Revisiting The Tiny Little Hamlet That Raised Me: MY VILLAGE

We are living in a golden age of board gaming stretching back now for over twenty-five years. If you are a euro game fan, you have been especially enjoying an absolute embarrassment of riches. So many designers have been at the top of their game, and there is a growing cadre of innovative younger designers revealing even more depth and diversity.

But, we cannot always look to the future, or be succumbed by the past. Like many of you, I have a shelf full of games that I really enjoyed when they came out, but have sadly slipped down line of games that hit the table. Do they hold up? Now that I’ve been writing about games for over ten years, it’s time to revisit some of these early entries to the collection.

One of those is a well known game from 2015 designed by the powerhouse duo of Inka & Markus Brand ( Rajas of the Gagnes, Exit: The Game). A card-and-dice based homage to the original Village series, it was published by eggertspiele and brought over to America by Stronghold Games. (Note, I was a frequent demoer for Stronghold at Dice Tower conventions back around 2017.)

In My Village, players have a delectable choice each turn from a fistful of dice results: choose any two dice, combine the results, and then use that number to power up actions all over the village. (We published my original review of My Village way back in 2016.) The decision is made even tougher by the fact that there are two different colors of dice, one of which brings your village closer each turn to the Grim Reaper, via the time track, who very quietly removes one of your villagers from your board as a long over due payment for helping you along the way.

I have played a lot of games with “time tracks”, and My Village does it as good as game I’ve seen. Fans of the original Village will definitely appreciate this mechanic. Grabbing the light colored dice means no time is added to your board, but for every dark colored dice, the time track advances two spaces. Thus, time is a resource, and the cost of time complicates and clouds every decision you make. But, cloudy in a good way, not like “cloudy with an impending rain storm” that threatens your favorite tailgate party.

So what do the numbers that you generate from the dice actually do, besides potentially forcing you to dance with death?

They give you cards. Cards, cards, and more cards.

My Village is all about grabbing cards from the various card markets, paying time and/or resources to get them, and powering up your own village. The goal, of course, is to score Prestige Points, and they come in typical euro point salad-y ways.

You could travel with your traveler, flipping green cards that give you lots of points but take a lot of resources on the journey, of course. You could build a beautiful church, and staff it with pious monks, who can give you short term benefits and lots of points for the gorgeous windows that will be a tiny portal for the monks to see out in the world.

You could add meeting spaces or guilds, you could build fields that generate lots of gold, or you could even develop and harvest your crafts area to amplify your engine, all in an effort to sell the trinkets back to waiting customers who visit your little hamlet. I really like the production and customers part, as it is another familiar homage to Village.

We played this at our recent game night, and while the set up and tear down is admittedly kind of a hassle, I was struck by how fresh My Village feels. It still holds up. We had to check the box twice to confirm that it was designed in 2015, because it feels like it could easily come out today and still be relevant.

In my euro games, I want there to be a tight economy, because I want to feel like each of my decisions are important. My Village definitely feels like that. We stare at the pile of dice at the start of our turns, seeing all of the branching possibilities, and it is tough trying to decide which phase of the game to focus on. And you better be solid in at least two or three phases to have a chance to win.

But I also want the game to have elements that distinguish my play experience from other’s experiences. Sure, this is a typical new era game where there isn’t a lot of direct interaction, but it is not like player interaction is completely non-existent. There is some interaction. I’ll give a few examples.

Grabbing the first player token means you get the best, early choice of dice. Each of the red and brown cards can only be purchased by one player, and each of them steers your strategy in a particular direction. Timing a big move on the time tracker, knowing that your opponent has a big ton of story points in her story tree that you can get the rat to eat up, oh that’s definitely some interaction. So, racing around the village getting the cards you want or forcing the end game faster are definitely important interactions.

But I will admit, interactivity is not My Village’s strong suit. It’s all about the puzzle of synergizing the village cards that allow you to take the most efficient actions with the dice you choose each round. The Brands’ design allow you to purchase only one card per round. But in a clever bit, when those cards are flipped into your tableau, they unlock “white banner” actions later. If you can add white banner cards that all have the same activation number, then you can turn that number into multiple actions all in one round. Having three craft cards that all have the same number means you are juicing up your economy, and it just makes you feel clever when it happens.

So, does My Village hold up after ten years? Absolutely. It was a joy to re-learn the game, and introduce it to gamers who have not seen it before. Whoever said “you can never go home”, never met Dennis Lohausen.

Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo