Villagers: Shifting Seasons is live (Villagers expanded)
Update: Villagers: Shifting Seasons has launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 23 days. You may back only the expansion, or get it together with the base game and previous expansion pack, or go all-in, and receive everything released for Villagers so far.
Our preview post below was published on June 26.
Shifting Seasons is an expansion for the 1-5 player card drafting and set collection game, Villagers. It will launch on Kickstarter on June 29.
Shifting Seasons adds new modules to the base game - Events, new villagers, and a new solo mode - which allow for new ways of playing and customization.
Event cards are split into four seasons, and each season has 3 potential Events. One of the three Events is selected randomly and placed underneath the stack of cards in the display. Once a stack runs out and reveals an Event card, you resolve it during the Event phase, after the Building phase. Event cards offer players new actions and scoring possibilities.
The expansion also adds the 'clay' category of villagers (tile layer, ceramicist, clayman etc.), which can be mixed in with the other villagers in the game, as well as seven special villagers (Forager Leader, Merchant, Engineer etc.) that grant you an ability, and another set of cards called 'teams' (Builder team, Harvest team). Teams will be set up next to the villagers cards and can be drafted in the same way. To play a team, you have to discard two cards from your hand instead of one. You can only have one team in your village, and each team provides a special bonus.
The Monastery solo mode is more 'relaxed' than the original solo mode. On each turn, you draft a villager from the display, and the Monastery takes another villager card in order to covert them. The Monastery follows a set of priority rules for drafting. In the end, you calculate your score and try to do better in your next session.