The Vale of Eternity and a Realm of Mythical Creatures
Set out to discover amazing creatures from different elemental realms to craft a powerful team in The Vale of Eternity.
It isn’t too often that I pick up a game that doesn’t offer an official solo mode, but there are always exceptions! My husband and I have enjoyed The Vale of Eternity, and I was delighted to find an unofficial solo variant to try out. With fairly straightforward rules and an interesting challenge, I set out to see if I might put my skills to the test!
Game Overview
Game Name: The Vale of Eternity
Publication Year: 2023
Designer: Eric Hong
Artists: Many (5 Credited)
Publishers: Mandoo Games & Renegade Game Studios
Solo Mode: Unofficial Solo Variant
With a selection of all sorts of creatures, decisions must be made each round. Yet growing a team is limited by the round number, and there are plenty of choices about how to reserve and use each card. Lots of abilities are possible, along with plenty of interesting creature combinations!
First Play
September 4, 2024
Complexity
2
Latest Play
September 8, 2024
Expansions
0
Setup Time
Almost None
Lifetime Plays
10
Play Time
15 Minutes
High Score
117
Game Area
22" x 18"
Low Score
38
Unusual Components
This is a beautiful game, and I appreciate the idea of doing something different. The circular scoring track is hard to follow, though, and I went the wrong way a few times.
Creatures are drafted from those available each round, and the standard method is to place them around a pentagon board so no one can read all of the text at once. Why?!
Elements are tied to the stone value, so I simply leave this out for reference and place creatures in a single row.
It’s easy to order them by value in this way after a few rounds, and makes the play area work a lot better!
Neat Strategies
With 5 elemental regions for the creatures, there are plenty of unique abilities that can be used in many ways.
Choosing the creatures each round comes down to first reserving them, while the solo opponent follows a set pattern. This is a really neat solo drafting mechanic!
I had to give up a few good options to ensure I wasn’t giving away too many victory points at times.
And since only part of the deck was used during a play, I couldn’t be quite sure if I could focus on a single element. So many strategies to try out with these cards!
Swimming to Victory
As usual, I started off at the easiest difficulty level and worked my way up. One of my most impressive plays was all about the water creatures. Look at all of that blue!
Creatures of the same element often work better together, but not always. I found clever ways to find synergies.
I also really liked the limits on expanding too quickly, and the penalty for discarding a played creature. My tableau size was limited by the round number.
Some creatures were better suited to a one-time use, but the cost to discard increased as the game progressed.
Around and Around
Very cool artwork almost made this score board look like it was designed with a 3D rock in the center! Alas, the only things above the board were the scoring markers.
It was tricky to keep track of this meandering path, although it was easy enough to correct my mistakes.
Some of the first few plays felt pretty easy, but then it all changed as the solo opponent picked up more victory points! Quite the challenge to figure out how to win.
And I didn’t find that I honed in on a single strategy. All of the creatures could be useful in different situations. Cool!
In Consideration of Different Shapes & Patterns
I think one of the things that threw me off with these components was the unfamiliar patterns. For a scoring track, I’m used to something with straight lines, often in a rectangular pattern that doesn’t spiral in one direction. And a pentagon to place cards around? I prefer all of the text to face towards me at all times. My mind just knows!
And that’s an important element: Board games tend to teach us to recognize patterns over time. When I open up a new board that includes a scoring track, I can often identify it around the border or in a prominent place. The rulebook doesn’t need to explain it to me: I just know! Anything that breaks those known patterns is harder to understand.
This is likely why we don’t see different shapes in use a lot. The collective memory of board game players means we’ve already learned to identify scoring tracks and know how to use them. It’s almost like muscle memory! Newer players may take a few plays to recognize these tracks and barely think about them, yet it’s something that happens with time.
Think about it with the next game you play that involves a scoring track. Are you thinking about how that works? Do you identify it without any hesitation? What makes it different from what you know? It’s an interesting premise to see how board games share a lot in common and teach us how to use certain elements without being too obvious about it!
A Slight Modification
With the standard solo variant, the dragon cards are very expensive and are only partially useful with their discard abilities ignored. Yet that’s an easy recommended fix…
I used a suggestion to reduce the solo opponent’s victory points by the value of a card played with a discard ability.
Voila! Gameplay was still just as challenging, yet the dragon cards didn’t feel like they were underpowered.
My play time started to speed up significantly, too, and I found that there was a really interesting little solo puzzle here. Even better: I wasn’t winning handily at all!
Awesome Tableaus
There might not be an endless supply of cards in the deck, but I was impressed with the variety. Even with some extra card draw abilities, I never used the full deck at once.
This tableau was pretty impressive! I found neat ways to have them all work together, and even timed some card placements towards the end for extra bonuses.
Some creatures seemed like better choices in most cases, yet this wasn’t often. I found them all to be pretty great!
I still have yet to see how some creatures I didn’t focus on might be useful as I keep working towards a victory!
Session Overview
Play Number: 1-10
Solo Mode: Unofficial Solo Variant
Play Details: Easy, Medium, & Hard Difficulty Levels
Outcome: 2 Wins & 8 Losses
Look at some of this awesome artwork! I struggled to win as soon as I hit the hard difficulty level, but this was a great thing. One play was very close! This is a nice sort of puzzle with lots of card combinations. I can see a lot of possibilities, even with the creatures I chose a lot. Just another case of an unofficial solo variant being excellent and giving some more life to a game I might not play a lot!
%
10 Plays
Affordability
Price & Value
9
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
9
Originality
Design & Theme
5
Quality
Components & Rules
9
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
9
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
7
+ Pros (Positives)
- Play time moves very quickly through the sequence of play with a simple solo opponent to manage.
- Making decisions about how to reserve and draft cards is very meaningful, especially with clear solo priorities.
- There are tons of different creature combinations to explore with lots of ways to collect victory points.
- Only part of the deck is used with each play, which adds a bit of uncertainty and creates unique strategies.
- Managing the stones, or currency, with a fixed number of slots is quite challenging and interesting.
- Being limited by the round number is a great mechanic that slows growth and adds more reasons to plan ahead.
– Cons (Negatives)
- Arranging the cards around the pentagon-shaped elemental board is more of a hindrance, but can be avoided.
- Some of the graphic design makes the numbers look more like symbols, and some of the iconography is small.
- Tracking scores around a circular path that loops and turns can be a little harder than it should be during play.
- Different elements have different artists, so not all of the creatures feel visually cohesive when played together.
Victory Conditions
Score the Most Points
- Overall Goal Progress 67%
Goals and Milestones
Win at least 1 game at the easy difficulty level.
Win at least 1 game at the medium difficulty level.
Win at least 1 game at the hard difficulty level.
Continue the Conversation
What do you think about The Vale of Eternity? Have you had a chance to try out the unofficial solo variant? I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this after a few plays! The puzzle kept me involved, and I enjoyed admiring lots of different creatures. I’ll have to keep hunting down a victory at the hard difficulty level. More fun times are ahead!
I love this game and buy the game at the first sight. Beautiful graphics and monsters taming excites me.
I played with friends for 2 player once, 3 player twice, 4 players multiple times, never win one game. I know my combination or strategy wasn’t work fine enough to win.
So I found you article is helpful, since I can furnish my skill over it by playing the solo variant mode. Thanks.
You’re welcome! The game is very challenging and I haven’t won all that much against other players, yet I hope playing solo will show you some other strategies to try out. Best of luck, and enjoy playing!