Architects of the West Kingdom

By Board Game Doc

Brief Overview

A 1 to 5 player worker placement game, where players compete to collect resources, hire apprentices, build town structures, and ultimately build the cathedral.

Pros:

  • Heavy strategy

  • Numerous opportunities with each turn, creating a sense of freedom and autonomy instead of restriction and limitation

  • Thematic artwork

Cons:

  • Prone to analysis paralysis

  • Fairly complex rules/symbols on the first few plays; you may be referencing the rule book frequently

Diagnosis: 8/10 Board Game Doctors Approve


Further Reading

Architects of the West Kingdom is a beautiful game, both creatively and intellectually. This is a game where you start planning for the end game from the very beginning. Each of your moves builds on previous plays in such a way that inconsistencies in strategy, or frequent shifts in strategy, will severely limit your potential.

Another key piece of this game revolves around the virtue track, where you can gain extra points, resources, money by going to the black market, thievery, and overall reducing your ‘virtue.’ Move it too low and you’ll start to reduce your overall victory point count, end up with workers trapped in prison, and even preclude yourself from working on the cathedral! However, with the right apprentices and strategy, a low-virtue strategy can be quite lucrative. To me, this helps create a much more engrossing, immersive experience. You’ll chuckle to yourself as you grab extra marble and gold while your opponents scoff at you as they attempt to maintain the high ground.

In the end, you’ll be left wanting more. You’ll undoubtedly have started planning so far ahead and contemplating so many opportunities, that you’ll never be able to complete everything you want. For me, I love this ‘embarrassment of riches’ feeling as far as opportunities go. However, to other players, these constant microdecisions and stress to make the perfect play, can be overwhelming. Nevertheless, the more you play, the more you peel back these layers of deeper strategy, and the more rewarding the game becomes. It is certainly deserving of its position amongst the top 100 games of all time.

As you architect your perfect collection, you’d be remiss not to include a spot for Architects of the West Kingdom.


You may also like: Paladins of the West Kingdom, Raiders of the North Sea, Wingspan


Information for this review was based mostly on games with 2 players, which is admittedly, not the best player count.