Our Review

A LifE a Village

My Village

Write your Village Chronicles

We aim high as the head of our village, because only with diligent residents who make their way sturdily, staunchly and assiduously, our village will prosper and allow us to write the most famous of all village chronicles due to the majority of collected story points. Many paths of development are available, but only a limited amount of time, because at some point The Grim Reaper is waiting for even the most capable village resident to bring him to eternal rest.

This final point you may take literally in the game of My Village by Inka and Markus Brand, because besides the village development, segmented into areas of medieval village life, time is the central concept of the game, as each development in any given segment instigated by the villagers, consumes an irretrievable amount of time. This consummation of time is represented in the game by a Grim Reaper Marker, which is to be found on the individual village board of each player and which is advanced on a circular track for nearly every possible action option you implement. Every time when a Grim Reaper has made one full circuit of the track, the respective player must decide on one of his village residents and transfer him from his personal village board to an empty grave on the graveyard, which is located on a common central board that is used by all players. The dilemma of this decision is huge: For every area of his village a player has only one available village resident. If this resident has died, a further use or development of the respective area is no longer possible. You can, of course, wait for offspring of the dead villager that will replace the deceased, but this next generation must first grow up and be educated, which in turn uses up valuable game moves which you would rather have used to develop your village.

Now, what are the areas in which the village can develop? You have a choice of areas for Crafts, Harvest, Market ,Travel, Religion with the sub-options of church and monk and Council with the sub-options of Council Chamber and Meeting Place, whereby each area is represented by special cards – Church cards, Monk cards, Council Chamber cards, Meeting Place cards, Field cards, Customer cards and Craft Building cards – which are laid out beside the common board and and which can be acquired by players in their turns and then used.

Each area or sub-area has its own mechanism; with the revenue from Craft building cards you can earn the price of Customer, Travel and Monk cards, Fields cards bring you guaranteed victory points and multi-use coins; Customer, Travel and Monk cards also guaranteed victory points at the end of the game. Both Church and Council Chamber cards bring permanent effects, Monk cards on the other hand give you once-only effects for immediate use.

In his turn a player can always only either acquire one card – provided that he can or wants to afford the price of the card – and add it to his personal village board, or use any number of previously acquired cards placed next to his village board. The prerequisite for both options is that the player was able to form / assemble one of the banner values depicted on the cards he wants to buy or use.

To form a banner he must choose exactly two dice – out of eight white dice and three black dice that were rolled at the begin of the turn – whose values combine to exactly the value of the intended banner. If the selection is not too enticing – he might have to select one of the three black dice which use up extra life time – a player can use coins or Meeting Place markers to change the value of a die or he might have, when all options have been use – have to use another banner value for his turn. Thus the activation of “starting player hand”, with which you become the starting player with the beginning of the next round, costs you one entire turn, but is very useful as you have the biggest selection of available dice in your next turn.

On top of the starting player right you also receive all story points which have accumulated in the starting hand with each round that has been played so far for provisional victory points. Yes, you did read correctly, provisional victory points. Because in My Village you have to distinguish between guaranteed, that is, safe and provisional victory points. For both types you use the same cardboard tokens, but while you place prestige points, the safe ones, directly into the main house of your own personal village board, from where they can never be lost, you must place the provisional story points onto the village story tree first. Those story points can be transferred to the safe main house as prestige points when you reach the main house again with your Head of Village marker, which is the only special marker on your village board, with the exception of the Grim Reaper who is only moved as a consequence of another action. Up to this transfer story points are not safe and can always be victims of a rat infestation which can always happen when a village resident of any other player dies and thus the advancing of the rat marker is triggered.

My Village, which at first glance immediately reminds one of the game „Village“, also designed by Inka and Markus Brand and being awarded „Kennerspiel des Jahres“ in 2012, ends when a number of village residents has died, in relation to the number of players, and has been buried in the graveyard. Then you add your collected points to those that you acquired by completing requirements on cards or by cards that you bought, and you win with most points. Contrary to the predecessor “Village” the partially great amounts for early, artistic demises of your own village residents, as those are already awarded in the course of the game as provisional story points.  

In all other aspects, too, My Village shares thematic concepts and traits with its predecessor, but must, however, be seen as an independent game - due to the completely different basic mechanism of dice selection, the shifting of events to individual village boards and additional game elements, for instance the rat infestation – whose lower interaction, compared to Village, is replaced by more complexity in village development. This qualifies My Village for a game that is suitable for families with gaming experience and, especially, for experienced players; a game that due to its oversized cards not only needs lots of room to play but also demands combinative powers to fathom its full potential.

Bernhard Tischler

Players: 2-4

Age: 12+

Time: 90+

Designer: Inka and Markus Brand

Artist: Dennis Lohausen

Price: ca. 33 Euro

Publisher: Eggertspiele / Pegasus 2015

Web: www.pegasus.de

Genre: Dice, drafting

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en fr it nl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Sequel to Village

Same topic

Completely different mechanisms

Less interaction

Compares to:

Village, Settlers of Catan The Card Game

Other editions:

Clochemerle, Gigamic; uplay.it; Stronghold Games; Mijn Dorp, 999 Games

My rating: 6

Bernhard Tischler:

Less interaction and more combinatorics – the switch to other mechanisms turns My Village into a completely independent games, that has only thematic parallels to Village, „Kennerspiel des Jahres“ 2012 and offers entirely new experiences. A complex feast for puzzlers and ponderers.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0