The Vale of Eternity

• Designer: Eric Hong
• Publisher: Mandoo Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 40 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Mandoo Games

In The Vale of Eternity, players are tamers who hunt various monsters and spirits to tame them as minions. In this fantasy world, numerous creatures are living in harmony. Among them, dragons are the most valuable and noble ones, and all tamers dream of taming dragons. The player who manages to tame the most outstanding minions wins.

Each player takes the bits in their player color, and the two boards are placed on the table.  One is a score board and round tracker.  The other is the draft board.  In each round, 2 cards per player are dealt to the board, placed in the area that matches the card’s suit

In each round, a player has three phases: Hunting, Action, Resolution

In the Hunting phase: Draft two cards from the game board. This is done in snake fashion (or Settlers style) – each player places one of their tokens on their selected card

In the Action phase: players take as many actions as they like, in any order they like, and they can repeat actions of the same type

• Tame a card – take one of the cards you have selected in the draft and add it to your hand.  There is no hand limit
• Sell a card – take one of the cards you have selected in the draft and sell it.  Collect stones as shown on the draft board.  Each player has a hard limit of having 4 stones at a time. You generally cannot color up. You do not get change if you overpay.  There are 3 types of stones: Pink worth 1, Blue worth 3, Purple worth 6.
• Summon a card – play a card from your hand to the table. You are limited to a number of cards equal to the current game round.  Pay the summon cost in the upper left corner and then play the card to the table.  Card costs can be altered by some card actions, and multiple card actions can stack.  If the played card has an instant effect, activate that now.
• Remove a card – remove a card from your play area, the cost is equal to the number of the current round

In the Resolution phase: Each player in turn order uses the active effects of cards they have summoned. These can be done in any order.

At round end, check to see if the game is over – this happens if at least one player has scored 60 points or more.  If so, the player with the most points wins, ties broken in favor of the player with the most summoned cards.  The game also ends automatically at the end of the 10th round.  Otherwise, pass the first player marker to the next person and play another round.

My thoughts on the game

Vale of Eternity was one of the games I was most excited about when I was doing my pre-Essen research.  I was quite excited to get a copy shipped to me in advance of the show, and we managed to get a single play in before I had to leave for Europe.  I have since played it more, and I’m still quite happy with it.  I’m also excited to say that it found many fans at SPIEL, and it appears that Renegade Games has signed it for US distribution, so everyone should get a chance to play it soon.

There is a unique feeling here in the way the cards are drafted but then used in multiple ways.  Sometimes you’ll draft a card only to get the gems for its color; or maybe you actually want the card to play into your area.  It’s also quite reasonable to hate draft against an opponent, just trying to deny them a particular card that would work well for their strategy.

Trying to get a card that you can play in each round is a good strategy but not essential.  There are times when you just don’t have the right card, and/or you’re trying to save your gems to play a better card in a later round.  On the flip side, if you’ve played lots of smaller cards, you might need to try to decide when is the right time to remove them from your area – the longer you wait though, the more expensive it will be to do so!

The star shaped board is neat, and I like the way it keeps all the cards organized in a way that they don’t run into each other.  That being said, I do wish that the text on the cards was a bit bigger.  It’s hard to read the game-necessary details on the card at times, and as you are having to draft cards, it’s really beneficial that you know what all of them do.  We have eventually figured out a system where the start player of the next round starts to look at the cards for the next round as soon as they are done with the current round.  In this way, we at least speed up the first choice of the next draft.

I also liked the way that the hard limit of 4 gems gives you some interesting decisions as well, especially if you end up with cards that require certain types of gems for their powers.  

The components are pretty good (except for the smallish area that is on the cards for the actual useful text), and the artwork on each card is nice and distinctive.  The game also includes an Eternity standee – it looks like a dragon. Curiously, the rules tell you to include it on the table to give a nice touch to your photos.  So… you’ll see it a lot here.

The game moves pretty quick once you get the hang of it, and so far, all of our games have ended on the 60-point barrier as opposed to finishing the 10th turn rule.   There are a few cards that have some less-than-clear text on them, but since the cards are seen in the draft, hopefully someone at the table will see it and the table can make a ruling on how to play the card.  As long as everyone expects the same action from a card, it should work out ok.

For a 30-40 minute game, there’s a lot to like here, and I’m thinking that this is definitely a game worthy of a larger audience. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

I love it!

I like it. Dale Y

Neutral

Not for me…