Cardboard Corner: Review of Vale of Eternity

Seasons is one our family's go-to board games. It fits nicely somewhere between trading card game and Euro, and plays in about an hour. Mostly solitaire engine building, you still have a chance to interfere with opponents' game plans through dice selection and card play. But it's in combining card effects where Seasons hits its sweet spot. Taking the Seasons model and stripping it down into a more streamlined experience is Vale of Eternity (2024).

Vale of Eternity is a 2-4 player card drafting and engine building game. Players start a round by drafting two cards each from a selection wheel, then have the choice of selling the cards for money, paying for and playing them, or keeping them in hand to play a later round. The cards are in five factions, each with its own sale value and type of card effects. Card effects can do anything from generate resources to earn victory points, and are meant to combo off one another. The player who builds the card-combo engine getting to 60 points first triggers end-of-round scoring. After final tally, the person with the most VPs, wins.

Vale of Eternity is a sweet, tight little game that, like Seasons, plays great at any player count. Once players have two or three games under their belts, a four-player game can be done in 30-45 minutes. It plays fast. And the card combos are nicely mid-weight. They do not have Seasons or TCG levels of complexity but offer more than simple A+B choices. Each game is different with myriad combos to build, meaning no two games play alike. The best indicator of this is that a group of experienced players will end with similar scores, each having found a way to generate points from the randomness of the draft.

There are a couple things which set Vale of Eternity apart, at least a little. First is the limits on resources. Resources come in three different types of stones: a 1-value, a 3-value, and a 6-value stone. Players can have a maximum of four stones at any given time, regardless of value, and the bank does not give change. If a 6-value stone is used to pay for a 2-value card, you've potentially done something inefficient by wasting the 4. Maybe it's better to hold that card until you get two1-value stones or a 3-value? These limitations on resources make for a tight but engaging decision space that helps define the game.

Second thing which sets Vale apart—at least a little—is end-game scoring. In Seasons, every card matters. After the final round, there is the final tally of card points, which typically means: the more cards, the more extra points. As a result, the VP tracker can change drastically. In Vale of Eternity it doesn't matter how many cards are in your engine. These extra points do not exist. What mattered is how well those cards combined effects to generate points up to that point in the game, little to be gained after. Another way of putting this is, the engine players have already built is less likely to be beaten by some obscure card another player played earlier. Well-built engines feel more rewarding.

But like Seasons, Vale of Eternity struggles with theme. Seasons opts for a 'wizards collecting crystals' theme, and Vale of Eternity tries something similar, including a very generic, very cutesy fantasy art motif (dragons, goblins, faeries, etc.). I understand other themes would potentially limit marketing and sales, but something like cyberpunk would have fit better thematically. The generic art doesn't interfere, however. The cutesy fantasy gets the game over the line. It just feels like trying to appease everyone ended up leaving everyone only partially satisfied.

One other item of note for “sensitive players” is that the box of Vale contains a few useless items. There is a dragon standee with no function, and the star which is used to place cards for drafting is unnecessary for experienced players. Those two points do not bother our family in the least, but I know there are moaners and complainers out there who will pick up on such things. You know who you are.

So does Vale of Eternity replace Seasons for us? No. The games are more similar than different, but the differences mean something. The biggest difference is complexity, and the resulting length of time it takes for a game. Vale of Eternity will likely come out when we've got less than an hour or are trying to teach a child or someone with simple expectations, whereas Seasons will come out when we've got more time and people with the capacity to handle a longer learning curve.

In the end, Vale of Eternity will not go down as the greatest game ever, but it is very tight, very engaging, and ultimately fun—the litmus test every board game looks to pass. Will we still be playing this 20 years from now? Not sure but ~25 games in we're still enjoying it.