Middle Ages

• Designer: Marc Andre
• Publisher: Studio H
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Hachette USA
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/47aBAv4

You are the head of a fiefdom and its future is in your hands. Will you develop agriculture with fields and mills? Or will you become a pious church-builder or prefer to feast in your sumptuous palaces? Develop your lands in your image and become the most influential lord in the kingdom.

In Middle Ages, you explore the essence of medieval urban life through eight distinct tiles: fields, farms, villages, forts, markets, barracks, churches, and palaces. Each tile features its own scoring system, yet it’s linked to others, offering a rich and immersive gaming experience. Unleash strategic maneuvers, from daring assaults on rival fiefdoms to reserving tiles for future use. Harness the power of tactical combinations to amplify your income and pave your way to triumph!

To set up the game, give each player a Fiefdom board – this has a column dedicated to each of the eight different building types in the game as well as the Lord and Scout pieces in their color.  Split up the plot tiles based on the color on their back (blue and orange)  Make a stack of the blue tiles, and draw N+1 tiles and place them in a face down row, arranging them numerically with the lowest value on the left. Once they are in order, they can be flipped up.   Repeat this three times so that you have four rows, each in its own numerical order, all face up.  Shuffle the event cards, deal out 4 of them and place them face up in a row near the Plot tiles.  Determine turn order randomly, and in that order, players place their Lord piece on an empty Plot tile in the top row of the display.

You have already started the first round!  The game is played over sixteen rounds, each following the same pattern.  Turn order in each round is determined by the placement of the Lord pieces.  Players will take their tile and do things in left to right order.  To start a round, first remove the tile which was not chosen and discard it.  Now, every tile remaining in the row will have a Lord piece on it.

When it is your turn, remove your Lord piece and immediately place it on an empty Plot tile in the next row – this will determine both your tile and your place in turn order for the next turn.  Now, take the tile you just vacated and place it in the column of your Fiefdom board matching the color/type of the tile.  It is difficult to put the tile in the wrong place as each column has its own specific pattern for cutout of the tile!  Perform the special action of the tile and then gain the income from that tile.  

The 8 Estates:

Field:  

Effect – gain 1 coin for each Farmer in your Fiefdom.  

Income – 2 coins for each Field tile in this column

Mill

Effect – all players with fewer Mills than you must give you 2 coins

Income – 2 coins for each Mill tile in this column

Village 

Effect – take a Plot tile from your Cemetery and add it to your board (but do not activate its effect)

Income – 2 coins per each Village and Rampart in your Fiefdom

Rampart 

Effect – Place your scout piece on any Visible plot tile other than the active row. No other player can place their Lord there

Income – 2 coins per each Rampart and Field tile in your Fiefdom

Market

Effect – Gain 1 coin for each Chest symbol in your Fiefdom

Income – 2 coins for each Mill and Market in your Fiefdom

Barracks

Effect – attack all players with fewer Ramparts than you have Barracks. Losers must discard their top tile from the leftmost column to their Cemetery AND give you 2 coins

Income – 2 coins per each Barracks and Village tile in your Fiefdom

Church

Effect – place an extra coin token under one column in your Fiefdom board – this column will now have increased income going forward

Income – 3 coins per Church tile in this column

Palace 

Effect – place an extra plot type token under one column in your Fiefdom board – this column will now also score this type of tile

Income – 3 coins per Palace tile in this column

The next player then goes.  When the current row is empty, refill the row with N+1 new tiles, arrange them in order and then flip them over.  

If you get to the end of the 4th, 8th, 12th or 16th round, apply the effect of the leftmost event card in the rown and then discard it.  These events may grant coins for particular tiles in your Fiefdom, or it may force players to discard tiles to their Cemetery or might even reward them for having tiles in their Cemetery.  In any event, the events are known from setup, so players have time to adapt their strategies if they wish.  When the event happens, you’ll also note that the Lord Pieces have to be placed back at the top row of the display to continue play.

