Villages of Valeria and an Influx of Shadow Adventurers
Build a bustling village into the next capital city with a range of specialized buildings and adventurers in Villages of Valeria.
Time to return to a somewhat older solo game I haven’t brought out in a few years: Villages of Valeria! This is a quick and interesting sort of tableau builder with wonderful artwork and the chance to put together clever combinations. It’s never been one of my top games, yet it’s a consistent experience that I wanted to see if I could still manage to win again!
Game Overview
Game Name: Villages of Valeria
Publication Year: 2017
Designers: Rick Holzgrafe & Isaias Vallejo
Artist: Mihajlo Dimitrievski
Publisher: Daily Magic Games
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
Buildings, adventurers, and monuments from an expansion provide interesting choices and plenty of variety. There is an arc to developing ways to produce resources, followed by a very active time of filling in the village! Play time flies by with enough interesting decisions to offer a fun experience.
First Play
May 2, 2019
Complexity
2
Latest Play
July 31, 2026
Expansions
8
Setup Time
5 Minutes
Lifetime Plays
20
Play Time
15 Minutes
High Score
99
Game Area
24" x 22"
Low Score
22
In the Shadows
It took me a little while to remind myself how to play, especially with all of the expansion content, but it was worth the short bit of reading! My village was great.
Well, it was very focused on the Shadow Guild, yet that made sense with the scoring conditions I had in mind. There were even a couple of special monuments nearby.
Turns were very quick, and I enjoyed balancing the end game trigger with my decisions. Don’t run out of cards!
All of the buildings provided the foundation to welcome a whole bunch of adventurers. And there were many…
Adventurer Overflow
I was pretty certain the Shadow Guild set up a new branch or something with the influx of adventurers. Ha ha!
It was awesome to add these inhabitants right near the end. Luck was on my side as a number of them showed up to award extra gold, allowing me to keep recruiting.
My score was just enough to reach a victory, which I was pretty happy about! I didn’t realize how close it was.
I thought this number of adventurers meant lots of scoring, yet I neglected to build. Those monuments were traps! Wait, maybe they literally were with the Shadow Guild. Ha!
A Balanced Approach
Another play saw the Shadow Guild still around, but I leaned into a lot of cathedrals and related buildings. I also finally found the official errata document… Oops. The adventurers!
I thought there was supposed to be a limit, and apparently it’s supposed to be just 10 during setup. A note to myself for the future. Why is this not on the publisher’s website?!
For anyone else looking for the official card and rule errata, the document can be found over on BoardGameGeek.
But I still counted my first play, as I was still pretty close and that victory was barely there. Good enough for me. Ha ha!
New Inhabitants
The back of one board not used for solo proved to be a lovely piece of art to arrange the adventurers around. Such an interesting group! I did better, making do with just 7 cards.
I had a nice time returning to this one. It’s a solo game I would classify as easy and predictable in a way that makes it welcoming. There aren’t many surprises, and I like that!
Now to just remember to play entirely correctly in the future, and not open up the floodgates to adventurers. Ha!
Playing this also reminded me of a few other games in this general world setting I still need to play… Coming up soon!
An Explanation of My Nemesis… Sleeved Cards
I personally dislike sleeved cards for a variety of reasons, but sharp-eyed viewers may spot a fair number of my solo games sport this plastic attire. My husband prefers them, and we’ve run into a few issues over the years with damaged cards. I sort of enjoy the wear and tear that occurs, but understand why that can be problematic in some harder to find or older games.
One thing that stood out during this play was the sheer thickness of these sleeves. I don’t know where they came from and they’re probably about a decade old, yet they’re pretty extreme! However, this means that there are a number of cards with ripples since there is a little extra space on the edges. I’m just calling it a unique trait of my constant nemesis: SLEEVES!
Session Overview
Play Number: 19 & 20
Main Expansion 1: Villages of Valeria: Architects
Main Expansion 2: Villages of Valeria: Monuments
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
Outcome: 61, 48 (1 Win & 1 Loss)
There was a stark contrast in the weather conditions near my village… Ha ha! Aside from a slight rules issue with picking up more adventurers than I should have ended up with, I thought this was a pretty excellent time. Very fun times piecing together strategies from the available cards, and I’m hoping I actually play this a little more frequently!
%
20 Plays
Affordability
Price & Value
7
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
10
Originality
Design & Theme
5
Quality
Components & Rules
9
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
7
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
7
+ Pros (Positives)
- Gameplay is quick and requires minimal downtime related to flipping cards to replenish the market or moving gold.
- Each piece of art brings the adventurer or building to life in a familiar but signature style of the game’s artist.
- Multi-purpose cards offer interesting decisions about whether to build, develop, or trash each one to move ahead.
- The solo mode uses only a portion of the cards, and even duplicates create different situations to work through.
- Not all of the expansions offer a lot of solo content, yet there is a nice mix of new cards and the monument buildings.
- In the end, it’s fun to take a moment to imagine what sort of village has been created with the full tableau.
– Cons (Negatives)
- A few rules errata are hard to find, such as the rule to only use 10 adventurer cards during setup for the solo mode.
- Gameplay is predictable in a nice sort of way, but this can mean that everything feels a bit repetitive rather quickly.
- Keeping the castle card and its tucked developments orderly can be a challenge, especially with a lot of cards.
- Most cards tend to be stacked so that the art is mostly hidden and the focus switches to the card abilities and icons.
Victory Conditions
Score 60+ Points
- Overall Goal Progress 67%
Goals and Milestones
Score at least 50 points.
Score at least 90 points.
Score at least 100 points.
Continue the Conversation
What do you enjoy the most about Villages of Valeria? Is there an expansion you prefer for solo play? I missed the errata about the solo adventurers deck, but at least I didn’t run away with an amazing victory. It was nice to come back to this one and see all of the possibilities! Sometimes, a predictable sort of solo game is exactly what I want to spend time with.
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