Valley of The Kings: Afterlife

I bought this one over the other two versions. "Take a card from here place one there, now you can buy one here and place it there or use it to move that card there over here blah blah boring boring" - That was my first impression, just moving cards around with subtle differences in how you're allowed to move them. I dragged my cards around, massaged my temples, sipped my coffee just challenging myself to get through the first game of solitaire. Following night found alderac posted another version of solitaire and gave it a shot and started to refine my analysis. Played the other version then the other and kept playing playing playing. Now it seems all I want to do is play this game! This game has a lot of charm to it. It's simple, elegant, cheap, full of interesting cards and mechanics and manifests its theme in clever ways and even includes educational facts. It's small, easy to carry on vacation and easy to learn the rules to play and plays well under an hour once you get the hang of it. Is it the most exciting game I own? No. It's a card game with a lot of repetitive movements. Is it still fun, best bang for the buck, and interesting? Yes, Yes, Yes. It might not seem that way on your first or second play but once you get familiar with the cards and start stringing them together building up your apex of power then intricately resting your legacy into a tomb for victory you find fun! Somehow this game has quantified the most potent satisfaction which can be found in games that came before and packed it into a little 5x4" package. Well done!

1 - 4 players (5 - 6 with two sets or combined with the original Valley of the Kings)15 - 45 minutes play time (the more you get used to the game, the quicker your turns are)This is a quick to learn, easy to play light Euro style deck building game. Think of it as Dominion super light. But not quite...The game includes reference cards for each player - this is handy as it highlights the actions for each player turn. The instructions are well written and easy to understand. Five minutes of reading them while setting up the game was enough to learn the game mechanics.Goal: amass the most amazing collection of artifacts for your tomb before the game ends.Gameplay: Deal each player their 10 starter cards, a tomb card, and a reference card. Players shuffle these 10 cards. This is your deck (basically). Draw five. Shuffle the artifact cards and arrange as instructed. Players then use cards in their hand of five to either purchase new cards from the bottom of the card pyramid, or use actions on cards (can't do both). Cards have a monetary amount and a cost. Cards used to purchase new cards or to do actions typically go into your personal discard and will be used in your deck. You may also entomb one card per turn. These cards will no longer be used but will count towards end game victory points. Play ends by discarding all played cards and remaining cards. When the draw pile is empty, you shuffle your discard into a new draw pile. After each turn, the pyramid of cards crumbles and new cards replenish this. When the pyramid is gone and cannot be replenished, each remaining player takes their final turn and the game is over.The goal is to amass as many unique artifacts into your tomb as possible. Each unique artifact from each set counts for exponential points. Collect six unique weapons? 36 VP Only one unique treasure? 1 VP. Starter artifacts are worth one.I found the best way to play the game is to go a few rounds buying some better cards and some artifacts then start trying to sacrifice or entomb some starter cards, thereby causing the better cards to show up more frequently. When the game is about halfway through, I start entombing the artifacts. There are also card actions to help the player. Some cards allow players to entomb more than one card per turn. Others can double gold value of the next card, or even make it so each player pulls a card from the base of the pyramid with the card action user taking the most expensive (but not having to pay for it since other players also get cards).The game is amazingly fun with two people and can be amazingly tough and frustrating with three or more. There are only two of each artifact, so in a three or four player game, you might have others grabbing artifacts you need. Since everyone sees what each person is buying, what they are amassing isn't secret. You also can see the cards that they have entombed.The balance of this game is what makes it fun. It's easy to teach newcomers, but they'll likely need two or three plays to get the hang of it. I found actually helping them for the first game worked well. I was surprised to see a few friends actually pull out crazy big wins on their third or fourth play. Once you get the hang of it and learn to balance buying and entombing, it gets easier.If you want to learn how to play deck building games - this is a great place to start. It's addictive and fun, and every game is different!Highly recommended - and it's a pretty sweet value at $16 - $20.

