Siege of Valeria was the game of the 3 new Valeria Games (Dice Kingdoms of Valeria & Thrones of Valeria) I was most curious about. As over the last 2 years, I’ve been getting into solo games. Not sure why?

Tower defence games are something I love & there has never been a steam sale where I haven’t picked up at least a couple. But those are video games, will in translate to the board? Can this siege to victory or will its defence be broken?

Setup

• Shuffle the 18 Siege Engine cards and return 5 Siege Engine Cards to the box. From the remaining 13 cards, deal five cards face-up in a line at the top of your play area and place the remaining 8 cards nearby as the Siege Engine Deck.
• Shuffle the 48 Troop cards and return two Troop cards to the box. Deal yourself two Troop cards as a starting hand, then deal out twenty cards face-up to complete the 5×5 Battlefield grid. Place the remaining 24 cards nearby as the Troop Deck
• The row of cards closest to you is the Vanguard. Place the Fortress board below the Battlefield and adjacent to the Vanguard.
• Take 5 Soldier dice and 2 Holy dice as your starting dice pool. The remaining 3 Soldier dice and 2 Holy dice are the dice supply. Keep your dice pool separate from the dice supply.
• Place the Strength, Magic, and Impact token supply nearby
• Shuffle the 18 Champion cards and place the deck nearby.
• Shuffle the 18 Event cards and place the deck nearby

Game Play

The game takes place over seven turns (days). In each turn you will:

• Roll Your Dice → Resolve the Siege Engines → Resolve an Event
• Perform Your Action Phase
• Activate the Vanguard → Advance the Battlefield → Reinforce the Battlefield

Roll Your Dice – Begin your turn by rolling all of the dice in your dice pool.

Resolve the Siege – Engines The Siege Engines in the Battlefield will attack, if possible, starting from the left-most column and working to the right

Resolve an Event – The Event cards bring a sense of the unexpected to your defence of the Fortress. You may want to play a few times without the Events, to build your skills

Your Action Phase –

• ENEMY TARGETS: In each column of the Battlefield, the card closest to the Fortress is the Front card.
• TO ATTACK THE ENEMY: To attack a Front card or an in range Siege Engine, you must spend dice of equal or higher value to the strength and magic shown on the card plus any Strength and Magic tokens the card may have accumulated during play
• CHAMPIONS: You receive a Champion card when you defeat a Siege Engine and when you play certain cards from your hand. Draw the card from the Champion deck and add it to an open position on your Fortress
• FORTRESS: Each Turret on your Fortress can sustain 3 Impact damage before it begins to fail. When a Turret has 3 Impact tokens it can no longer hold a Champion. If there is a Champion card on that Turret when it receives the 3rd Impact token, you must discard the Champion with no repair effect
• END OF ACTIONS: When all of your dice have been spent or are unusable for any other purpose, your action phase is complete. Unused dice are returned to your dice pool to roll in the next turn

Activate the Vanguard – Any cards remaining in the Vanguard (the first row of cards adjacent to the Fortress), activate now

Advance the Battlefield – The cards in the Battlefield advance and reinforcement arrive in the following steps:

• All of the cards in the Battlefield advance as close as possible to the Fortress while remaining in their columns. Some cards will advance further than others and some columns may be temporarily empty.
• After advancing the Battlefield, check the state of the Troops deck. If it is already exhausted, you immediately lose the game.

Reinforce the Battlefield – New Siege Engines and Troops arrive.

End of the Turn

If you haven’t won or lost by this point, go back to Roll Your Dice and start a new turn

Winning and Losing

Throughout the full rules, you’ll see text explaining win and lose conditions as you would encounter them during game play. Here they are again:

• YOU LOSE if there is a Siege Engine in the Vanguard when you Activate the Vanguard
• YOU LOSE when a Turret on your Fortress receives a 4th Impact token.
• YOU LOSE if the Troop deck is exhausted when you need to Reinforce the Battlefield.
• YOU WIN if the Siege Engine deck is exhausted and there are no Siege Engines in the Battlefield.

How Badly Did You Lose?

If you lost, count the number of undefeated Siege Engines on the Battlefield and in the Siege Engine deck to determine how you’re treated after the battle.

• 1 Undefeated Siege Engine: The General of the Armies of the Shadow Kingdoms salutes your bravery and tactics. To have a worthy opponent is all any soldier can ask. While your Fortress is now in the hands of the Shadow Kingdoms, the General sets you free in hopes that you two will meet again.
• 2-5 Undefeated Siege Engines: The Captain of the Watch, seeing the defeat in advance, enlisted the aid of the Steward of the Fortress to sneak you out through a secret tunnel. The swamp where you emerge is not a proud place, but you’re alive and can plan for a second engagement.
• 6-7 Undefeated Siege Engines: The Sergeant at Arms, and what few survivors she could find, have imprisoned you in the dungeons beneath the Fortress. The rats in the cell are keeping their distance, as if they do not want to be associated with such a stunningly bad Warlord.
• 8+ Undefeated Siege Engines: Only the tradesmen and stable hands were standing when the monster-kin made their final assault, but those few citizens caught you unaware. You now lay in the dirt, trussed like an Aquila Day pig, a gift in trade for the leniency of the General of the Shadow Kingdoms.

