The Middle Ages is a source of much interest for people in the modern era. We were much more barbaric back then and social decorum – for the noble classes at least – was structured by a framework of chivalry; which is drifting ever more into the past. From the middle ages we have inspired films, such as, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Braveheart (1995). It should come as no surprise that modern Board Games have been inspired from the Medieval era too. Today, we will discuss Board games based on Medieval times, as opposed to games played during Medieval times.
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Carcassonne
Carcassone also appears in our list of games like Catan. This is because the game’s primary mechanic is through a tile placing system. The game is based on the French Medieval city of the same name whose iconic walls were fortified in the 13th and 14th centuries. Looking at the City we can see four major terrain types: the walled city, the grasslands, the roads, and the abbeys. These four terrain types are the terrain types used in the game.
The objective of the game is to get the most points possible. You do this by matching terrain types on tiles, for example, a road must match with a road. There are varying difficulties of terrain to complete giving you progressively more points. Roads are typically the easiest to build. Cities, on the other hand, are more often than not the hardest, giving the most points.
Tiles can only be placed one at a time and because there is so much variety in the tiles it creates a brand new experience almost every time you play. As discussed before, we have already written an article describing the rules of Carcassonne in a bit more detail, so please check here if you want any more details.
Dominion
Dominion is somewhere between a medieval board game and a card game, but favours the latter heavily. It is a deck building game that favours variety amongst all else. Starting with 25 cards you build your deck as you go. There are a total of 500 possible cards in the deck, so it will certainly take a few games before you will have run through every available card.
The aim of the game is to get the most possible victory points. Some cards will outright gain you victory points, some will be deck support type cards – to help you get victory points in the future, and others will act as obstacles for your opponent. In the centre of the table – the marketplace – players can buy cards when they can afford them.
It is the true medieval monarch experience. You hire troops to make your army stronger, you construct buildings, gain gold, and improve your castle. The freedom of the game is as much as 500 cards allow you. This is a lot when you consider the first edition of magic the gathering, another deck building game, had only 302 cards and yet the amount of variety we glean from that game at the time allowed it to continue to be popular to this day.
Sheriff of Nottingham
The Sheriff of Nottingham is one of Robin Hood’s greatest opponents. He is cunning, cruel, but beyond anything else greedy.
In this game most players play the role of merchants, while one is the sheriff on a round by round basis. At its core, this is a social deduction game – which is always fun. As merchants, players are trying to get to the market to sell their goods and make a profit. The risker the merchants the play, the more profit they can make. This is done by attempting to sell contraband. The job of the sheriff as “law enforcement” is to prevent the sale of contraband. The sheriff can chose to check the bags of a merchant. They may take the contraband off the naughty merchant or accept a bribe to allow them to keep it. However, if the sheriff searches the goods of a legitimate merchant, they must pay a penalty. It is all about weeding out the good from the bad.
We decided to add this one in, not only due to its popularity, but also as a change from the typical city builder type board game that many medieval themed board games go for.
Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done
The Crusades were instrumental in defining the middle ages. A Crusade was a military expedition led by Christians to the holy land – Jerusalem. There is much literature and modern media about the Crusades and the events have been responsible for creating some of history’s most famous figures, such as Richard the Lionheart.
It would therefore be dismissive of us not to include a medieval board game based on the crusades. Crusader: Thy Will Be Done is our worthy consideration. The defining feature of this game is the “rondel macala” mechanism. Each player has their own rondel which they upgrade over time and dictates their actions in the game. In addition, each faction has different attributes which will determine your strategy. The attributes range from as simple as bonus movement to as complicated as a new token distribution method at the end of turns.
When the influence of your Order gets too strong, King Phillip disbands all orders, ending the game. There is a lot of detail to this game to be honest, which cannot be explained well enough here. We would strongly recommend checking out a formal review if this is something you are interested in.
Village
Village takes a move away from the blood, the gore and the despotism of the middle ages. Instead, it takes you a small medieval village where your aim is to make the village grow and prosper as much as possible. As much as players want the village to grow, the game is also about securing your own dynasty in history.
Each player starts as head of a family, you may become a priest, maybe the mayor, or even search for glory abroad. The most important thing is securing your name in the history books. The game ends either when the village chronicle is full or the anonymous graveyard is. Those are your two paths. Really the game is all about setting the foundations for the future. The first few generations of your dynasty will probably end up in the pauper’s graveyard, but these deaths will have laid the groundwork for future generations to be successful.
Players start each round with cubes, these can then be spent on actions in the market, travel zone, crafting zone, church, or council house. Remember, the decisions made early on will have consequences down the line – it is worth thinking ahead!
Conclusion
Medieval media has brought lots of enjoyment to homes over the years. It is fascinating how different people were 1000 years ago. The Medieval age inspired not only films, but board games too. The board games of the time were, on the whole, fairly rudimentary. Therefore, games we have today are influenced more stylistically than mechanically. Many of the games based on this time period have achieved great critical and commercial success. Carcassonne, for example, has three core games with over 30 expansions. The Middle Ages is a really interesting period of history and we hope for many more medieval board games to come from it.
