Estate: Raise the Realm

• Designer:  Devon Grodkiewicz, Kathryn Hahn 
• Publisher: Grod Games
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 14+
• Time: 20-100 mins
• Purchase link: https://grod-games.myshopify.com/ 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Estate, players take on the role of a Noble Leader of a Great House who is bequeathed an Estate post war. Each Leader begins the game with resources, a special ability, a unique build of construction(s) and/or citizen(s) cards within their Estate, a Family Secret objective, and workers prepared to rebuild.

A worker placement reconstruction challenge, players must use their workers wisely to optimize their Estate’s growth over the five Eras of game play. Workers can be used to take one of four main actions each turn: play citizen/construction Estate Cards, gather resources from the center game board, produce on Production Cards within their growing Estate, and draw new citizen/construction Estate Cards to join the cause. As the Eras progress and your Estate grows, worker actions become more powerful.

Don’t forget the Era Events! Revealed at the start of each Era, Era Events impact game play (either positively or negatively) for that Era while also introducing a public Era Objective players can compete for.

Time is limited and not on your side, and careful consideration must be made when determining the best actions for your rise to power. Optimizing your leader’s special ability and family secret objective will also provide valuable victory points at game end.

To set up, each player chooses one of the eight Leaders, and takes the associated Leader player mat and player aid.  Each Leader has a unique set up and this leads to asymmetric strategies from the start.  On the player board, the tracks are filled with cubes.  Players receive starting cards (listed as their “Starting Build” on their mat) from the Estate Deck; these are placed face up on the table in their area.  Each player now removes the left most cube from the tracks associated with their starting cards. 4 workers are placed on the spaces on the player mat and the extra two are placed nearby.  Each player gets 2 Family Secret cards and keeps one.  Players also get a starting hand of 5 Estate cards.  A draft is had with these 5 Estate cards with players choosing one to keep and then passing the rest to the left.  Continue this until players have kept 4 cards and discard the final unchosen card to the discard pile.

Place the Realm board on the table, and distribute Era Event cards to the five spaces: random positive for Era 1, and a mix of 2 positive and 2 negative for rounds 2-5. Choose one Advanced Gather tile for each of the four levels and place them on the board.   One resource of each type is placed on the corresponding resource spaces, and a market of 4 Estate cards is placed face up in the Market. 

Estate is played over a series of five Eras.  Within each Era, players take turns placing one worker at a time, proceeding clockwise. The Era ends when each player has used all available workers.

Era Start: At the start of each Era, an Era Event is revealed and its effect announced. Era Events have consequences that affect the game play for the duration of the Era and also introduce an Era Objective that players compete for, with awards for 1st: 6 Victory Points, 2nd: 1 Card & 1 Resource, and 3rd: 1 Resource.

During the Era: Workers may take 1 of 4 actions on the Player Mat:

1. Expand: Play an Estate Card: Play an Estate card for the resource cost located in the top left corner of the card. When played, remove a cube from the corresponding Estate tracker – Noble (Crown symbol), Production(Money Bag), or Commoner (Scythe Symbol).  You can only play 7 cards of any particular color.  Cards have their own abilities, and some provide VPs.
2. Draw Estate Cards: The player may draw from either the Market or the Estate deck at random. Once done, replenish the Market. The number of cards to be drawn is equal to the highest number revealed in the red Draw track on your player board.  There is no hand limit.
3. Produce on Cards in Estate: Activate production cards within your Estate to take their effect and gain resources / cards / and more! It is possible a player may have more production cards than they can produce on, make sure to check the progress in your production row to confirm.  The number of cards that produce is equal to the highest number revealed on the blue Produce track on your player board.
4. Gather: Move your worker from the player mat to the game board to perform an available Era or Progress action. (Some Era Actions may not be available yet if the player has not progressed far enough on their Gather Track on their player board.

