Lords of the Manor Preview - Build Your Estate, Feed Your Workers, Outsmart Your Rivals!
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Transcript
Hey there gamers, welcome back to the Board Game Co. channel and today we have a preview of Lords of the Manor. Hey there gamers, it's Professor Mag here and welcome back to the Board Game Co. channel. Today we have a preview of Lords of the Manor by Minmax Games. Now this is a current crowdfunding campaign, so you can check out the link down below for everything that they have planned. This is a sponsored preview and this is a prototype copy in front of me. So all rules, components, things like that are subject to change. Now, in Lords of the Manor, players are going to be running each of their estates hopefully very efficiently, where ultimately you're trying to construct buildings. That's going to be the most important thing, but you're going to be doing a few other things as well, such as hiring workers, being sure to feed your workers, as well as throwing a few intrigue cards toward your opponents. So, throughout the game, players are going to be playing through seasons over the course of four years.
So, four seasons and four years. And you're going to use this to place out your different workers to perform actions for you. But ultimately, you're playing cards out into your tableau that are going to hopefully make you stronger and stronger because some of these buildings you're also going to be able to use to upgrade into a larger version of itself, meaning that it will have a bit of a discount for you if you've already built it. So, with that, let's take a look at Lords of the Manor. Now, here in front of you is going to be the shared play area where this is going to be an area that all players have access to. This is going to be your common market where you'll be able to draw cards from as well as playing them. And then this is going to be your tracker for the seasons as well as the years that you are going to go through. These are going to be your fate decks, which I'll get to in just a moment. But these are also going to be the entry cards that players are going to be able to play against other players or perhaps guard yourself as well. And we'll get into those in just a moment. But I do only have one player board set up over here, which is all you need for the example to understand how players are going to be building out their tableau.
But just know I do just have one player board here. And normally you would have the other players of course around the table, but I have it a bit zoomed in so that you're able to see everything on the table. Now, ultimately, players are going to be constructing buildings, and you're going to be doing that either from cards from your hand or from the common market. But in order to play these, you're going to need the resources to be able to do so. And it would also cost you an action. So, you're able to perform an action on your playerboard, and you can do the same action twice. It doesn't matter if you already have a worker on there, but you're going to be able to spend your workers on a turn to complete an action, as well as any free actions that you would like to do. Now, there are cards that are going to have worker placement spots as well. So, you're going to be able to take actions on those spots. But to be able to get any cards into play, you're going to have to take a play card action to do so. So, with one of our workers, we're going to be able to select the expand action over here and play a card from our hand or a face up card. And you do start off with these resources at the beginning of the game.
So, you do have a few things to start you off. So, taking a look at our hand here, we have a few things. And one of them we would be able to play which is our small sawmill. This would cost us both of these resources here. We would be able to play that. We have a few other things that we're able to do such as eventually gaining an extra worker. We would have this carpenter which gives us an ability that we're able to use once per season or we would be able to play this master scavenger. But we are also able to play cards from the common market as well. So, we are able to, for example, play this cliff's side farm for one of these stones as well as a wood. So, we are going to pay those resources here and play that card as our action.
So, we will take this and play it down into our tableau over here. And that is going to provide a few things for us. So, it is going to be a victory point at the end of the game. And we now have a worker placement spot that we're able to go to on future turns to produce uh an apple as well as the stones. So, we're able to do that for ourselves. And then, additionally, this card is able to support building other buildings such as the large farm or the large quarry. So, if you do want to build one of those, you'd either again have to have it in your hand or available here in the common market, but you would be able to build it at a discount because you've already built the cliffside farm. So, now a new card would come out for other players over here. And on future turns, we would now be able to use this worker here to either place on expand again. If we had the resources to play another card, we'd be able to do any of these actions here. Or we would be able to place our worker here again to produce one of these as well as one of these. So that is one of the ways that you're going to be able to really chain getting resources for yourself is building out the different uh buildings that are going to provide that for you. But to go through the other actions that players are able to do, this is going to be research, which is refresh all of the face up estate cards, and then take two.
So, you're going to remove all of these, fill a new market, and then take two from that new market. Now, in that instance where you are drawing two, you won't automatically fill. So, you would take two from the area and then fill both of those spots for the next player. Uh, and the next action is going to be explore. draw four face down cards or two face up cards from the estate and keep two. So you would be able to draw four from here or draw two face up escape cards and then keep two. Now next there is scavenge and this is a way that you're going to be able to gain resources that you really need to play the cards in your hand because you're going to be able to gain any one resource and take the starting player token. So you'll be able to take over and take that starting player token for yourself. meaning that you'll be able to go first in future rounds and you'll be able to gain that one resource that you need to perhaps complete a card that you've been wanting to do. Now, finally, there's intrigue where you're able to pay resources to draw two intrigue cards and then keep one. So, now let's take a look at what some of those intrigue cards are going to do. So, for example, here we have merchant exchange up to three resources from the bank at a 1:1 ratio. So that's very important because normally you're going to exchange resources with the bank at a 3:1 ratio and this is giving you a 1:1 ratio instead. Now there's also one here that is city guard where you can block the
action of another player's entry card meaning that if someone were to play an entry card against you would be able to block it. So, the merchant is not a good example of something that you would block, but uh here we have power shift. All players simultaneously pass their hand of entry cards to the player on their right. So, you can see where someone may want to use a city guard to block powers shift if they have other entry cards that they want to hold on to. Now, those are all of the actions that players are able to do from their player board. So, they are again going to gain more actions as they start playing cards that have the worker placement spot. But for the sake of the example, for our second turn for autumn, we would place our worker over here and produce these goods for ourselves. So, we'll take these onto our player board.
