Viscounts of the West Kingdom - A Solo Review
Image: Garphill Games
INTRODUCTION
“Choosing peace over prosperity, our once strong King began offering our enemies gold and land to lay down their axes. But peace is a tenuous affair. As poverty spread, many people lost faith in his ability to lead and sought independence from the crown. Since finding favour in his courts, our future has also become uncertain. As viscounts, we must be wise and decisive. Loyalty is to be upheld, but gaining favour among the people must be our priority, should there be a sudden shift in power.”
Following the success of the previous two entries to the series, authors Shem Phillips and S J MacDonald return once again to the world of Medieval worker placement with Viscounts of the West Kingdom, heralding the end of the trilogy. Those of you who have read my previous reviews will know that I am a huge fan of both Architects and Paladins, two excellent entries to the otherwise crowded field of worker placement board games. Therefore, I was really curious and excited to take a closer look at Viscounts of the West Kingdom (henceforth Viscounts) to see whether or not the author duo would be three-for-three in terms of designing engaging solitaire board game experiences.
Full disclosure: a review copy of The Viscounts of the West Kingdom was kindly provided by publisher Garphill Games.
COMPONENTS
Following what has become something of a signum for the publisher, Garphill Games continues to deliver a whole lot of board game content crammed into an exceedingly small box. The good news is that the actual components are of high quality throughout, from the custom shaped wooden resource tokens to the wonderful illustrations by Mihajlo “The Mico” Dimitrievski. The game features a modular pie-shaped board which is being held together by the Castle, undoubtedly the literal pièce de resistance of Viscounts resulting in a very eye-catching board game when fully displayed on the table. Although visually arresting, the process of moving the worker meeples between the three levels of the castle can occasionally be rather fiddly especially during later stages of the game when the castle runs the risk of becoming somewhat crowded. Or it could just be the case that my big ol’ lumberjack hands have failed me once again.
One aspect that bears mentioning is the way Garphill Games continues to improve on the art of creating comprehensible rules documents. There is undoubtedly a fair number of interlocking mechanisms to be had in Viscounts and the rulebook does a terrific job aiding the reader, with lots of examples of play making the process of learning the game that more accessible and enjoyable.
“The king is dead, long live the king!” Photo: Fredrik Schulz
THE SOLO MODE
Similar to Architects and Paladins, the solo mode in Viscounts features a deck of scheme cards which is used to dictate the actions of the automated opponent. Performing the turns of your dummy counterpart is remarkably straight-forward, you simply reveal the top card of the deck and add it to the leftmost slot on the neutral player’s board thus shifting the que one space to the right after which you resolve the current scheme card in sequence. Initially it may take a couple of turns to internalise how certain icons vary when solo playing Viscounts but after a while the game becomes an incredibly smooth experience, where performing the turns of the neutral player takes little to no effort. During all of my playthroughs I never had a single instance where I found myself unsure as to “target priority” or doubting whether or not I was performing the actions of the neutral player accurately. It really goes to show that Shem Phillips and S J MacDonald design board games where the fundamental core supports solitaire play. This becomes evident when taking into consideration how the neutral player will gain both virtue and corruption over the course of the game, which is a key concept that makes Viscounts so interesting. Both Architects and Paladins features this notion of a Yin Yang mechanism of equilibrium, however Viscounts perfects the formula creating the most interesting iteration of this concept which in turn creates a more dynamic bond between the solo player and the automated opponent.
The thing that differentiates Viscounts from its figurative siblings is the fact that the solo opponent is represented as four distinct alterations, each focusing on a particular avenue in terms of strategy. One version of the neutral player is geared towards constructing buildings, always favouring the necessary materials needed to populate the main board with guildhalls and trading posts. Alternatively, you have the option to play against a solo opponent who is entirely devoted to placing workers on the castle centre piece which if left to its own devices will score the neutral player a large amount of victory points at the end of the game. This results in a solo opponent that is absolutely relentless in its pursuit of achieving its targeted goals, out of all the entries in the West Kingdom series of board games I found the solo opponent in Viscounts to be the most difficult to beat by a country mile!
The scheme cards dictate what actions the neutral player will perform on their turn. Photo: Fredrik Schulz
FINAL THOUGHTS
In many ways, Viscounts is the figurative Goldilocks of the West Kingdom trilogy. In terms of rules complexity and interlocking mechanisms it manages to hit the sweet spot between being lighter than Paladins whilst providing a bit more meat to the bone than Architects. Although it shares similar traits with its predecessors like the notion of virtue versus corruption and how these powers of balance influence your avenue of strategical options, Viscounts still manages to feel unique and exciting to play proving once again that Shem Phillips and S J MacDonald are amongst some of the finest solo board game designers in the industry. If you enjoyed Architects and Paladins then this final entry to the West Kingdom is a must-have and one I would recommend without hesitation even if you are only going to play Viscounts solitaire as is the case for yours truly.