End of Era: The Era ends when all workers have been used across all players. Before resetting for the next Era, any cards with End of Era effects activate. Players then score the Era Objective, marking their scores with cubes placed on the main board.

Era Reset: Take the following steps to reset the board for the next Era:

1. Add 1 resource to each of the accumulating resource action spaces on the game board
2. Refresh the Market – remove all cards and replenish
3. All players withdraw their workers back to their Estate player mat
4. Reset the Leader Special Ability token
5. Reveal the next Era Event

The game ends at the end of the fifth Era.  At this time, players calculate their scores.

• Cards played in their Estate
• Game End bonus points on cards
• Gold – 1 VP per Gold
• Tucked Cards – 1 VP each
• Resources on Cards – 1 VP each
• Era Objectives
• Family Secret card points
• Tableau tracks – 7VP per track with all cubes removed

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most 1st place finishes for Era Objectives.

My thoughts on the game

Estate: Raise the Realm is the first game from Grod Games as well as the designers, and it has a lot going on!  It uses the familiar base of a worker placement game, but the interactions between all the cards and their abilities will keep you working constantly on your strategy.

Each player has an asymmetric start based on their choice of character and starting buildings. While the character choice does tend to push you in a certain way on your strategy, I do not think that it railroads you into a single path.  As with many “big deck of cards” games, sometimes your strategy is shaped by the cards you have access to and the cards that you add to your tableau. That being said, certainly for your first plays, I’d simply lean into the strengths of your character ability and hopefully dovetail that with your hidden end-game scoring bonus card.

As you are adding cards to your Estate, you are not only looking at the direct ability of the card but also considering the way that it builds your engine.  Do you want a balanced strategy? Do you want to be able to draw more cards to have the best selection?  Do you push the Gather action strength to get all of the sweet advanced actions?  As the game nears the end, you should definitely not forget about the large 7 point bonus for finishing off a track – this is a strong motivator for card choice as you near the end of the game.

In each round, you’re also being challenged to stay on track with your overall strategy while also being enticed to compete for the Era Objective.  The six points for winning is definitely worth it, but even the card and resource for second can be quite helpful.  Every game plays out with a slightly different cadence based on the randomness of the Era Events/Objectives.

The rules are ok, though there are a few confusing lapses.  First, it’s nice that there is a printed FAQ included in the box, but it is a bit frustrating for a few rules to ONLY be given in the FAQ.  Otherwise, the FAQ is nice… but if it was already included in the box, why aren’t these rules simply in the main rulebook?

The rules still have plenty of holes. We had numerous questions and clarifications that are not addressing the rules nor the included faq. In fact there is a frequently Asked question in the FAQ that unfortunately is not frequently answered – the page literally ends without an answer… 

Also with an estate deck with 156 cards, there are frustratingly few card explanations on the rules and faq, and we had to house rule far too often.  I’d like to see an updated version of the rules or maybe a living rules document online to answer these questions. 

The game gives you a lot to think about, but it doesn’t help itself in game length.  The game can drag on a bit – and even with experience, it takes a bit longer to play that I’d like.  There are a number of cards that require you to know the number of qualifying cards in all Estates, and it takes awhile to get these questions answered.  A number of cards allow stealing from players or copying of actions, and this also eats up time as players constantly are asking what other people have or what their cards can do.   Even being familiar with the game, we’re still looking at 20-25 minutes per player, plus setup/teardown/rules/time lost looking up clarifications.

For a debut game from a designer/publisher, there is a lot to like here.  The bones of the game are solid, and I have enjoyed trying out a number of different strategies as I’ve learned the game.  The rules are admittedly a bit of a jumble, but I think we have found answers to most of our questions.  I think this game is definitely worth a look, and it would not surprise me at all if a larger company picked it up and did a bit of development on it.

If you’re looking to get in on the ground floor with a designer and new publisher, Estate: Raise the Realm would be a good choice.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor

Purchase link: https://grod-games.myshopify.com/