Village Pillage Review – Rock, Paper, Scissors Hits the Gym

Disclaimer: A prototype of Village Pillage was provided for free by Jellybean Games, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

Village Pillage is the latest board game from Jellybean Games, famously known for Scuttle and Peter C. Hayward’s blue beard. So far they’ve produced games with gorgeous art and cozy rules aimed at families and casual gamers. This is also true of Village Pillage.

To win a game you need to rise from being a lowly village chief to ruler of the Turnip Kingdom – unrelated to the Mushroom Kingdom so put your lawsuits away. This is awarded to the first person to collect three turnip-related relics.

Collecting these relics is no easy task though, as you must defeat other players in a series of combats that suspiciously look and feel like Rock, Paper, Scissors. At least to begin with.

Your starting hand contains a Farmer, Wall, Army, and Merchant, and in each round, you play one card towards neighbouring village chiefs. Then, you flip up your cards and Farmer beats Wall, Army beats Farmer, and Wall beats Army.

Of course, beating in this context means gaining more turnips. For instance, if someone plays an Army against your Farmer. Then you’d still get three turnips from your Farmer, but four would be stolen by their Army. You can prevent stolen turnips by placing them within your vault. Although to begin with, the Wall card only puts one turnip in the vault at a time.

The wonderful wrinkle to this familiar game is the Merchant. They convert your turnips into relics or more powerful cards from the marketplace. So while Village Pillage may start as Rock, Paper, Scissors it quickly becomes a whole stationary cupboard of items before the game ends.

Players continue to play round after round. Getting more turnips and more powerful cards, until one player manages to buy their third relic. Then the game ends, and their coronation begins.

It’s time to turnip the heat

Being a variation on the common game Rock, Paper, Scissors means that it’s dead easy to teach and learn Village Pillage. It also means that players are already familiar with how the game works strategically.

Yet Village Pillage quickly moves away from this basic premise by giving players access to the market, changing the simple premise of three different selections, to having five or six. Suddenly the strategy becomes a lot murkier, and as a result, a lot more fun.

Additionally, since you won’t see every card in the market in one game, games play out is radically different. In one game, we saw more thieves than a prison cell. While another was overrun with farmers, making it a race to the peak of turnip mountain.

This creates a wealth of replayability within Village Pillage as you can never play the same strategy twice. Instead, you must align your approach to turnip gathering with what’s on the market. Keeping the game fresh game after game.

That all said, there’s one thing that stays the same game after game, and that’s the Merchant card. It’s terrible for anything but buying cards and relics. So you can’t just play it, you need to sneak it in knowing full well that if someone plays an offensive card you’re screwed. It fills you with a fantastic amount of tension whenever you play this card because it leaves you so vulnerable.

Yet that’s what makes Village Pillage so good. You never know what cards other people are going to play, so there’s an element of risk every round that keeps you on edge. More often than not, they’ll surprise you when cards are flipped up. Creating a chaotic, ever-changing game state. Leaving whoever thrives best in this madness to be turnip royalty.

Watch out! It’s mean… or it can be

Something to be aware of is that Village Pillage can sometimes feel like a mean board game. The silliness of the theme and wonderfully colourful artwork take a lot of the sting out of the attacks, as well as the ability to defend. But still, there is an element of attacking other players.

Another thing that bothered me about Village Pillage, was when we played with more than three. As you no longer have control over the outcome of the game.

More specifically, because you’re only interacting with your neighbours, there’s at least one player who never has to beat you in Rock, Paper, Scissors combat. It becomes the old Puerto Rico problem where the winning player is usually the one who sits next to the worst player.

Still, Village Pillage was right up my alley. The endless mind games were a blast and frequently led to moments where I thought I had someone figured out, only for them to surprise me. Then the rest of the game kept me engaged by having both the turn-by-turn card play, plus the overarching strategy of buying cards and relics. Combined with its excellent replayability, Village Pillage was a small-box delight.