Vampire Village

• Designer: Maxime Rambourg
• Publisher: Studio H
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 20-30 minutes
• Played with game provided by distributor, Hachette USA

In the heart of a hostile region, you’re the head of a fortified village. When night falls, ferocious monsters emerge from the darkness and storm your village! To avoid carnage, organize your defenses, call in your heroes and… direct the most dangerous creatures toward your neighbors!

The game is played over two rounds, split in two distinct phases. During the day, each player selects cards to build their village, considering the best combination of buildings, the optimal positioning and also recruit powerful heroes to protect their villagers. During the night, they receive Creature cards to split between themselves and their neighbors In the best of cases, they choose to keep creatures that their defense can handle while hitting the weakest spots in your neighbor’s defenses!

Finally, the Creatures attack and destroy the most exposed buildings and villagers. At the end, the player with the most surviving villagers and tamed creatures mastered is declared the winner !

To set up, each player gets a starter Village card with 2 Villager tokens on it.  Each player is dealt 6 Village cards from Deck 1.  The Village Deck 2 is shuffled and placed on the table.  The two different Creature decks are also shuffled and put on the table.  The attack order tiles are set up, showing the order of attack of the different types of creatures.

The game is played over 2 rounds, each with three phases: Construction Phase, Creature Phase, Attack Phase.

In the Construction phase, players will draft cards to build their Village and install defenses.  Each player chooses one card from their current hand, and then passes the remainder to the next player (direction of pass noted on the back of the card).  When all players have chosen, the cards are revealed and then placed in the owner’s village.  Cards must be placed adjacent to at least one other card, and the village may not exceed a 4×4 grid.  Continue this until each player has placed 6 cards into their Village.

There are two types of Village cards: Building cards and Hero cards.  Each building card defends against the 3 types of creatures (green = witches, blue = werewolves, red = vampires) differently.  The number in the corresponding shield shows the defense value against each type. Many building cards generate Village tokens; often based on the placement of this card in relation to other cards.  You can see this information at the bottom of the Village card.

Hero cards do not provide defense but rather attack power. They have 0-3 Combat icons which show what types of creatures they fight best (all heroes fight Demons).  Additionally, Hero cards have a movement value at the bottom. When you place the hero, you can move any villagers which start on orthagonally adjacent cards to the hero.  The movement can be split amongst multiple eligible villagers.

In the Creature phase, there are two turns of card distribution.  Each player is dealt 3 Creature cards from the current Round’s Creature deck.  Each player keeps one of the cards, and then gives one each to their left and right neighbor.  When this is done, all players will have 3 cards, and they are all revealed.  Witches are placed to the left of the village, Werewolves above the village, Vampires to the right of the village and Demons underneath.  Repeat this process so that all players have 6 cards around their village at the end of this phase.

In the Attack Phase, each village is attacked by the creatures – in the order shown by the Attack Order arrow.  Demons always act first, and they either cause you to discard a Hero card or suffer a special effect.  You can discard a Hero to ignore the effect.  If one of the options does not apply (you have no Heroes OR the effect doesn’t affect your village), you are forced to choose the option which does apply. Then, the three types of creatures attack in the order of their tokens in the arrow.  Each type has slightly different attack patterns:

• Vampires have fixed attack values from 1 to 6 as shown on the card
• Werewolves have attack values that increases as you have more of each type (black or grey) attacking you
• Witches can have a fixed attack of 2, or they derive their attack value based on the number of witches that is attacking one of your opponents.  There are Threat markers which should be used to denote the attack strength 

To resolve each of the three attacks, do the following.  First calculate the total attacking strength for the creature type.  Then calculate the village defense against that type of creature by looking at the outermost row/column of your Village which is closest to the attacking creature type (i.e. for Witches, only consider the left most column).  

If the Village Defense is equal or greater than the attack strength, the Village wins the battle.  All the Creatures are driven off this time, and they remain where they are.  They will attack again in the next round….  If the Village Defense is less than the attack, one of the Creatures rampages through the village. Discard a Village card from the corresponding defending row/column as well as any villager tokens on it.  Then, destroy the weakest Attacking creature unless you discarded a Hero in this round of fighting, in which case you can remove any Creature card.  Now, re-calculate the Attack Power and Village Defense and resolve the fight again.  Continue until the Village either wins or there are no more attackers of that type.

Do this for all three attack types.  Again, there will likely be some Creatures which remain around your Village – they stay in their place and will attack again.  Now repeat the entire process for the second round, again drafting Village cards, then distributing Creatures and then resolving the attacks.

At the end of the second round, players will calculate their scores:

• 1 point per Villager Token on their cards
• 1 point per Creature which was repelled and remains around their village

The player with the most points wins. Ties are broken in favor of the player with the most cards in their Village at the end of the game.

My thoughts on the game

So, at first glance this looks like a tower defense game, and I suppose it fits that role.  But once you have played it a few times, you’ll realize that the game is here to crush your dreams as you watch everything you’ve worked so hard to build fall apart… :)  

The first phase is pretty simple – draft cards to try to build up your town with decent defenses.  While you’re at it, add as many villagers as you can as they’ll score you points if they manage to survive.  You’ll likely want to have a balanced defense because if you have a visible weakness, you’re surely going to get handed attackers of that type from your opponents.  In this regard, sometimes a single hero is the best sort of defense as you might count on losing a fight, but knowing that you can remove the highest powered enemy of that type may be enough to save your proverbial bacon.  I suppose you could try to be mean and hate draft – but it felt like most of the time, I’m struggling to build up my own town; I don’t really have the luxury of taking a card I can’t really use just to prevent my opponent from getting it…

The second phase is definitely where things get spicy.  With each set of three cards, you get to pass one to each opponent – and you can try to target their weaknesses.  After the first set of cards, be sure to look at what your opponents have already accumulated, because you might end up wanting to send them attackers against their strongest side if it looks like they could still be overwhelmed there.  Also, you should definitely pay close attention to the order of attacks – you might try to foresee how things will go wrong, and give your opponent a smaller attacker that they will be completely unprepared for!  Trust me, it doesn’t take much in Vampire Village for things to go wrong…

As the attacks are resolved, I’d recommend doing them one at a time.  Sure, it makes the game go a bit longer, but man, it is so fun to watch the towns get pummeled and destroyed by the attackers.  Certainly in your first game, I’d go this route; if nothing else to make sure that everyone employs the correct rules for resolving the battles.  It is not uncommon for towns to lose half of their building cards if they are not properly prepared!

Interestingly, players that do poorly in the first round are not necessarily doomed in this game.  That is because towns that defended well in the first round end up with more attackers left surrounding them, which means even more things to fight off in the second round!  And the only thing that matters in this game is how your town looks after the second round of fighting…

The game plays quickly – maybe ten minutes to explain the rules, and twenty to thirty to play.  It’s definitely a bit chaotic, and a little bit mean – but man, every game can’t be about moving wooden discs around a board simulating medieval farming or trading goods at the pier?!   I’m right on the edge; it’s almost too mean for me – but the short playing time makes this more palatable.   For those who like highly interactive games with a bit of nastiness to them, this is definitely one to try.  You’ll get a little bit of drafting and puzzle solving as your build your defenses, but the game shines in the attacks – and you’ll have a good time trying to stick your opponents with cards they can’t handle and then gleefully giggle as their towns crumble in front of your eyes.  

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. 
• Neutral. Dale Y, Justin
• Not for me…