Molding: The Fief Element

Flavor:

In the Fief Element you take on the roll of a noble duke working to carve out a kingdom for yourself from the surrounding countryside.  You must manage the growth of your city with the wealth and production of your nation and wage war on unworthy infidels.  We have, of course, heard all this before.


Play:

Turns so far a loose and very simple.  You select a card from a face up pool of options.  First you must build the wall section depicted on the card, then you may build one of the kingdom elements associated with that card which will earn you victory points.  These elements cover a range of developmental characteristics from finance to military strength.  Players will each play between 8-12 turns before the randomly seeded scoring card turns up and ends the game.  At the end of the game, players earn points in each category based on who controls major shares of each element, more points if the elements are scarcely represented and less if the board is cluttered with that element.  

The 13 different building pieces are used to create enclosed boroughs to both score points and boost elements placed within their walls. Eleven of the wall sections depicted are simple shapes. One is a castle gate which in general has a diminishing end game point value and supports your commerce. The last is a tower section that my function as a normal wall section but may also be built atop a wall to create a multiplier for both military elements built on top of it as well as double the point value of all boroughs that it overlooks.

Play time for the initial tests were approximately 10 min and 25 min respectively. In the second game we tried a few changes which were interesting but extended the length of the game beyond what I am comfortable with the two player version requiring.

Thoughts and/or questions are encouraged.