How Honoured Was Your Victory

If you won, count the number of cards in your hand (Defeated Troops) and in the Battlefield (Routed Troops) to determine your standing as a Defender of the Realm.

• 0-3 Defeated and Routed Troops: The Queen is grateful for your service, but you’re not invited to her Golden Jubilee
• 4-6 Defeated and Routed Troops: Her Highness, the Queen, will be pleased to meet with you at Court the next time you’re in Shilina. Bring a gift.
• 7-9 Defeated and Routed Troops: Her Royal Majesty is considering you for Commandant of the Duchy of Kosk, a new, but important province out in the western wilds.
• 10-12 Defeated and Routed Troops: Her Royal Highness, the Queen of All Valeria, has announced a reception in your honour. Please RSVP with +1.
• 13+ Defeated and Routed Troops: Saffrina III, Sovereign of All Valeria, Protector of the Western Wilds and Guardian of the River Nae from which All Magic Flows acknowledges your triumph over the Shadow Kingdoms and proclaims you Defender of the Realm. You will serve at Court as Her Majesty’s Minister of War for the remainder of the current strife between the Valerians and the monster-kin

Game Play

Solo games feel like a bit of a guilty, as it is the same level of fun of playing a board game but you playing it all by yourself. I don’t know why, but if feels that way, but I always feel a bit cheeky playing a board game by myself. As it is the social aspect of board games that I like most. Yet, I’ve really come to enjoy solo gaming. I’m actually glad one of these 3 is able to be played solo or is a solo game.

I sat down on my bed after writing the other 2 reviews & thought, “I’d have a quite night & play a game or 2 & get to bed early”…… that didn’t happen. As once I was handed my first crashing loss, followed by two more. I was not sleeping until I got myself the win. Which happened on game 4 , but I wanted to be invited to the Golden Jubilee, so scrapping through is not a win in my book. So on I played!

And that is the thing about Siege of Valeria, it is challenging, thought provoking & not for the faint hearted. It brings all the excitement & nervousness of a tower defence game with those ‘oh, might just get through’ moments. That is why I love tower defence games so much, is that knife edge moments of ‘Will this wave kill me or have I done enough to scrap through’. Which Siege of Valeria captures so well, all that is missing is the waves of enemies moving along the track towards you.

Siege was the one I was most interested about, as I never thought you could actually get the feel quite right to make a tower defence board game actually work. But I must say something to Daily Magic Games, I need to apologise as you proved me wrong. It can be done & if handled correct, can be amazing.  As this game is everything I wanted, challenging game play with a really focus on knife edge decision making, that is challenging but is so much fun.

The one element I love is the win/loss ratio scale. Like a win is a win, unless you are playing Siege of Valeria. Than even a win can feel like a loss. Not to mention, Win/Loss scale is hilarious & I really think it is a great touch, as even when I won, I found myself wanting to win better & weirdly, when you lose, it can make the loss feel not as bad or horrible! It’s something I’ve never seen before in a game. Though the game doesn’t need it; It added a lot more to the game than I original realised at first glance. I’ve found that sometimes the issue with solo games, is they don’t always feel competitive & this adds a level of competitiveness within ones self. It makes you want to win better or if I’m losing, try hard to lose by less.

Art

As I said in the Dice Kingdoms of Valeria article, Art is by The Mico. That is really all your need to know.

If you have ever played a Valeria game, you have seen & love his artwork. He is an absolute maestro & though in Dice Kingdoms of Valeria, in which he had an easier task & they gave him some room with Thrones of Valeria. Daily Magic Games unlashed The Mico with Siege of Valeria. As the art on this game is something special, as The Mico has outdone himself with these set of characters & villains. There may even be inspired but some pop culture characters… Black Phanther…. sorry Sir Phanther lol

Final Thoughts

Siege of Valeria was a game that excited & made me feel the most nervous of the 3 new Daily Magic Games. As I love tower defense games on my PC & thought if it worked, could be an amazing if handled right. Thankfully for us all, that is exact what Daily Magic has done. They’ve Created an exciting, challenging, fun & enthralling game that is the most fun I’ve had in a solo game.

If you are into the solo games or enjoy tower defense games, this is the game for you. I enjoyed all of this current crop of Valeria & really impressed with the variety & intelligent game development of them all. But Siege of Valeria was the one that won my heart, I didn’t mean to saved the best for last. Yet it was a happy accident!

If you would like a copy of Siege of Valeria or one of the other two games, you can back them on Kickstarter here