Volfyirion Guilds is live (Save your cities and beat the dragon)
Update: Volfyirion Guilds has launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 29 days. You may pledge just for the dragon mini, or go for the retail or the Kickstarter edition of the game. Pledge options with the Volfyirion card game, expansions and playmats are also available.
Our preview post below was published on July 2.
Volfyirion Guilds is a 1-2 players deck-building game in which you wage a war of survival for your guild of cities, under the looming threat of the dragon Volfyirion. The game is a stand-alone expansion to Volfyirion, which was published in 2019, and offers an entirely new solo mode: instead of battling the dragon Volfyirion, you now play against an Automaton, which makes the solo game closer to the 2 players experience. The campaign will go live on July 7.
In Volfyirion Guilds, you take control of three cities, each featuring two slots, one for a Troop, one for a Building, in order to reinforce them and grow your power. Your opponent in solo is a “Monster” that you must pick between a choice of two. The Monster works with two rows of cards: a life points row of face-down cards (each card is a life point), and a “strength” row of face-up cards that get activated in sequence to produce different effects depending on their color, on the number of strength cards in the row, and on the chosen Monster. Your goal is to defeat the Monster by removing all of its life points before they destroy your three cities. You may purchase Asset cards from the display, as well as three Wonder cards that are placed next to the dragon's lair and provide persistent effects. Both the Asset cards and the Wonder cards display get refilled at the end of your turn.
You start the game with a deck of 10 starting cards and draw a hand of 5. Cards show a set of stats: Command points, Battle points, and Knowledge points. When you play the cards, you get these resources, which allow you in turn to perform actions. Command points allow you to recruit new cards from the display (they go into your discard), Battle points are used to destroy your opponent’s Life points (you need 6 to remove a life point), Knowledge points are used to purchase Wonder cards, or to unseal them if your opponent sealed them (making them ineffective). Knowledge points may also be used to move Volfyirion from its lair to your opponent (to destroy one of its life points), or from one of the cities to its lair. Indeed, if Volfyirion is located in one of your cities by the end of your turn, it gets destroyed, and all attached cards with it. You may also attempt to defeat Volfyirion itself by totaling up to 16 Battle points in one turn; then, the dragon is slain, you grab all the Wonder cards on display (which will no longer be refilled), and you add its lair under your Guild’s dominion, thus receiving an additional city.
Building and Troop cards, when played, must be attached to a free slot on one of your cities (or replace an existing one), usually adding defense to these cities. Cards may also feature a secondary ability. Some of these secondary abilities require a Synergy Chain, that, is, you must first play a card of a given suit to activate them. The game features a few additional mechanisms, such as the possibility to reserve a card for a subsequent turn, or the use of “Agent” cards to claim cards from the display without purchasing them. Several abilities also allow you to cull your deck of the cards that you no longer find useful.
At the end of your turn, all cards get discarded, except the Building, Troop, and Wonder cards, giving you lasting power that will pile up with what you play in subsequent turns. Then, you draw 5 new cards, reshuffling the discard into your deck if necessary. The game continues until you either defeat the Monster or lose your last city.