Viscounts of the West Kingdom - Playthrough & Review 

My favorite of the trilogy!

I liked it! Paladins is my favorite in the trilogy, but the other two share a close 2nd.

A very close second to Paladin for me. Mainly because I play games more at 2p, which paladin excel better in that player count. But it’s really great if you prefer more player interaction but still want to remain the depth like paladin. Love this game still and hope to play it at a higher player count! 👍🏻

Viscounts for me with Paladins a close 2nd. My biggest gripe is that I have people who are willing to play Viscounts but not Paladins citing difficulty. Architects and Raiders are par for the course here in New Zealand but still very enjoyable plays with the right people

This is my least favorite in the series as of right now. I’ve played 3 games and the person who focused most on the castle won by a landslide each time. I really like the game still but I haven’t played it enough to like it more. And it seems like you MUST participate in the castle to have a chance of winning. Which knocks it down a little for me because i don’t want to be forced to go a certain direction in a game. So for me it’s Architects Paladins Viscounts

Hi Lynn, thank you for the compliment (and noticing haha). That is exactly what we want to achieve out of our videos. =)

This is a great observation. Now that you mention it, I can't think of a different board game channel with better editing than Before You Play.

LOL it'll be the 4th in the series 😝

That’s what you get for winning the trilogy for a future game 😂

Yeah it came down to 1 card!! We did the math and the outcome would be the same, but Monique would have had 1 less tome.

@@BeforeYouPlay Slightly closer, then. I wonder, on average, how many major/minor victories are worth it to get an additional mid-game tome.

Hi Mike, thank you so much for following along with us. We know a lot of these videos eat up your valuable time! 😃

Thanks Luke, we really appreciate your comment! Hope you two have a blast!!

Thanks for the support Henrique!

Haha hope you get to check it out!

Hope you enjoy it Adam!!

Thank you for your support! 😀

Lol "smash" just came so naturally!

It does, and it gives you a reason to take certain strategies. It's so cool that they tied the games together with it!

Thanks Roland!

To their defense I dont find the rules that clear in that regard, and this is included in a rule clarification file on BGG so we're not alone..

Rules seem pretty clear. pay - discard - resolve. But you definitely have to reference to rules to get all these nuances in your first few plays

Haha, it took us a little longer than we anticipated, but so glad that we did it!

Yep I noticed that too, coin should have been spent for that move

What are you talking about?! She clearly didn't have to pay an extra coin. She moved forward, then up following the arrows. What's wrong with that?

@@warever37 yep, you’re right. I overlooked the arrows in close proximity to the castle.

Hi Jacob, that makes so much more sense to me (Naveen) you spend the coins to hire but if you cannot shuffle it back into your deck then you may never see the card you hired.

Thanks!! There is an app from Garphill games it's on IOS pretty sure Android as well.

The official Garphill Games companion app; it offers a score calculator for each of the West Kingdom games, as well as each of the North Sea games, Circadians, and Raiders of Scythia.

@@BeforeYouPlay Thanks. I will check it out.

Pretty sure they’ve mentioned being in the LA area

Yes we are in an LA suburb.

Did I read wrong?

No, the sideways thing only happens in the first tier. That's why the little arrows are only on that tier.

My experience is that manuscripts are better for longer games since you can potentially get more sets, while castle is capped at around 40 points once all your workers have been placed. If uncontested, the cleric bonuses as well as the manuscripts that give additional points are also pretty big boons. Which is why the castle player needs to control the pace of the game. This is made easier by the fact that the castle provides the best way to get virtue with the +2 virtue space. If you keep colliding at the +3 deeds space you can run out the deed pile pretty quickly. Building the building that gives +1 virtue on collisions will help with this, so is thinning your deck to ensure you keep getting virtue from reshuffles. Alternatively I suppose you could spam criminals and try to run out the debt pile quickly, which would be easier since getting corruption is easier than getting virtue. But at the same time you risk losing points from unflipped debts and ceding the 12pt bonus to an opponent... I haven't actually tried this so I'm not sure how well it'd work. So yeah, the idea is to end the game before the manuscript player ramps up. My preferred path is actually buildings but that's a whole other story...

It’s called Garphill Games Companion.

Nope. You can only rearrange what's there, you can't move cards to unoccupied slots.

@@Hakucho64 Where does it say that in the rule? I just see "Rearrange cards on your Player Board in any order (this is always optional)" nothing about unoccupied

No, you first deal with all your own groups of three. Then when you're finished that, you do the check for groups of four. So they played it correctly.

It's really good! We will be putting out a wrap up video soon.

She's too good!!

Hi Michael, sorry for the confusion! The Nerd Shelves are doing a livestream playthrough on their channel right now actually, but if you are unable to catch it, it’ll probably be available to watch afterward. Board Gaming Ramblings also have a playthrough =)

And you didn’t pick a silver from your tome, yet again 😅

Oh it's because Bertha isn't a criminal. You only move your corruption marker when placing a criminal. haha yeah, kept forgetting to pick up the silver!

@@BeforeYouPlay Oh my bad. I thought that the existing criminal signs on the board mattered as well. 😅

@@mridulsaboo2945 I thought this too! Took me ages to realise it was only when placing - I forgot that part from the teach

He did not cheat.. he correctly followed the direction that the arrows point at that time stamp.

There is an app from Garphill games

Garphill games scoring app. Has scoring for most of their games on there. Even scores the Bots for the solo as well.

Tomes

I'd say give it a couple more plays. It seemed that way at first with my group but lately whoever goes castle has actually been losing. Especially in 4-player games since its much easier to bump workers off. The other 3 players just need to spend 1 turn each bumping you off and it'll set you back 2-3 turns.

@@XTCyan trouble is I play mostly at 2 and literally every game we've ever played has been "do castle, win." I can accept that it can be better with more - and I want to like it so I'll play again - but the 2p experience seems pretty brain-dead sadly.

@@distrustfulmonkey2832 even with two it depends. I've found buildings to be my preferred strategy actually. Castle requires 7-8 turns to complete if you've built the +1 fleur-de-lis building and assuming you have some gold saved up, getting you around 45 points (roughly 5 - 6 points/turn). If you build all the level 2 and level 3 buildings you get 36 points in 6 turns (6 points / turn, once again assuming you've traded for some stones). It's a little lower but buildings provide permanent buffs which are extremely helpful. Manuscripts is slower, requiring 8 turns to get 32 points. However, they scale a lot more since for castle and buildings you're limited by the number of workers and buildings respectively. They get a big boost at the 12-15 turn mark if they manage to claim all the cleric bonuses uncontested. 3 sets + all cleric bonuses = 60 points which comes down to 4-5 points per turn which is pretty competitive still. That also does not include any manuscripts that score you additional points so overall I'd say it works out around the same.