And then after that, once all players have placed all of their workers, you would then move on to the next season. Now, when moving on to the next season, this is when players are going to retrieve their workers back onto their player board. So, you will get those back and then you're going to flip over any cards that you have used. So, for example, there is this master carpenter here. So, if this had been in our tableau, it has the ability once per season during your turn, convert four wood into three coins. So, if we had used this, this would have a token on it here showing that it's available. And then once used, you would flip it over to used. But when the season passes, that is when you're going to flip this back over to available. Now, finally, you're also going to draw a fate card.
So that's going to be this deck over here where you will draw one of these. And for example, this one is nothing happens. So there are some in here where nothing is going to happen and players don't have to worry about it. But to continue going through this deck, just to give you an example, this one is draw one good fortune card. So now let's draw a good fortune. And this is going to be stone surplus. All players collect two stone. So all players would gain two of these onto their player board, which is very useful. But you may have noticed there is also a darker deck over here. So that was a good fortune card. And there are going to be bad fortune cards as well. So again, as a reminder, we are in year 1 and you will go through all of the seasons. But once you pass through to winter, again, you're going to go forward to the next year. And when this happens from year 1 to year 2, you're then going to add in the ill fortune card as well. So this is one that is now going to allow you to shuffle the fate deck. In fact, you're going to have to do it because during year one, you're simply going to draw these cards and perhaps have the good fortune favor you.
But once this is now shuffled into your deck, whenever this comes out, it will be shuffled again. Meaning that it's possible for it to come back after it is seen. But to give you an example of an illtune card, we're going to draw one over here. The plague. For two seasons, all players must disable one worker token. they must still pay full food cost during the harvest. And I'll get into exactly what that means in a moment when we go through the harvest, but you can see where the plague is really going to affect players. So, there are ill fortunes that are going to be triggered starting on year 2. Now, the game takes place over the course of four years with those four seasons. But when the harvest happens, that's going to be when you go over from fall to winter again, going on to a new season. So, you're going to have to go through the harvest when this happens. And there's going to be both good and bad things that are going to affect players. So, you're going to have certain things happen like drawing an intrigue card, which all players are going to be able to gain, but you're also going to have to pay food for your workers. So, for your two starting workers, you'll have to pay a food each.
So, a total of two food. But any other workers that you have hired after that are also going to cost you additional food, and they're hungrier. So, if you have three workers, for example, you'll have to pay a total of four food because you'll pay one for each of your starting ones and then two for anyone that comes after that. So, your extra workers are going to be very useful, but they'll also be hungry as well. Now, again, the harvest is going to happen before moving over to here and then moving down to the next year. And to go through the harvest, players are going to pay their food for their workers. And then all players are going to draw an entry card for themselves. But on top of that, you're going to refresh the common market. So these cards are constantly going to be in flux as well because every year you're going to have a whole new set of cards where you will wipe everything and not be able to obtain anything that was discarded because of that. Uh, but the common market will be refreshed and then players will have to discard down to a maximum of seven cards that are estate cards in their hand and four intrigue cards. So, you are limited to how many cards you can carry over between the different years. And then after that, the starting player token is going to be passed clockwise. So, that is also going to be in flux for players as you move into the next year. Now again just to show you how the discounting system will work. For example, this large farm here because we have our cliffside farm would cost us
this smaller inside amount of resources instead. So for other players, they would have to pay these resources here which would be two of each. But for us, because we have this, we would be able to pay one of each instead. But then this card is going to replace that farm. So, you're no longer going to have that worker placement spot available. And you also will be able to provide a discount for future cards that you're playing unless you gain another cliffside farm. So, you then will be able to place this over here like this. And that's important because you're going to still gain victory points from the previous building. So, where the previous one for us was one victory point and the large farm is now three, we have a total of four victory points for this area of cards here, plus the three for our master carpenter. Now, as I mentioned, getting another cliffside farm, you can only ever have one card of each name out. So, for example, where we have this large farm, we would not be able to have another large farm. But where we covered our cliffside farm, we would be able to have another one of those now in the future. Now, finally, at the end of the game, players are going to get victory points for their cards that they have played out into their tableau for the victory points shown on them. And then you're also going to gain a victory point for every coin that you have.
Finally, for every food that you weren't able to feed your workers during the different harvest phases, uh you will gain a begging token. So, for any begging tokens that you have at the end of the game, they're going to be worth negative two victory points for you. So, they're going to be a huge detriment that you can see why it's very important to feed your workers during each of the harvest phases. Lords of the Manor is going to be a game where players are very focused on building out their tableau, but also the different resources that they are able to produce because you are able to play cards from your hand as well as from the common market. And when you build certain buildings, it's going to provide a discount for you for future buildings that you want to build on top of it while you're still able to keep the victory points that you've already earned for yourself from playing the card initially. So, building out these different buildings and then building on top of them is going to be very helpful.
But also having these different workers that you're able to activate once per season are going to be very helpful as well, especially if you're able to get them out within year one or two because you're going to have the four different seasons through four years. So the more times that you're able to activate these different workers with their once per season activation are going to be very important where for this one we had we were able to convert the wood into coins. and you might not use that every season, but being able to use it whenever you need it is going to be very, very important. Players are also going to have their family abilities that they're able to use. So, for example, ours is during the harvest, we're able to draw two intrigue cards instead of just one. So, you are going to have the different bonuses based on the family that you have chosen as well.
So, you're going to use that as well as what cards you may have started off the game with and the starting market. And that's really going to build out the game for you to decide what you may want to go into with what buildings might provide a discount for you, what things you want to start producing, or some cards might provide some endgame scoring that you really want to work toward as well. So, this has been a preview of Lords of the Manor by Midmax Games. You can check out the link down below for everything that they have planned. Thank you all for watching the Borgim code channel. I've been Professor Mag, and I'll see you all next time. Bye.