only after having played at least a couple of games with the standard ones:
Rule 1 - You get 2 VP extra if you completed your walls without placing any extra section;
Rule 2 – You get 3 VP extra for the longest straight section of wall
The game is really for everybody and only needs some attention at the beginning of each Era, in order to find the best possible path for your walls, and some considerations when placing the single sections of wall in order to optimize the “combinations” of the red die.
Mainly for families and friends: expert players will rarely come back to it after the first test.
Pietro Cremona
Players: 2–4
Age: 8+
Time: 30+
Designer: Emiliano Venturini
Artist: Sabrina Miramon
Price: ca. ca. 25 Euro
Publisher: Cranio Creations 2018/2019
Web: www.craniocreationsinternational.com
Genre: Placement
Users: For families
Version: it
Rules: en it
In-game text: no
Comments:
Short playing time
Easy rules for everybody
No interaction between players
Compares to:
Encircling and area-filling games
Other editions:
CMON (en), Gigamic (fr)
My rating: 4
Pietro Cremona:
A simple game to be used as a filler before a heavier one, or to be used with youngers players and in family. It is of little interest for expert ones.
Chance (pink): 3
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 1
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 0
Dexterity (green): 0