Guilds of London Review

The legendary Guilds of London were established as bases for the numerous industries from which they take their names, to enable commerce to build and develop within London, leading to the boom in trade that propelled London through to the city it is today. Of course, with tanneries and candle makers on the wane, they are now little more than posh clubs for Lord Snooty McSnoot & chums to quaff obnoxiously expensive whiskey. (Quaff; verb. A form of posh drinking involving partially choking at the thought of the grubby poor person who poured it for you.)

The Guilds of today are so snobby in fact they wouldn’t even let the designer/publisher use their real name or coat of arms in the game. Thus, with the exception of 3 mentioned in the back of the rulebook, all the guild names and coats of arms had to be made up, though you wouldn’t be able tell unless you are an expert in heraldry. You’re not an expert in heraldry… are you?

Well, even if you are I’m sure it won’t harm your enjoyment of the Guilds of London: The cardboard version! Taking us back to the exciting development of the Guilds, as new ones sprouted from the fertile economic soil of middle ages London, so too will the cardboard guild tiles take root upon your table top at regular intervals, the playing surface expanding outwards, a dynamic board upon which the game’s core element of area control will be played out.

You each play as some non-specific important person who is trying to gain influence in the guilds, sending out your small army of liverymen (as guild members call meeples) to take control of available guilds, leaving behind one of their number as master. I said this was area control, but the extra twist is that an area is resolved at the end of any round in which the minimum number of meeples (as indicated on the tile) is reached. This can be done just by one person and often will be, since no one will want to give the other players the random and sometimes very generous second place reward if they don’t have to. The winner flips the tile to its pretty colourful side, and leave a meeple there as it’s master.

But ultimately this is just what you do to score points and that isn’t the really interesting part. No, the interesting part, the part that will have you thinking and possibly pulling your hair out in frustration is the deck of action cards that determines everything you can do. These cards can be spent to hire new mee- liverymen, can be played to move liverymen from the guildhall where they sleep to one of the guilds whose colour matches the card you played, or can be played for their all too often indecipherable action (that will sometimes cost you a card or two to activate). Take for example this

Which means that if you control 3 tiles you can draw 3 cards at the end of your turn, but if they are all the same colour, you get 4. But then there’s this

Or this

So while many of the cards are fairly straightforward, you’ll spend most of your first game in confusion reading the gigantic card glossary. Now, the iconography is generally logical, but the variety of actions means their attempt to create a unified scheme of icons inevitably fails. There is the added problem that not every card is present on the reference sheet, although it might be there under a similar form for a different coloured card. Just to increase confusion. After a number of games I still have to check it occasionally to be safe.

Once you get over that hump though you find a really interesting and rewarding game of hand management. You’ll find yourself looking for good combos, aiming for good draw abilities and needing to decide when to save a card for its action, and when to spend it for the immediate rewards from the guild tiles. You can play as many cards as you like during your turn, but you’ll only get to draw two at the end seeing your hand rapidly diminish if you’re aren’t careful. If you don’t play any cards you can draw 4 instead but you don’t want to be doing this too often so careful use of card powers and tile rewards will be a key part of your strategy.

Of course, as with most hand management games you can just as easily feel at the mercy of your hand of cards, unable to reach certain tiles because you never draw that colour, though it is a testament to the game that I’ve felt this less and less as I’ve played more. You need to be flexible, which might initially be at odds with the secret objective card you start the game with, but there again the key is to take opportunities from tiles/cards to draw as many of these objective cards throughout the game as you can to get as many opportunities as possible to score. Some of these are a real challenge too, like having no liverymen at all in the guildhall, or having the same number of action cards as objective cards in your hand at the end of the game, truly daring you to manipulate the game as carefully as you can, and really rewarding you at the end.

Now I know what you are thinking. “What is that giant silver dude!?” and after reading through the rulebook I was left with exactly that feeling myself. You see he is the Beadle, and much like the Beadles of the actual Guilds, he is a mostly ceremonial piece whose role is mostly just to sit around looking pretty, though he does count as a piece for triggering scoring on a tile. Like the Evolution dinosaurs, his size is inversely proportional to his usefulness.

There are some other issues worth mentioning. The neutral black meeples you can collect are either painfully aggressive, or just a threat that sit there menacingly throughout the game. They are an element you might hate (although there is now an interesting variant available). The 2-player game is not as good as with 3 or 4, it lacks interactivity with the neutral meeples’ effect being exacerbated. It also loses the lovely growth stages I enjoy from the normal game.

My other big concern is if you are lucky enough to get a string of cards whose action allows you to draw more cards. It is quite possible to get in a position where you never have to spend a turn drawing cards, and the speed at which you are gaining new cards makes it more likely you’ll get new draw abilities. It might be nothing, but players who have managed to set this up in my games have gone on to win by a big margin. And it’s not as though you can easily pursue this as a strategy either, it being dependent on the draw.

None of these are enough to ruin my enjoyment of the game, however. The more I play Guilds of London, the more I enjoy it. There is always an element of luck to hand management games but I find this to be an interesting challenge to play around. It’s about making the most of the opportunities you get, spotting how to combo together cards and grab what you can. I love how the game evolves as you play and the secret objectives ensure you don’t know for certain what the end result is until the very end. It’s not the simplest game to pick up and play, but certainly rewards your efforts!

 

Rating: Guilded