Castellans Review
We review Castellans, an area control board game published by Daily Magic Games. Castellans is the next in the Valleria series from Daily Magic Games
I am returning to the Valeria Universe of games to review Castellans. Thus far my travels to Valeria have been mixed, Dice Kingdoms of Valeria is my favorite roll and write, while Guild Academies of Valeria is the game that got my second-lowest score ever. Will the third time be a charm or a strike-out? In Castellans, the westernmost city of Valeria, Kosk, is in need of a Castellan to manage the city’s development and day-to-day operations. You will compete against your opponents to be the best Castellan by developing districts, collecting resources, buying and selling goods at the wharf, gaining influence within the guilds, and encouraging the best citizens of Valeria to move to the frontier.
Castellans takes place over five rounds and each round has four phases: Draft, Action, Score, and Reset. The gameplay combines Area Control and Dice drafting in a fun, somewhat unique way.
Draft phase: Players draft the resource dice until each player has three. The remaining three dice are stored on the game board to be used by Manor powers and certain citizen cards.
Each player gains the resources on the dice that they drafted (Gold, Wood, Stone, Food, Magic, or Influence). Magic can be used to augment payments requiring Wood, Stone, and Food. When you earn influence, you select which guild you want to influence and move up that guild’s track. Each track has multiple bridges and when your influence marker crosses a bridge you gain a bonus. At the end of the game VP are awarded based on the ranking of your influence in each guild.
Action phase: Players spend their drafted dice to perform one primary action.
1. Wharf – Place Cargo tokens to buy or sell a resource. The Wharf has two very important sub-Actions:
Shipyard: pay two wood plus one gold per Ship in the district to place a ship in that district.
Sail: Spend two gold to