At the end of the 16th round the game ends – and evaluation happens.  Each player first looks at their Fiefdom and loses 10 coins for each Column that they do not have at least one Plot tile built.  Then, the player with the most coins remaining wins.  Ties broken in favor of the player with the Most Palaces, then most Churches…

My thoughts on the game

Middle Ages is a reskinning of a classic game Majesty: For the Realm – one of the games I really liked from Spiel 2017.  If you have played the original (and I still own the original) – this is a somewhat more streamlined version.  Ergonomically, I think it works better with the tiles with distinct cuts to match the tile type.  Playwise, it is improved due to the upgraded drafting supply situation (akin to Kingdomino).  There are also event cards which are new to this version.  They do add a little variance/unpredictability to each game, but you also have plenty of time to figure out how you are going to deal with each one

There are 16 turns in the game, but the decisions in each are generally quick to take – with the most choices coming when you are earlier in turn order.  Going first in a round can be so advantageous that there are times when I might take a tile I don’t want in the current round just to be in place to go first in placing for the next round – to really get the tile that I want!

But, everything just flows, you move your dude, pick up your tile and then play it.  There really aren’t any options when playing it – just put it in the right column (made easier by the pieces only fitting together one way), do the mandatory action and take the mandatory income.  No thought there.  The main decision each round is simply where to put your guy for the next round.

In that sense, it’s a simple and enjoyable game to play.  It has scoring chips with rational values (I still remember getting so mad that Majesty didn’t have a 5-point tokens).  I can teach it to you in about 5 minutes, and once the game is in action, it’s easy to grok and folks can just enjoy the game.

Is it all better (compared to Majesty)?  Well, depends on how you like your game.  I will note that Middle Ages seems to have a bit more take-that/destruction to it.  There are plenty of buildings that will get sent to the Cemetery here, and it feels like once you have lost the military fight, you are best off not even trying to join in, but rather just use your picks on better things for you – even if you know you’re just going to lose them again.  There’s also a fair bit of stealing with the Mill toll as well as some possible hate drafting/negation with the Rampart scout action.   

It may just be groupthink but there does seem to be a pattern where one player gets ahead in Barracks – to the point it’s not worth really going for them any more and then that player generally always has a Barrack available to choose from – and this can lead to some huge income gains.  Of course, players can stop this by putting their Scouts out to stop a Barrack from being drafted – but it is a powerful engine that we have yet to find a great strategy to thwart.

The overall production quality is great though. I have already raved a few times in this review about the different notchings on the tiles – and this is a great strategy that I’m surprised I haven’t seen much before.  I also like the way that the extra Plot tokens and extra coin tokens have little notches they just seamlessly slide into.  On top of that, the artwork is amazing with so many little details on each tile.  It definitely looks beautiful on the table.

In the end, this ends up in the super filler category, and at least for me, just outside of a gateway game.  There is a bit more depth here than in Majesty, so if you want something just a bit chewier, this is the choice.  While it has many of the characteristics that I’m looking for in a gateway game – short play time, simple rules, easy to grasp strategy – I find that the tile destruction and constant Mill tolling can be frustrating for newbies (heck, even for veterans like me when they’re on the short end of the stick) – and I personally wouldn’t use this game as a first look at the games I play.  That being said, if you or your group leans into a bit more confrontation than the usual Euro will give you, this would be a good entry point then…

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Matt C: I’ve only played this newer version of the game and only two games. In both games, one (or more) player seemed to get beat up by the Barracks quite a bit. In one game that player did come back hard and managed a 2nd place but was still quite far behind 1st. Several Barracks seem to be quite a strong strategy and, especially depending on how tiles come out, can be pretty hard to compete against. Hopefully, these are two isolated games and the game may have 1st-time player issues. I’m not a huge fan of take-that games and am especially wary of games where the take-that nature of the game can continually pound the same person. I could be talked into another game I suppose, but for now it isn’t for me.

Alison Brennan: A re-do of Majesty: For The Realm which works well and gets the same rating for being an upper-end light-weight Euro. In the biggest improvement, it adds an 8th tile type and now the two rightmost tile types allow you to change the scoring conditions in your other categories, allowing you to smack down more specialised strategies. This effectively replaces the end-game category scoring (as you score more intra-game). The change I’m more ambivalent about (it’s just different is all) is the tile gathering rule which is now Kingdomino like, but we’ve seen both stay-first and go-last strategies do well so it is what it is and the game now takes 5p well which makes it a nice go-to on BGA when there’s a call for something light-ish but with nice decision making.

Fraser: Well I suppose we will now have to completely give up on the expansion for Majesty For the Realm that was clearly intended ☹️  We picked the original up at Essen 2017 and still play it.  Six minutes elapsed time per player to complete, nice little game. Even without the 2 denomination coins.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! John P, Alison Brennan
• I like it. Steph H
• Neutral. Dale Y
• Not for me… Matt C.