Marc André, the designer behind one of the most-voted and highest-rated board games of all time, Splendor, is back with a new project that will take 30 minutes to play and accommodate players as young as 10.
Build Your Fiefdom and Prosper by Acquiring Currency
The 2-5-player Middle Ages is due to be released in 2024 and illustrated by Claire Conan, published by Studio H. In the game, André returns to his familiar setting and players become the head of fiefdoms.
Players are offered multiple choices about how they run business, from building mills and developing agriculture to growing a certain girth around the waist and letting their estate runs itself, to outpouring of piety by building churches.
The game, although only 30 minutes long, will be played in 16 rounds and each player will pick a Plot tile from a changing row. You place your Lord piece on the tile, add it to their fiefdom and trigger the scoring conditions and powers.
These tiles that are drafted openly will trigger various effects and develop different aspects of your fiefdom. The tiles are field, farm, village, rampart, market, barracks, palace, and church. Each tile will score differently and will be combined with other tiles, further triggering additional effects if and where appropriate.
As soon as the players have collected their 16th tile, the player with the most money (not points mind you) wins the game. A quick and easy one, Middle Ages has all the hallmarks of a popular board game and definitely draws something from Splendor in terms of scoring and the overall theme.
Outside of Splendor, André has embarked on a few other projects, working on Barony in 2015, a medieval territory-building and abstract strategy game. The title was well-received leading to an ever more popular expansion, Barony: Sorcery, in 2016.