Weathering the Siege of Valeria in a Short Solo Campaign
Defend the city walls from an onslaught of monsters and siege engines to become the hero of the Siege of Valeria.
I had a pretty nice time when I explored the short campaign for Siege of Valeria earlier this year! With a focus on tower defense mechanics, it provides an action-packed experience. After my recent wins as the monsters, it seemed like a fitting way to swap back to defending the human cities! I only hoped the gargoyles were tired of victory. Ha ha!
Game Overview
Game Name: Siege of Valeria
Publication Year: 2022
Designer: Glenn Flaherty
Artist: Mihajlo Dimitrievski
Publisher: Daily Magic Games
Solo Mode: Designed for Solo (Included in the Base Game)
Columns of monsters and siege engines provide an almost endless stream of enemies to work against. Dice provide strength and magic to survive through the week of battles. Walls may weaken, yet heroes fight back to hold off the monstrous tide once and for all to defend the cities!
First Play
January 19, 2023
Complexity
2
Latest Play
December 23, 2023
Expansions
1
Setup Time
5 Minutes
Lifetime Plays
12
Play Time
35 Minutes
High Score
5
Game Area
24" x 24"
Low Score
0
Looking Over the Wall
So many monsters! Gameplay involves columns of foes who threaten different areas of the city walls. Fail to fight off the closest enemies each day, and damage builds up.
More dice may be unlocked over time, allowing for bigger rolls that have a better chance of destroying the large and dangerous siege engines… They’re quite ominous!
Defeated monsters also become ability cards with bonuses that may be used at any time. So many cool combinations!
Heroes stand on the walls, ready to offer up special ways to contribute to the siege. Will 7 days result in ruin?
Champion Templar
The base game may be enjoyed on its own, yet the campaign is where the full experience seems to exist. Just a shame it was packaged as a separate expansion.
I began with the Templar champion, who was pretty awesome! She gave me the ability to ignore a magic requirement on an enemy once per round.
The variety in the campaign is rather interesting, yet as I started to play, I realized I had seen everything before.
Puzzling through the order to defeat monsters to chain new abilities was a lot of fun, though! I was doing well!
Thematic Enemies
It seemed quite fitting that the boss was the Abomination, paired with the Resurrectionist commander. There was a story there, possibly due to the battle at a laboratory!
Everything progressed well enough. Monsters were thinned out, siege engines crumbled, and the city walls only sported a couple of small fires. All good!
Yet there came a point near the end when winning was clearly impossible with the bad dice rolls I dealt with.
The boss required a lot of magic, and with just 4 magic dice total, I didn’t have a way to roll any of them again.
Punishing Losses
As I looked ahead to possibly continue the campaign, I was surprised I hadn’t noticed the way the outcomes worked.
The idea is to play the 3-game campaign, but winning isn’t necessary. Yet only a victory provides a reward.
In other words, losing imposes a penalty during the next play. This is the opposite of campaign play: If I’m struggling, a little help is needed to give me a chance.
With the penalty I drew, I lost the ability of a hero right from the start. It seemed fair enough to accept that the monsters won… I didn’t need to play this campaign out!
Exploring the Meaning of Persistent Effects
Logically, it makes sense to reward victories and punish losses. However, take a moment to think about the game experience. When you win, it may have been done easily or by the slimmest of margins. The next time you play during a campaign, do you want a better chance of winning or having a little more of a challenge? I know my preference…
It’s nice to overcome additional challenges or obstacles, provided they’re pretty fair. The other aspect to keep in mind that even a short campaign involves cascading effects. A one-time bonus or penalty still flows through in some small way. I don’t necessarily want to be penalized for winning, but having an extra challenge adds lots of satisfaction.
This is why I wasn’t too excited about having something negative associated with my loss. In this way, it increased my chances of losing again… Which didn’t make me excited to keep on playing. There is a good deal of luck with the enemy cards and dice rolls. I felt like I had to get lucky to win multiple times, but bad luck was going to be penalized. Not great.
Session Overview
Play Number: 11 & 12
Expansion: Siege of Valeria: Campaign Expansion
Solo Mode: Designed for Solo (Included in the Base Game)
Play Details: Campaign Mode
Outcome: 0, 0 (2 Losses)
There were some really neat moments, especially with a lot of the monster card combinations! Yet there was always a bad roll near the end that allowed the boss to survive. I later found out that my random setup removed most of the cards that rewarded more dice… So I was always at a disadvantage. Fun moments, but the city fell!
%
10 Plays
Affordability
Price & Value
8
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
9
Originality
Design & Theme
7
Quality
Components & Rules
9
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
7
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
4
+ Pros (Positives)
- Monsters and siege engines create an interesting puzzle with different card abilities to collect and chain together.
- Some bad dice rolls may be adjusted by planning how to defeat enemies in order during each round.
- There is a good sense of tension during play as the city walls get damaged and siege engines creep closer.
- Play time moves along pretty quickly, thanks to a helpful reference card that lists out most of the necessary rules.
- Different heroes and champions can make a big difference in the strategy to move ahead after each round.
- Columns of monsters don’t take up an enormous amount of table space, and everything remains easily reachable.
– Cons (Negatives)
- The assortment of monster cards used has a huge luck factor, as some have much better abilities related to dice.
- Although there are a lot of ways to manipulate the dice, consistent bad luck in later rounds can’t be fully mitigated.
- Having the campaign in a separate expansion splits up the full experience, although the overall variety isn’t high.
- Random events can be especially punishing with no way to avoid them, yet these add little to the fun factor.
Victory Conditions
Score 9+ Campaign Points
- Overall Goal Progress 67%
Goals and Milestones
Score at least 13 points with the base game.
Win at least 1 game at the standard difficulty level.
Score at least 6 points with the campaign expansion.
Continue the Conversation
What do you enjoy about Siege of Valeria? Have you managed to win the campaign with a perfect score? I definitely see a lot of excellent choices in this design, and it’s certainly a great experience! Yet it feels like I did well enough during my past campaign to call that an overall victory. I guess I’m just better at playing as the monsters in this world. Ha ha!
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