How Does The Game Work?
Paper Tales is a card game played over four rounds. During the start of each round, you'll be drafting hands of five cards amongst the players at the table, choosing what you think will suit your particular route to victory.
The two characters you place in the front 'rank' are the ones that will count their combat score and, just like with 7 Wonders, you'll fight against the people to the left and right of you. Unlike in 7 Wonders though, there is no penalty for losing a fight. Equalling your opponents or beating the score will net you a nice few victory points to keep you ticking over.
The characters, creatures and warriors you play in the back rank don't add their strength to combat (unless with specific card effects) but it's a good place to put cards which will give you resources to use when building structures or buff other creatures. They might even benefit you in a different way.
After you've fought against your neighbours you make gold for future rounds. As standard, you get two gold but you can get more thanks to additional cards and buildings you've played into your tableau. As mentioned above, gold is used to pay for some of the more powerful cards you'll be drafting throughout the game and that's about it - spend it if you've got it as you don't get victory points for having a bundle of gold at the end of a game.
After making money you can then choose a building to construct within your kingdom. Here is where the resources you've generated come in. You simply have to choose a building from your deck and put it into play either at level one or level two (if you've managed to bring enough resources to the table). You can instead choose to upgrade an existing building which unlocks an additional slot on your front rank allowing you to play three cards which aid you in battle.
The final thing you do during a turn is place tokens on your cards which represent the passing of time within your empire. If a card already has a token on it, they are discarded from play, but if not you'll place one and get an additional turn out of them.
There are of course plenty of exceptions to these rules which are present on the cards. For example, the Necromancer is very powerful but places those ageing tokens when its played. The Mystical Healer, however, prevents a character from dying whilst they have just one token on them meaning they'll stay around that little bit longer.
Once you've got that first turn out of the way you'll start again by drafting a new hand of five cards and repeating the process above. Hopefully, by this point, you will have worked out what strategy you're going to use to aim for victory.
What Makes It Stand Out?
So far, it sounds like a pretty simple card drafting game right? Well, there are a few things which mean this game stand out for me. Firstly, you've got the way your tableau works. On subsequent turns after the first, you're able to replace cards in front of you.
This, combined with the ageing effect on cards within your tableau mean that things are constantly changing and there is a lot of mitigation offered to players if you just can't make your idea work. Just take the money you've earned that turn and come up with a new strategy!
In the same vein, the game also doesn't last very long. We played two games which came in at around half an hour each so if you feel like it didn't work out the first time, you can simply set up quickly and go again without too much fuss.
The game also features a vast array of different cards so whilst you'll see a few duplicates now and again you can't be assured that you'll be able to do the same strategy you did in a previous game. This pushes you to try and broaden your horizons and perhaps move from focusing on battle to creating lots of resources and a bunch of buildings which fund your empire building.
I also like that there is conflict in the game between players but in a different way. Because you never force anyone to take penalties for beating them in battle, you can benefit from your strength whilst they simply just get on with whatever engine they're building. This might not suit everyone but it means that your opponents never feels like they're punching you when you're down.
This doesn't mean the game isn't without strategic thinking. As with any game which is about drafting, you can look at what your neighbours and other people at the table are doing and try and even snag something that might benefit you whilst also hurting their chances. This isn't a major theme of the game since things change so drastically from round to round but it's something extra to consider.
I also like the fact that combos and coming up with interesting links between the cards in your tableau really does provide for some pretty epic moments. My friend got a Troll into play and was able to boost it to an insane degree with all the money that he was making. It was pretty powerful!
I came away from my two games of Paper Tales already looking forward to playing it some more. I had a peek through some of the extra cards the game has to offer and there are already a few different ways I'd want to approach it next time I get to play.
Paper Tales has been around for a few years now but I'd almost completely let this one fly by me. Thankfully, a member of our gaming group picked it up recently and I'm glad they did.
I am a big sucker for games like 7 Wonders where you can see something developing and unfolding before you. I also really like simple games which are easy to explain and then play multiple times during a session. Paper Tales is able to hit all of those notes without being the massive behemoth that 7 Wonders has turned into within our group. Don't get me wrong, 7 Wonders is still really high up there in my rankings but Paper Tales feels like a nice alternative, especially for those coming to board gaming for the first time.
I'm a big fan of Paper Tales and if this one has passed you by I highly recommend you checking it out at conventions or your local board game cafe if they have a copy.
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