by mi_de
Feudality was designed by Tom Wham and published by Z-Man games in 2011. It is playable by two to six players in a little over an hour.
What You Get
There is a central scoring track that also holds tiles for purchase, individual, double-sided player mats on thick, glossy paper, a deck of cards with cartoony illustrations, an action summary card and first-player card, lots of cubes and food/wood/rock made of wood, a draw bag, a couple dice and wooden pans, and a whole lot of little tiles. The tiles are wonderfully illustrated with little characters, and have symbology that is clean and easy-to-read. The boards are colourful. The cards are good quality and the illustrations are also pretty good. Overall, a very nice-looking package. I even like the box illustration. There is a lot of air inside, but that seems to be the norm these days.
What You Do
Players are attempting to build up a little kingdom by purchasing and placing tiles on their player mats. They will acquire resources with which they will purchase new tiles and some of these new tiles will score points. The winner is the player first to reach a set score.
A player turn starts by rolling two 8-sided dice. The resulting roll is used to mark a location on every player’s mat: where the two dice intersect, one places a marking pawn. Then, all nice locations adjacent to or under the pawn are eligible to be ‘activated’. When activated, a player may take advantage of any one of the tile results in the area of the marking pawn. This may allow resource collection, point scoring, or activations of a special ability, like allowing a re-roll or healing. A roll of doubles or an eight on either die results in a follow-up roll, also applying any tiles results. Once all the rolling is done, the phasing player draws an event card. These are usually bad. The King is a bit of a jerk, and is always calling upon his nobles to send him goods, food, or army units to help him. When the Queen shows up, the players get a bit of a break. Other cards, like the rat infestation, spell bad news for the unlucky sod.
After the random event is enacted, a number of tiles are drawn from the bag and placed face up, available for purchase. In player order, each player may select one tile and place it on their board, or they have the option to fortify their initial tower which everyone starts with to a larger construction, like a keep or castle. Each tile has a cost in goods to purchase. Once bought, they are placed on one of the empty locations on the player board, or else in the castle location (if a troop counter). Some purchases, like mines or fishermen, need to be placed in particular locations (on a mountain or river in the two examples). Others may be placed anywhere.
Then, the phasing player only will take two actions. The possible actions: a) activate any one resource tile for goods or point collection, b) an ‘amorous liaison’, which allows a die roll in an attempt to score a point, c) attempt a sabotage of an opponent’s tile, forcing its removal, or d) initiating an attack, either on one of the countries warlike neighbors or on a player higher on the score track; both of these types of attacks are an effort to score points.
Attacks are simple: total up the attack value of all involved units and roll a die: the higher sum will win. However, each unit used in battle needs to have a die roll made for it: even and it survives, odd it is out of the game (killed). Finally, the phasing player must feed his population, spending one food for every six tiles he/she has on the board. This ends a player turn: the action goes to the next player. The game continues until the requisite winning score target is reached.
What I Think
I like Tom Wham games. They are whimsical and straightforward in their goals (see Awful Green Things from Outer Space or Kings n’ Things) with random events, dice rolling, and terrific illustrations. Feudality does not break this mold. The game is very easy to pick up and plays really fast. Our three or four player games finish well within an hour but you feel like you have done something in that time, building up a little kingdom. There are several ways to score points and you have to adapt a strategy to the available tiles, but also to the fickle rolls of fate. Sometimes those 6’s just never seem to be rolled!
It is not a deep game by any means. The lack of control can get frustrating to some; it is not in the Euro-mode in this way. You can gang up on the leader. The event cards can have a sizeable impact. The deck is very large, and only a fraction is used in any game so you never know what could come up. Sometimes the number of actions you have seem a bit limited, and we end up doing quite a few ‘amorous liaisons’ for lack of anything better to do. Still, the turns go fast and even when you are not the active player you get to purchase tiles and collect resources, so you are not sitting about twiddling your thumbs during the game.
I certainly can recommend this game to anyone looking for a light-hearted ‘kingdom builder’ game with some direct confrontation and mini-civ building aspects. I would be wary if you favour serious Euros in the Caylus or Agricola mode: think more like Catan or Troyes. And it is a must for Wham fans, if for nothing else than the great artwork.