Complexity escalation

New Zealand designer/publisher Shem Phillips has made a career out of creating a series of worker placement games that manage to be both familiar and different. With each game he comes up with a new take on the genre, whether it's Raiders of the North Sea's focus on using a combination of empty and occupied spaces, or Architects of the West Kingdom's lack of a traditional round structure. However, clever as he is, his games are beginning to fall victim to what's known in collectible games as power creep.

In collectible games such as Magic: the Gathering or Heroclix, the business model relies on enticing players to keep buying more product, rather than them buying just a single game. In an effort to keep players interested (and buying), the designers of such games have in the past felt compelled to make new cards more powerful and complicated. This may have proved effective in the short term (at least, it did in the heady CCG days of the 1990s and early 2000s), but in the long term the added levels of complexity usually end up creating a barrier to new players that's far more detrimental than having older players get bored and move on.

Board games that have followed a similar model of using frequent expansions to sustain interest from an existing player base have fallen victim to a similar problem, where the crushing weight of increasingly complicated expansions makes the games unplayable (I'm looking at you, Arkham Horror). This isn't the exact problem with Shem Phillips' games, but it is similar, as he appears to be increasingly relying on his existing fan base (via Kickstarter) as the main audience for his new games, and so he feels the need to ramp up the scale on each new game.

All of which brings us to Paladins of the West Kingdom, the second in the West Kingdom series and the fifth in Phillips' overall series of medieval-themed games. Like his others, this one starts with a basic worker placement mechanic, and then builds on it with an unusual series of innovations. Rather than giving each player a finite set of workers, Paladins instead has different types of workers (warriors, priests, laborers, and so on), and players draft different combinations of them at the beginning of every turn. Game play then involves choosing from a dizzying array of options, so many that a key component of the game's strategy is to decide what you're going to do and stick to it -- the worst thing a player can do in this game is try to do a little of everything, because the scoring system is focused on doing a lot of the same thing.

It's an interesting game with a lot of options, and it's different from any of Phillips' other games while still being familiar thanks to the consistent illustration and graphic design across the whole series. And that's really kind of the problem. In his rush to avoid repeating himself, he's created a game with just a little too much going on. There is a lot to keep track of in this game, from building garrisons to sending out missionaries to hiring townsfolk (with two different options for each) to choosing whether to fight outsiders for a one-time benefit, or convert them for an extra end-game victory point condition. It's just a little too much, especially when compared to the other games from this designer.

We play (and enjoy) Raiders of the North Sea and Architects of the West Kingdom quite a bit, and we find that both games (even Raiders with two expansions) offer just as much depth and entertainment value, with a much lower level of complexity. In short, they're just as fun but a lot easier to play.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) an interesting game design, but a little too complicated when compared to this designer's other games.

• Paladins of the West Kingdom official website
• Paladins of the West Kingdom on BoardGameGeek