Board Game Review: Architects of the West Kingdom

Architects of the West Kingdom is a worker placement/investment game from Garphill Games. Set during the Carolingian Empire in 850, players act as architects, building new landmarks throughout his kingdom. You’ll use your workers to hire apprentices, gather materials, and arrest rival architects’ workers.

Players begin with 20 workers who they’ll place on the board to gather resources, get building and apprentice cards, free imprisoned workers, or buy items from the black market. On your turn, you will simply take a worker and place them on the board, taking the action that is on that location. That’s all, so turns are very quick and dynamic. Unlike a lot of worker placement games, which only allow you to fit one meeple into a space, effectively taking up that space, most areas allow you to place more than one. Each worker you’ve placed in that region so far makes the action you take at that location worth even more.

Example: If you send one worker to the quarry, you’ll collect a single stone. If you already have a worker there when you place another worker at the quarry, you’ll collect two workers, and on and on.

The more workers at the location already, the greater the reward. Now, naturally, your opponents won’t want to see that happen, so they can send a worker over to the Town Centre, where they can capture one group of workers of a single color from a single location. If you’re tired of your opponent snatching up a bunch of gold in the mines every turn, this is the way to do it. The owner of these captured workers now has to spend money to free them up for use again.

Not only are players trying to earn victory points, but Virtue as well. When your Virtue is high, you can help build the cathedral which provide a boatload of VP at the end of the game, but you can’t access the black market (you’re too virtuous to go there). If you’re low in Virtue, you can skimp on taxes, but you’ll get less VP. This is constantly shifting up and down, as you go to collect taxes, losing you Virtue, while building some buildings or hiring particular apprentices will raise it up.

The guildhall is where you send workers permanently for the rest of the game. There, they help build the cathedral, or allow you to build a building, provided you have the resources the card needs.

The game ends when all of the guildhall spaces are filled with workers. There are multiple things to add up to learn your final VP total.

I had a TON of fun with this one. The artwork is superb, very evocative of the era, with a cartoony spin on it. The board itself is beautifully illustrated.

All of the components are top notch. Each raw material has a different shape and color, and the meeples aren’t your standard meeple shape, so while they’re familar, they feel different in your hand and look very nice on the board. The box has that nice rough cardboard that I love the feeling of when I pull the game off the shelf.

While the game seemed overwhelming at first, it’s very easy to grasp once you’ve begun playing. All the symbols everywhere begin to make sense as the game goes along. I love that each turn is VERY fast. It’s a single choice on your part: Where am I placing my worker this turn. You place the worker and fulfill what happens on that location, then it’s the next player’s turn. By the game ending once the guildhall is filled, the players set the pace of the game. If they want to take a leisurly time collecting materials and apprentices while imprisoning their opponents, they’re welcome to. If they want to race for the finish line building buildings as fast as possible, that’s a way to go too.

I really love the Virtue track. Seeing yourself slip further and further into unvirtuousness and deciding, “you know what? Screw it, I’m gonna build this thieves’ den because I’m already a dumpster fire of a human being,” is very satisfying.

I feel like this game could definitely use more players than the two-player game we played. Neither Bridget or I are very cutthroat, so we just sort of meandered around building and collecting things. If you got 5 players in there, it could be very vicous, in a good way. Either method of play works here.

The game includes solo play mode, variable abilities for players, and a 2 player-vs-bot mode, so it’s VERY replayable.

If you’re a fan of worker placement, little meeples and wooden resources, the medieval period or anything else I described here, I definitely recommend picking up Architects of the West Kingdom. After reading the rulebook, I told my wife, “It’s the kind of game I’ll keep on my shelf and if someone wanted to play, I’d say ‘sure'”, but after actually playing the game, I can’t wait to get this out of the box and play with a larger group. This one’s definitely a keeper.

Gamerati sent a copy of Architects of the West Kingdom to Dice Monkey for review.