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Garolium Scraggart, beloved ruler of the people, has died. Despite an upbringing of real hardship she rose to the highest rank in the royal court and did what she could to make sure the poorest in Brighthelm were not forgotten. She died too young, her work half done. A tournament has been announced to find her successor. Brave knights have travelled down royal highways. Bold paladins have knocked on royal doors. So too have bards, lords and heroes. All looking to take over Scraggart’s reign and rule the realm to their desires. And every one of them has been sent back to whence they came. Because Garolium herself had devised the tournament. It was the last thing she did, and she decreed it would only be open to those of the most limited means. Those whose potential had been locked by the chains of ill-fortune and poverty. Brighthelm's paupers. She had spent her whole life building their ladder and nobody was going to kick it away.
In Paupers' Ladder, players are a pauper in Garolium's tournament. Along with your bird companion, explore the wild and treacherous land of Brighthelm as you strive to learn three of the five virtues: generosity, fellowship, bravery, knowledge, and magnificence. Battle a bestiary of creatures, undertake quests, find ingredients to craft powerful recipes, and discover the sights and wonders of an exciting new world along the way. But beware! You're not the only pauper in town. the land of Brighthelm is illustrated with a playing board and over 400 cards depicting equipment, quests, recipes, monsters, ingredients, encounters, cities, villages and more besides.
On your turn you use both your Pauper and your Bird, in either order. Each character may move from the Region they occupy into any adjoining Region, or stay where they are. Paupers’ can pay to travel extra Regions. Your character now explores the Region they occupy.
The aim of Paupers’ Ladder is to learn any 3 of the 5 Virtues. Virtues are learned in different ways. For instance, you learn the Virtue of generosity by discarding a certain amount of gems from your purse. When a player has learned 3 Virtues, they have won the game.
- Quick and interesting gameplay (approx. 45 minutes)
- Whimsical and humorous elements
- Creates a nice baseline for a story and is enjoyable to play
- Base game has a lot to offer
- Second edition components are awesome
- Golium's tournament is a standard way to play and learn virtues
- Saltash Necromancer scenario offers a different, neat experience
- Moon Towers expansion doubles possibilities and adds talent/curse cards
- Cobbled Isle adds interesting cities with landmarks and a traveling ship
- New poppers from expansions add unique starting abilities and storytelling options
- Bodacs of Brightelm have a nice Halloween theme and familiars
- Giftbearers are holiday-themed and gain virtues by giving gifts
- Root Wings add extra whimsy and humor with unique companions
- The game has a lot of care and work put into its creation
- It is a welcoming world to come back to
- Host is not 100% sure of exact component editions (mix of first and second)
- Moon Towers expansion might not be used as much by the reviewer
- Moon Towers expansion can make specific card keywords harder to find due to large decks
- Katy Ren ship in Cobbled Isle involves more upkeep and is not the reviewer's favorite part
- Some components from Giftbearers expansion don't work with solo play
- Art style of Root Wings doesn't match the rest of the game
- Fantasy setting might not stand out much
- Art style might not be for everyone
- fantasy adventure
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- card drafting — The game involves drawing cards from regional decks.
- Coin Collection — Collecting coins is a part of the gameplay.
- Deck building — The Moon Towers expansion effectively doubles the amount of cards, creating large decks that can make finding specific cards difficult.
- Modular board/components — Cobbled Isle introduces modular components and city landmarks that add unique abilities.
- Monster fighting — Players defeat different types of monsters.
- Quest Completion — Part of the gameplay involves completing quests.
- set collection — The Giftbearers expansion allows players to gain virtues by giving out gifts.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I always laugh as I'm playing and I just find it to be a really nice time.
- The Moon Towers has all of these region cards and basically the same amount of them. However, the interesting thing with this expansion is you don't actually mix those together. You play it completely separately and it gives a couple of different ways that the game changes.
- But if you are looking for specific keywords, it kind of gets watered down. Maybe watered down is better than muddied. I don't know. Either way, it becomes harder and harder to find specific cards even though you have a lot more variety.
- The thing that I love the most about this is it actually gives you city cards. So that rather than just going to these different cities, cities now have landmarks. So that'll give them a unique ability that they kind of have.
- The Root Wings... illustrated by the designer's nephew, and they are delightful.
- From the distant lands of who knows where come these strange feathered vegetables. Now you too can have a flying carrot as a companion.
- It is just so nice. It's like a a welcoming sort of world, even though I'm aware there are there's a lot of there's a lot of monsters and everything that you need to deal with in all of these areas, but it's it's very nice to come back to this one and just to see the amount of care and work that went into creating this.