Villagers launched on Kickstarter in 2018 and got out of hand quite quickly, finishing its run just shy of 14,000 backers. The original plan to ship games from a spare bedroom had to be revised.
The game itself is a bright & breezy affair where players draft from a changing pool of beautifully illustrated villager cards with the aim of building the most prosperous village by the end of the game.
With its lovable cast of characters, many paths to victory, ease of teaching, and great production values, Villagers has become a firm favourite on gaming tables around the world.
This PDF provides a great overview of how Villagers works, and we got none other than Rodney Smith to create one of his famous “Watch It Played” videos so you don’t even need to open the rulebook!
And if you only have 60 seconds to spare, the incredible Sarah Shah has you covered!
Villagers has been reprinted several times, and translated into 11 different languages by our international publishing partners, including Kosmos, Gigamic, and CMON. All of this was made possible by the incredible support of our Kickstarter backers, and we can never thank you enough!
Villagers is available to play free online on several platforms: Tabletop Simulator (solo mode, 2-player, and 3-4 players), Tabletopia, and the brand new Yucata version with full rules enforcement, asynchronous play, and the 2018 Kickstarter Expansion Pack!
And now, we hope you’ll join us once more as the universe of Villagers expands…
Shifting Seasons is an expansion that adds more of what players love about Villagers, plus some new surprises. It offers wider variety and more scoring opportunities, and increases game length by one round on average, giving players more time to create the perfect village. Additional rules are kept to a minimum, with everything easily integrating with the base game and previous expansion.
Shifting Seasons adds several new modules to the game that you can include or exclude as you wish, but we think you’ll want to use it all!
Four Event cards are placed during setup – they go under the stacks on the road that don’t have a market card. They will trigger in order throughout the game as the stacks above them are emptied, giving all players bonus actions and scoring opportunities.
A set of five cards featuring a Builder Team on one side and a Harvest Team on the other. By discarding two cards back to the road, players can recruit a team of their choice to help expand their villages, but each village is only allowed one Team!
Prepare for the arrival of seven unique Special villagers with powerful rule-bending abilities, including the Leader, the Inventor, and the Tentmaker. They’re so strong, there’s only one of each, so use them wisely!
A whole new suit of cards with Clay as the base resource, allowing for fresh opportunities and longer games.
This is a new way to play Villagers with just one player. The Monastery is a simpler and more relaxing alternative to the intense Countess mode included in the base game.
In a word, yes. If you sleeve your cards and want to keep them all in the base game box, and you have the Coin Chest, then you’ll have to keep the Coin Chest separately. It is intended to be used with other games anyway, so let it live on a shelf where it’s easy to reach!
Final tweaks and graphic design are in progress, but you can view the draft rules here. We don’t expect any major changes to the rules. Feel free to leave your comments & suggestions on how anything could be improved.