My husband and I played Valley of the Kings: Afterlife recently and we had a great time learning this game. Essentially the game is a deck-building game but with a different twist as it uses a pyramid design to allow you to purchase your cards. Let me explain.After learning how to play the game, we decided to used our lazy Susan in order to be able to switch the play between the two of us. We find that when it comes to deck-building games it is good to be able to have the flexibility to flip the game play between the persons playing in order to make a better decision. So we set up our stock (which contained the level II and level III cards), the boneyard (aka the destroy pile), and the pyramid before starting our play.Each player gets starter cards which are composed of level I cards. You will receive in your hand 4 Shabtis, 3 Urns, 2 Boxes of Food, and 1 Offering Table. You also get a Tomb card as well as a reference card if you need it. In front of you, you would set up your area in whichever way you desire.The goal of the game is to get the more points. Each turn you play you can do one of three things: 1) buy a card from the base of the pyramid, 2) execute the action listed on a card, 3) entomb a card (once per turn). How can you buy? Well each card has a cost which you can find at the top right corner. For example the Sphinx has a cost of 7. Each card also have value which allows you to purchase other cards. The Sphinx has a value of 3 which is indicated in the gold area on the left of the image. Each card also has an action which allow you to do something else. Again in the case of the Sphinx the action allowed is to put the next card you take or buy this turn into your hand. For this specific action it means you will be able to use the new card right away. Also as you play and purchase cards, the pyramid will crumble allowing the cards located at the top to come down in place on the pyramid. Once you have crumble the pyramid you can incorporate more cards at the top. However, the pyramid will always have only six cards.There are three types of cards: starter cards (the ones you received initially in your hand), the unique artifacts (like the Sphinx, Ibex statue and so on), and the sets (mummification, jewelry, chambers, weapons, and tomb art).As you play, you need to entombed cards in your Tomb. At the end of the game the entombed cards will be used to score the victory points. For starter cards and unique artifacts the victory points are calculated based on the VP listed on the card. Simply add these up. However, there is a different twist in calculating the points for the sets. In this case, when you have entombed sets you have to determine how many different cards in each set you have (do not count duplicates) and then square the results. Here’s what my tomb looked like when we finished the game. So for my Chambers set (orange cards)I had five cards in this set which gave me 25 (5x5) victory points. The rules also include a scoring example for people who might have difficulty in calculating the points. Also a quick note on our setting… My husband discovered that it would be more visual for him to see the cards stacked in categories so that is what we have decided to do but the idea is to stack your entombed cards under your Tomb.We really enjoyed playing Valley of the Kings: Afterlife and look forward to play many more games with it. It is different than the other deck-building games in many ways as you entomb cards and purchase cards from a pyramid. There is strategy in this game as you have to build set within your tomb in order to score more points. Consequently, you have to be aware at what your opponent is doing and think before crumbling the pyramid so that you do not give an advantage to your opponent. The instructions are easy to follow and very clear from what we have seen. There was one time we wondered about the action associated with a card and we checked for more insights in the instructions book which provided more information about that card. However, most cards are very easy to understand. What I particularly like as well is the tidbits of historical information found at the bottom of each cards where you will be able to read about how the Egyptians used different things in their everyday life or preparation for the afterlife. This game is perfect to wrap-up some studies about Ancient Egypt. Thought it is mentioned 14 and up for this game, I am pretty confident that my 8, 10 and 12 years old would understood the rules and pick up the game rapidly. They already play other types of deck-building games that are above their ages.The best part is that even if Valley of the Kings: Afterlife is a stand-alone game, it can be mixed with the original Valley of the Kings to play a different game each time and also play up to 6 players. We enjoyed Valley of the Kings: Afterlife so much that we will probably invest in getting the original Valley of the Kings so that we can play with our four kids as well.The box contains 96 artifact cards, 4 tomb cards, 4 reference cards and a rule book. The game is planned for 24 players but it also include a solitaire rules if you desire to play alone. Expect a playtime of about 45 minutes.Good news for people who enjoy the Valley of the Kings games – a new version titled Valley of the Kings: Last Rites will be available soon. In this new version you must hire artisans, builders, and priests to prepare your tomb for the afterlife. Again you will be able to mix this one with the two previous titles in the series.